Ok, back on Oct. 8th, Mookie put up the Hierarchy of The Theater... Its quite nice actually, and in an educational setting, it occasionally works out that way... Unfortunatly, reality has absolutly nothing to do with what they teach people in school... (that is perhaps the single biggest failing of university level theatre departments, they only teach you what you need to go from college straight in to an educational job) Well I commented that I would get around to doing one that resembles the reality I've seen, so here it is finally... (yea, yea... I'm massively behind... the computer ate my CAD program, so I had to wait for my new edition to come in... I didn't feel like doing it in a graphics program)
Sorry... I still use a free account, so no images right inside the blog... Anyway... Depends on where you are, but this shows the basic framework. The money heading covers lots of sources... could be a producer, or grant, or subscriptions, etc... The Production Manager is responsible for overseeing the entire tech department, and the artistic staff. They are essentially on par with the director.... They never make an artistic decision though... Final artistic decisions fall to the director... The PM is the person that will eventually have to reign in the director to the budget, or more often the realities of what is actually possible... (I've heard directors ask to make things fall slower... yea, let me go and start altering gravity for you... I've got Einstein and Newton in a storage room to work out the details...)
The red box is often considered the artistic staff, though the TD is often not designing anything really... The designers and the TD then flow down to their respective shops/departments... Some times the prop department is part of the scene shop, sometimes not... Sometimes Sound gets lumpped in with Lights, which is just dead wrong, but its still common...
The purple lettering is the show group... They all answer to the Stage Manager once the show is in "Tech"... Before that time they answer to their respective departments...
As I said, this chart is different in every theatre you walk in to... This is pretty common for regional theatres though...
Posted by Backstage at October 24, 2003 07:02 PM