Organising a Performance

Put Your Team Together

Putting your team together is the most important part of your project. Get this right and most things will fall into place.

Who Will You Need for Your Project?

The people you recruit for your performance will largely depend on the nature of what you are trying to create. There are a few things you will need to think about when making these decisions.

What is the main focus of your performance? Do you want amazing sound? Are the costumes really specific? Try to find people who have these specific skills.
What do you want the aesthetic and form of your performance to be? Who has done work like that before, or who do you think has the raw skills and approach to pull that off?

Get on the Same Page

Make sure you have an initial conversation that is clear and thorough, even if you know everyone or have worked with them before. Every project is different. Make sure you talk through:

The aim of the project
The timeline and expected participation
Any of their unavailability
Expected remuneration
The expected method of communication and culture of the project.

Contracts and Payment Models

You’re organising a performance and want to pay all the creatives involved? Good on you! There are four ways of doing this and the approach people pick normally differs from professional contexts (which are often subsidised with funding) to independent or artist-led contexts (often unsubsidised).

Profit share—this is principally for independent theatre companies, who cannot afford to pay their creative team and cast award (professional) wages. It has to be mutually agreed by every member of the creative team
Performer’s Collective Agreement—this is a professional performance award, developed by the MEAA
Live Performance Australia Award—this is the industry award that covers the live performance in Australia
Fee Based Contractor—this is particularly appropriate for designers working for a professional production. You can find guides to suggested fees at the Australian Production Design Guild.

Work Out the Money

Income

What are your sources of income? Tickets, yes, but you could also look at securing grants or individual donations to support your project
When will your income be coming in? What do you have to pay when? Your cash flow will determine when can you afford to pay for different parts of your project. Make a plan to schedule this appropriately. Particularly with independent projects you may need to save up before you can begin the project.

Expenditure

You must divide your budget by ‘lines’ of expenditure. In a spreadsheet each row will be a separate expense— set, speakers, costumes, creative wages. Have a look at the example below for more information
Make sure you have a ‘contingency’, money that is in your budget, not for anything specific, but if an unexpected cost comes up.
Be realistic in your budgeting. Don’t allow $200 for sound equipment if all of your research and quotes indicate it will be $400.

How big should your budget be?

Your budget is determined by the amount of income you have.
If you are generating your income through ticket sales, you can use this handy calculation to work out your possible season ticket sales:
number of paid performances (excluding opening night) x average ticket price x number of seats in the theatre
Generally, budget on 30% of your possible season ticket sales. This is conservative, so it protects you from accidentally spending more than you earn.

Managing your budget

Prepare a budget in excel or Google Sheets—this allows you to set up simple formulas to help you calculate how much you’ve spent, and what you have left.
A budget line item describes all the costs associated with one type of expense such as ‘printing’ or ‘catering.’ You can also group similar line items together in categories. For example the category of ‘marketing and communications’ could have line items such as ‘digital advertising’ and ‘printing: flyers and posters’ inside.
Your budget should be an active document and something you come back to regularly. Make sure you track how much you spend. Track the ‘actual’ spend against each line of your budget so you can see what is happening, and what funds you have left to work with.

Schedule Your Project

What is your team's availability for this performance? Particularly working in an independent context, you will need to work around them. In a professionally waged context, you will have more control over the schedule.
Where are you rehearsing? Make sure it is as accessible as possible for the majority of your team.
When are your performance / opening times? What technical preparation do you need to get ready, do you need to rig lights, paint walls? How long will this take, and who needs to be there to get it done?
Make sure all of this is communicated clearly and regularly with your team, you may like to use a platform such as Slack to help you manage this.

Ticketing

You may be working with a venue who provides ticketing. If you’re not, you will need to decide the rate that you charge for your tickets. This will depend on how you have structured your budget.

If you have to manage your own ticketing, here are some sites you can look at: