Want to start new independent theatre company? Congratulations and condolences. I’ve spent the last year working on this very challenge with a highly talented and dedicated group of people, and we just survived the first season. However, there were many lessons learned along the way.

Bear in mind that I am not a theatre professional. While I have perhaps 12 years of amateur experience in community theatre, ranging from acting, tech, improv, directing, producing, and various workshops… I am really just an engineer with an abiding passion for the craft. I have no formal training in anything theatre or business.  So, if some of these lessons seem self-evident to more experienced theatre professionals, well, that’s why. I’m just a guy who realized that the kind of theatre I love to do is not being done enough in this community, and thus decided to roll my own.

Also, I don’t claim to have necessarily done any of these correctly or successfully yet. They are, in some cases, lessons learned from actually making the mistake; in other cases, they are simply observations or philosophy that I have come to by thinking of hypothetical situations. A couple at least are principles I have held from the beginning.  In every new situation, you will probably have to figure out how any principle is practically going to apply; maybe sometimes it will be impractical, and that’s where your creative leadership needs to come in.

So here we go, and not necessarily in any particular order of importance:

1. MAKE YOUR AUDIENCE PART OF THE CREATIVE PROCESS. Show them the process leading up to the production, take them behind the scenes, give them access to the ideas and perspectives actors and crew at every stage of the production, and allow them to openly discuss, debate, question, and explore the work. Your audience members are not merely your customers who show up and make an isolated purchase, they should be your community and thus deserve long-term inclusion and interaction, even when they are not in the theater.  They’ve got to be rooting for you even throughout the production process, and then they will feel invested in what you are doing.  Which brings me to….
2. COMMUNICATE. In this age, it is essential to be able to reach out to your audience, fans, supporters, and company electronically, directly, and often. There is no excuse to not have a blog, Facebook Page, Twitter Feed, and a media-rich website… and not just to have them superficially, but to update them often and use them effectively. Learn to use them well, or be left wondering where your young audiences and members have gone.  It takes a significant chunk of time and a genuine desire to connect; if you can’t bring either to the table in this context, my bet is that your theatre company is slowly starting to seem irrelevant.  Don’t know where to start? Check out Dave Charest’s blog for “wicked smaht marketing tips for nonprofits”. I follow the guy religiously on Twitter as well (@DaveCharest).
3. HAVE A CLEAR VISION. Why are you even here? What is the goal of your work? Why should the community care that you are doing what you do at all?  Simply saying “we are here to do theatre”, and even being good at it, is not good enough. What kind of theatre, for whom, and for what purpose? Why is this kind of theatre needed specifically by your target audience, and how will your approach to creating it evolve when conditions change?  The Vision should be completely independent of your resources, assets, people, audience size, the economy, or the nature of your theater space.  It’s not the HOW, WHERE, and WHEN… its the WHAT and the WHY.  This applies to the company as a whole, as well as to individual productions.  Oh yeah, and make sure everyone down to the janitor has buy-in.  You may be able to ride for awhile without a clear Vision if times are good. But when the tide changes, everyone from the public to people in your company are going question why you exist in the first place. If you can’t succinctly answer the question in clear and personal terms, again my bet is that your theatre company is slowly starting to seem irrelevant.
4. EXCITEMENT IS NOT VISION. It’s not talent either. Nor is it responsibility or integrity. Don’t confuse excitement with an ability to implement.
5. ULTIMATELY, IT’S ABOUT PEOPLE. As Colin Powell says in his leadership principles, you can make all the plans, bylaws, and procedures you want, and you definitely should for the sake of organization and structure, but at the end of the day those plans will succeed or fail solely on the quality of the people involved. “Quality” here means much more than just raw talent or experience. Indeed, having a variety of experience levels, backgrounds, theatre histories, and preferred production methods is going to generate the right kinds of positive debate and experimentation within the group.  Passion for the craft, a genuine desire to learn and grow through the art form, and a personal investment in our Vision and what we stand for are far more valuable to me than an impressive theatre resume.  You can always develop people in skills they don’t have, but its much more difficult to deal with a lack of character, passion, or motivation. As long as everyone involved keeps a healthy respect for each other and buys into the same overarching Vision, intelligent debate is healthy. However….
6. KNOW WHEN YOU NEED TO PISS PEOPLE OFF. It’s going to sound cold and ruthless, but if you are not pissing some people off, you are probably not being a responsible leader OR artist. Leadership is not a popularity contest.  On the business side, let’s be frank… for all their excitement, talent, and good faith, some people can be very ineffective at a particular role.   The challenge for the managing/producing director is to then remove these people as efficiently as possible from these positions, while still maintaining morale and personal rapport. That doesn’t always work well at all. In fact it’s usually kind of messy. But, at the end of the day, as managing/producing director you must act in the best interest of the company; if the sacrifice of good graces that this sometimes takes is not worth it to you, then remove yourself from your position instead. Any in-between endangers what you stand for. And while internal differences and constructive debate leading up to a decision is what keeps an organization sharp, once a decision or policy is made (always in light of the Vision), that decision needs to be implemented by everyone as if it were their own. And if not, well… there is always going to be “the drama of drama”; but when sniping and pettiness begin to create divisions and drag down morale, remove those responsible, regardless of their talent or effectiveness.  Whatever they bring to the table is simply not worth the spreading negativity.  Enforce this through positive influence wherever possible, not negative pressure, particularly when working in a volunteer organization.  Think about it this way: if an offending person buys into your company Vision and you can make a reasonable, considered argument as to why this needs to happen based on that Vision, then they should (perhaps reluctantly) agree. If they don’t buy into your company Vision, they shouldn’t be in the company anyway. Harsh perhaps, but true. And on the artistic side, intelligently pissing people off brings me to…
7. PRUDENCE IS THE ENEMY OF RELEVANCE.  I can’t sum it up any better than in an LA Weekly Stage article that I have bookmarked. Just read that.
8. BALANCE STRONG CENTRAL LEADERSHIP WITH INDIVIDUAL DISCRETION. Push tactical authority down to the lowest level that makes sense, which in most cases means the people actually doing the task. They probably know how to do it best, and if they don’t, they are the best able to experiment and figure it out, so give them the resources to do it and get the hell out of the way! Strategic level things on the other hand, such as the company vision, overall policies, how we treat each other and our audience, what is expected, why we are here, etc… these need buy-in from every member to be credible, but they should be centrally enforced and managed, transparent, and held with no exceptions.
9. DON’T ASK ANYTHING OF ANYONE THAT YOU WOULDN’T DO YOURSELF.  And demonstrate it. Even if you aren’t the best person for that task, you should be willing to do it if needed. Especially in a volunteer organization, in the event that no one willingly wants to do it, if it needs to get done, you’re the one who gets to do it anyway!
10. THE TROOPS CAN’T RALLY TO A FLAG THAT ISN’T THERE. No matter how bad things get, how contentious the divisions, now grim the balance sheet, or how negative the reviews, the commander in the field must be the very face of confidence and optimism.  Acknowledge problems head on, openly discuss mistakes, and above all don’t lie… but do not ever let your personal sense of failure or hopelessness spill over to those who look to you for leadership. If you’ve written off a production in your head, see it to the end in a professional manner anyway, even while planning how to do it better next time. If a risk goes badly, document the lessons learned.  But stay positive. Give your actors the pep talk after the horrible press, get in the trenches with the crew member that keeps messing up, and lead the charge to address the impossible curveball that just came up and looks ready to sink the project.  If you give up on your people, your people will give up on you… and once they do, it is next to impossible to muster the credibility to get them back in good spirits.

So there you go. Ten things that I don’t necessarily do well myself, but that I’ve slowly come to target as general principles by which to abide.  As I learn and grow with the company, I am sure some of these will change or at least get tweaked a bit. Maybe the list will grow longer, who knows. But for now, I think this is a pretty good summary of the lessons learned notes in my Producer’s Notebook this first season. Here’s to many more seasons to come!