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Organizational Models

There are many different kinds of theatre organizations, and content in this section explores the diversity of models. Dive in with essays on shared leadership and restructuring a company as a worker’s cooperative.

The Latest

Towards a Sustainable Theatre Model
Essay
Towards a Sustainable Theatre Model
by Scott Walters, Munroe Shearer
27 February 2024
That Which We Call a Struggle: A Response to Ife Olujobi’s “$5000”
Essay
That Which We Call a Struggle: A Response to Ife Olujobi’s “$5000”
by Chris Myers
5 February 2024
How Pay As You Are Changed Theater Mu
Essay
How Pay As You Are Changed Theater Mu
by Lianna Matt McLernon, Wesley Mouri, Anh Thu Pham
27 November 2023
A Romanian political rally.
Postcards from Romania
Essay

Postcards from Romania

Crossing the Audience Border

24 March 2014

I sit in theaters today and I question who this contemporary audience is and if they find themselves represented onstage. The demographics of the audience are different, theater to theater, town to town; the National Theater attracts older audience members who go to be seen, the independent spaces usually play towards a younger crowd, similar to the Broadway, independent and regional audiences in the US. But the one unifying factor is that the work isn’t made for the audience, it’s made for the artist.

How Do We Make It? Directors and the New Theater Landscape
Essay

How Do We Make It? Directors and the New Theater Landscape

23 March 2014

Michael Rau and Will Davis share different approaches to make collaboration work in theatre-making.

Kermit the Frog.
Why Kermit the Frog is a Bad Producer
Essay

Why Kermit the Frog is a Bad Producer

21 March 2014

I grew up entranced by Jim Henson’s Muppets. Performing with wry but gentle humor, they pulled back the curtain to snicker at backstage life and deftly expressed all the joy, camaraderie, and frustration of working as an ensemble. Though televised, it embraced the dynamic liveness integral to puppetry, variety, and vaudeville as art forms. So now, looking back at the films as a young arts manager, I’m shocked to realize that Kermit the Frog—whom I love very, very much—is a pretty bad producer.

Plays by Women
Essay

Plays by Women

One Theater’s Story

17 March 2014

As a former fellow-traveler, albeit on a somewhat smaller scale than the summiteers, all of this got me thinking: For the twenty two years of Theater of the First Amendment’s producing life as the resident professional company of George Mason University, how did we do?

Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble logo.
Ensembles
Essay

Ensembles

The Life and Times of Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble

14 March 2014

Alvina Krause, one of twentieth century’s most famous teachers of acting, believed, “if you can act Chekhov, you can act anything!” In the summer of 1976 she was 83 years old, long retired, yet still taking private students in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. Little did she know that seven students from Northwestern University in Chicago would come to study “acting Chekhov” with her, and end up settling into the town for a much longer stay as the Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble (BTE).

Theatre Bay Area logo
Triple Play Discussion Series
Video

Triple Play Discussion Series

Friday 7 March 2014
Minneapolis, MN, United States

Theatre Development Fund and Theatre Bay Area hosted a series of six roundtable discussions intended to uncover the best new thinking and practices around what most effectively links audiences, generative artists and the theaters who produce them livestreamed on the global, commons-based peer-produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv. The fifth of six discussions was in Minneapolis on Friday 7 March at 11 a.m. PST (San Francisco) / 1 p.m. CST (Chicago) / 2 p.m. EST (New York City).

The Business Case for Radical Hospitality, or No-Cost Access to Theater
Essay

The Business Case for Radical Hospitality, or No-Cost Access to Theater

2 March 2014

Part two of this series, curated by Aditi Kapil, playwright-in-residence at Mixed Blood Theatre, examines the pragmatics of how Radical Hospitality works, “The Financial or Business Case,” in a conversation with Managing Director Amanda White Thietje, Community Outreach & Marketing Manager Brie Jonna, and Artistic Director Jack Reuler.

Ensembles
Essay

Ensembles

Making and Paying for the Art

25 February 2014

How do you work as a group? How do you work without a script? How do you ask someone to fund a group without a script? And how are you still together—financially, artistically? The non-traditional model of creation is frequently mysterious if only because it is hard to understand without doing.

The cost of producing professional theatre.
Infographic
Essay

Infographic

Hidden Costs of Producing Professional Theater

20 February 2014

Cape May Stage is a small Equity theater in Southern New Jersey—about as far south as you can go before your hat floats. Geographically, we are isolated from our colleagues in neighboring cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. Yet, because our audiences routinely come from those places, we are forced to compete with larger theaters with larger budgets. That demands a creative solution.

Cabaret Poe poster.
Pursuing Originality in Indianapolis Theater
Essay

Pursuing Originality in Indianapolis Theater

Q Artistry

19 February 2014

We often discuss originality at Q Artistry, an Indianapolis based new works theater organization. We debate it and comb over it with dirty, bloody brushes or pluck at it with a solitary virgin pick. And we always come up with different answers. From talking bowling pins to singing bunnies, we've presented ideas in theater form that were brand new or re-imagined. We've set Edgar Allan Poe to theatrical music in "Cabaret Poe" and turned the villain from the oldest poem known to man into an experience for audiences in "Grendel".

Many question words on a notecard.
Creating a New Play Microcosm
Essay

Creating a New Play Microcosm

14 February 2014

Starting a theater company is much like getting ready to write a book report in the sixth grade. Before you get to the nitty-gritty, you first have to figure out the “Five Ws and One H.” Who? What? Where? Why? When? And, How?

Photo of a broken plate.
Antipermanence
Essay

Antipermanence

An Argument for Increased Infrastructural Ephemerality in America’s Nonprofit Theaters

26 January 2014

In her essay, Annah Feinberg investigates infrastructural ephemerality in America's nonprofit theatre.

Writing In the Middle of Nowhere
Essay

Writing In the Middle of Nowhere

23 January 2014

Artistic director and playwright Wendy MacLeod and I wondered aloud: what would happen if, right then, that playwright was placed in a remote community of writers for two weeks, at Ohio’s quiet and serenely beautiful Kenyon College? And what if that playwright could work with the commissioning theater’s literary manager as an advising voice and with all the tools at hand—actors to read, writers to hear, and, at the end, a fully staged reading? And no ticket sales. No critics.

Waterfall Agile Poster.
Techne
Essay

Techne

Agile Theater Makers

17 January 2014

Speaking of centralized authority figures: we are also so accustomed to having the “initial creative impulse” of a play come from a playwright .... But given the core task of the role—establishing the high-level vision for a production—is there any reason why, say, a designer or actor couldn’t serve as a product owner? I mean… why should playwrights be the only theater artists who get to sit in the “big vision” chair? In an agile theater world, they wouldn’t.

National Theatre Festival logo.
Postcards from Romania, Part Two
Essay

Postcards from Romania, Part Two

Theater and “Planet Money”

7 January 2014

In the middle of the National Theater Festival and National Independent Theater Festival in Bucharest, the divide between idependent theatre and state theatre—artistic freedom and money—becomes clear.

Welders logo.
Towards a New Collective in American Theater, Part One
Essay

Towards a New Collective in American Theater, Part One

3 January 2014

Tired of waiting for a production and the loneliness writing entails, The Welders formed to take action. The warm reception made them realize how much can be done when having a community.

The Twitter logo.
Weekly Howl Archive
Essay

Weekly Howl Archive

Self-Producing & Making Your Own Opportunities

2 January 2014

The Weekly Howl is a peer produced, open access discussion about theater culture and contemporary performance that happens in real-time on Twitter using the hashtag #newplay. If you have an idea for a topic or if you want to moderate the discussion, contact us on Twitter @HowlRound. The Weekly Howl happens on Thursdays on hashtag #newplay at 11am PST / 1pm CST / 2pm EST / 19:00 GMT / 8pm CET

Progress in Practice
Essay

Progress in Practice

At-Risk Industries in Dialogue

22 December 2013

Alex Ates shares a brief description of A Truckload of Ink, a new play by Jim Fitzmorris, commisioned by The NOLA Project theater company.

a portrait of a nora long
The Unsustainable State of Art
Essay

The Unsustainable State of Art

16 December 2013

A. Nora Long examines our culture's fascination with the starving artist, scrambling to make ends meet... and calls for a movement to dismantle our thoughts about how we make a life in the theater.

A Romanian crest.
Theater management in Romania – A Mandatory Professionalization
Essay

Theater management in Romania – A Mandatory Professionalization

10 December 2013

The fall of communism in 1989 ledway to the democratisation of art. Ioana Tamas gives the breakdown of how arts management had to be developed to make this transition successful.

Rehearsing Nightmares.
The Phantom Seats of Philanthropy
Essay

The Phantom Seats of Philanthropy

29 November 2013

Adam Burnett and Jud Knudsen imagine a world without arts funding and wonder: could that actually be the impetus we need to rethink how and why we make theater?

Radical Hospitality
Essay

Radical Hospitality

The Artistic Case

27 November 2013

This initial conversation between Artistic Director Jack Reuler and Playwright-in-Residence Aditi Brennan Kapil examines the artistic case for a theatre in Minneapolis to charge no admission, program ambitious new work that stretches its aesthetics, capacity, and resources, and perhaps more importantly, why this matters?

portrait of paul meshejian
A Life in Theater
Essay

A Life in Theater

22 November 2013

Paul Meshejian challenges the idea that compensation in theater is something to be taken for granted. Instead, shouldn't we expect to not make much for our art?

All you need it love.
Letting the Love Love You
Essay

Letting the Love Love You

Navigating the Gray Areas of a Love or Money Industry; Part Three: All you Need is Love

10 November 2013

The key to successful “amateur” theatre is communication. Danielle Rosvally reminds us that outsiders need transparent frame works so the relationship with the company be a success.

Logo for Dramatists Guild.
Playwrights at the Helm panel at Dramatists Guild
Video

Playwrights at the Helm panel at Dramatists Guild

Tuesday 22 October 2013
New York, NY, United States

The Dramatists Guild of America presents a panel discussion "Playwrights at the Helm" livestreamed on the global, commons-based peer-produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv on Tuesday 22 October 2013 at 2:30 p.m. PDT (San Francisco) / 4:30 p.m. CDT (Austin) / 5:30 p.m. EDT (New York) / 21:30 GMT. Use Twitter hashtag #howlround and direct comments @DramatistsGuild.