Starting a Basic Theater Group

  “All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts…” Shakespeare from As You Like

Like Shakespeare, are you champing at the bit to fulfill your dream of developing a theatrical production or company, well it an be a simple process or as involved to suit your needs.

To start a basic theatre group all you need to do is to gather together like minded people who have an interest in theatre, singing or music in general. Many times people who love theatre, also have an interest in other areas of the arts. But it’s a great idea to set a time to get together and discuss the possibilities of developing a theater group.

Decide on a venue such as someone’s house or apartment, or even hire out an inexpensive venue to have your interested parties to discuss your theatrical productions you may at some stage wish to mount. Someone will need to be the facilitator and take notes and jot down ideas. When there is a group of like minded individuals, great ideas usually arise, so make sure they are written down.

Ideas You Should Discuss

When you first gather together discuss each other’s background in theatre, music and or musical theatre. Discuss past productions you’ve been involved in and talk about your experience and personal talents. Discuss interests in the type of theatre you wish to be involved with and also discuss the type of theatrical productions which they have enjoyed seeing or participating in.

• Discuss each others background in theater
• Discuss their personal talents and experience
• Do they have professional or amateur experiences
• Talk about the types of productions they are mostly interested in
• Are they interested in working backstage such as directing a production or being a stage manager, in charge of props, costumes or would be interested in the design of the set and or overall.
• Are they passionate about theater
• What skills can they offer and do they have connections to people who can help with productions in some way.

Using these ideas, you can ascertain where you might like to go as a group and how you’d like to form. You may want to then and there decided that you want to form an small company, group or performance team.

Amateur Groups vs Professional Groups

Most theater groups from the community begin as an amateur group. In its most rudimentary understanding, amateur groups perform and produce theater/music/musical theater where they do not usually get remuneration. That being, that they do not get paid for their performances. Of course there are exceptions, which will be discussed further down the page.

There is also a line of thought that amateur performances operate in a fashion where they meet their local communities expectations, but not necessarily that of the high end market that professional groups do . For example, most amateur groups out in the wider community who perform do so without getting paid. However depending on the local group mounting the production, often times the director and or musical director will be the only people getting remuneration for their work. The rest of the cast, crew and musicians often work for free or for the love of the artform.

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There is a huge range of ability, talents and skills when comparing amateur and professional productions. And it does not necessarily mean that if you mount an amateur production, that it will be poor. Many, many amateur productions, it can be stated rival ‘professional’ productions in terms of overall production and performances.

Let us suppose that when you are starting out as a new company, you identify yourselves as an amatuer group with the possibility of some day ebbing into the professional route.

Establish a Group Entity or Name

Once you have formed your group and have had a chance to discuss your possibilities, you will need to form an identity. This can be fun, as you will need to choose a name which best suits your performance group.

If you are a youth group, you might want to keep the name ‘youth’ in your title somewhere, to give emphasis on your ages and often times your experience. If you are forming a group in your local area or town, you might want to have that name in your group name. An example is The Napier Operatic Society in Napier, New Zealand. (Amateur)

Typically a theater group such as this will have many members which have built up over years and have become a society. You may want to establish a small group with yourself or a small team such as The Real Theatre Company, which is run by a theatre director, who hires in crew and cast members depending on the production. This is a theater production in which I myself and my theater director husband run and this is currently out logo.

Our theatre production team although small is considered semi-professional, in that some cast and crew members are paid for their talents and skills and most of the other cast members are not. For example a principal actor, musical director and or musician are the people we pay for their skills and talents. We have had a mixture of emerging and established talent which is perfect for our particular needs.

Many times we have engaged acting students in roles to help them build confidence on stage and their over skills and talents.

Roles With Basic Theater

You can have a number of roles or positions in your theater group depending on your needs. For a basic theater group, you will need an artistic director. That person overseas the overall aim of the company or group. If you’ve established yourself as a straight theatre group, you will need someone to produce the show, direct the show, be involved in casting, act in the show, making props, design and build a set, to marketing. Often groups starting out will have members will take on more than one role to make the show happen. It can be exhausting, but also extremely rewarding if you get your show off the ground and it is a success.

Production Roles

• Artistic Director
• Director
• Producer
• Production Manager
• Set Designer
• Set Builder
• Costume Designer
• Costume Sewer
• Props maker
• Stage Manager
• Stage Hands
• Prompt
• Marketing Manager
• Front of House
• Ushers
• And of course Cast members

Many of these roles can be interchanged with your members or not utilized, depending on the production.

Venue of Performances

There are a variety of performance venues and spaces your group may use depending on your production. You may want to investigage hiring a local hall which is often very cheap to hire. For example for a production for a kids show my company mounted, we held auditions and rehearsals in a school hall for about $600.00 for a three week period. Each night was about 3 hours per day to hire. Some halls are also excellent venues to perform, especially if you are starting out.

Other spaces could be your local pub or fancy bar. You could check out a number of places to see if they are interested in your idea to have your production at their site. Also you need to negotiate yours and their terms and conditions for tickets. Some venues like to take a clip of the ticket. Some will be happy with paying at the door or online.

Any venue with enough space, could totally work.

Here are some examples of venues you might like to utilize.

Possible Show Venues or Spaces

• The local hall
• A small theater
• An abandoned warehouse
• A person’s house
• A School stage
• Outside in a garden
• The street
• A truck
• Walkabout Theatre in a Park
• An Art Gallery
• A museum
• A Cinema

You will need to think of the venue of your performance and the resources such as lights and sound systems which may already be readily available or not. In that case you may need to loan equipment from people or hiring it in. If you are a community group, in some cases professional audio/visual companies may hire out their equipment at ‘amateur’ prices. This generally means that you may get a discount on your hireage.

If your company is a charitable trust or group, you may be able to use theater equipment at a cheaper rate than professional groups. It all depends on your group status and what your overall goals are and the policies of the companies you are hiring from.

Goals

In a nutshell, you need to decide on the people you wish to have on board. Decide on the types of productions you want to put on. Understand the basics of mounting simple productions. Establish your overall goals for your group or company.

Check out the post The Difference between Drama and Theater

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