It sounds like I may be the only producer in the thread, and while directors, technical directors, etc. definitely have budgetary responsibilities, it’s really the producers who manage the financials. We’re a large community theatre, with a regular five show season, and are resident artists at our city’s arts center. We also produce “edgy” art-house style shows in our studio space. We have a children’s theatre arm, and are generally pretty mainstream and family friendly. We don’t pay our actors, although we do offer a gas allowance because we are in a very sprawled market. We do pay our directors, designers(scenic, lighting, sound, costume), and carpenters a per-show stipend. This is generally not enough to require us to issue 1099s unless you work on more than one show per year with us. Our musicians are union, so they make union money and are generally paid hourly. They supply their own instruments with the exception of the piano. Pretty much everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, else is highly variable. Budgets are set by show and what the show requires. A musical is generally much more expensive than a straight play, and some shows have huge costume requirements while others are straightforward on costuming but require ornate sets. In the past year we’ve had budgets for costumes range from $250 to $3,000, and for sets ranging from $500 - $4,500. It’s entirely driven by the show and the artistic team, led by the director.
Here’s a couple examples.
The Diary of Anne Frank. This show doesn’t require much in the way of special costumes. A couple trips to thrift stores would do it, or if the company was a long established company, they could probably pull the costumes from stock. We were considering this one for our upcoming season and costumes weren’t something we were worried about at all. A minimal budget for some time for our costume designer to alter some stuff or do incidentals like a Nazi armband and that’s about it. The set on the other hand needs to have that “confined space” feel, so the walls need to be fully built and the boundaries of the Franks world need to be solid in a traditional interpretation of the show. Set dressing and props would be a very high budget area too because you have people who live their entire lives in this room and you need groceries, toiletries, bedding, etc.
A Few Good Men. This show requires enormous costume commitments. Military dress uniforms aren’t just something you can pull out of thrift stores or fake easily. You’ll probably need a military costume consultant, or even more than one because multiple branches of the military are involved. Rank insignias need to be acquired or fabricated, there’s just an enormous amount of detail that goes into the costuming for this show. The uniforms need to be tailored to the performers because they would be tailored on a real JAG or Marine. The set can be a couple of tables and a few chairs pulled in from the lobby. Literally.
It’s a very broad field and I guess the best I can do is to give examples. In Julius Caesar, if Shakespere had been working with a Dramaturgist, there wouldn’t have been a mention of a striking clock. In West Side Story, had Sondheim been working with a dramatist, this poor, nearly illiterate in English, sweat shop worker would not have had these lines in the song “I Feel Pretty”
That kind of complicated rhyme and wordplay just completely isn’t appropriate to the character, and Sondheim says this himself in his book, not to mention some of it may not even be in her limited English vocabulary.
Dramaturgists are the detail-oriented people. The ones which say “you can’t put a Navy JAG dress uniform on a Marine Corporal. This is what a Marine Corporal dress uniform looks like, use this instead.” They need broad knowledge bases, good investigative skills, and a lot of attention to detail. It’s a very specialized field, and if you’re your friend’s go-to guy for obscure bits of knowledge about a huge range of topics, that may be why she’s recommending the field to you.
Enjoy,
Steven
