Wow, that's quite generous :)

I suppose those are not uncommon numbers, but I've always been madam frugal. 

I usually do $1500-2000 for straight plays (sometimes less).  I don't do many musicals, but I am directing Sweeney Todd this fall, and I've budgeted somewhere around $6000 for it, the vast majority of that going to cover the rights, book rentals, paying the orchestra etc.  I think I have around $1500 left for production costs.  It's tight, but I've sort of made a reputation for myself doing good shows on a shoestring. 

Sounds dirt cheap (and it is), but we have a lot of good contacts who own local businesses (antique shops, costume shops, florists etc)... so we borrow a lot of things in exchange for a "special thanks" mention.  Plus we have a very well stocked theatre when it comes to lumber, props, costumes, so most anything will already be there.   The first rule if I need something that isn't already there is to try to get it donated. :)  

Kaeli

We're renting a theater as well and being madam frugal we still spend 2,000-2,500 for a straight play running one week.   I think somewhere around 1500 of that right off the top is for theater rental and rights, so it's tough to get it down any lower.

I've got 2 straight play shows (no musicals yet) under my belt from the past 2 years of a new company.  Our first show was about $3000; last years was $4000.

But that's not just for the show, that was our operating budget for the entire run - so included things like start up costs.  We cut a lot of corners the first year - made do with whatever we could.  Last year (the 4k year) we made a lot of purchases that'll be re-used for years... like probably 40 caster wheels for moving large set pieces.  The facility we use has wheels, but they suck, so we just bought our own.  A pretty expensive investment, but we never had a problem rolling our sets around and we had a lot of pieces last year that'll probably mean we'll never buy wheels again for quite some time.

We have a theatre with 49 years in the community, and our own building and staff of 2 full time, 6 part time.  We do six nights of straight plays over two weeks, 8 nights of musicals over three weeks.  We budget 5,000-7,000 usually for straight plays and 9,000-12,000 usually for musicals.  Although bigger ones like Beauty or Wizard of Oz have crossed the $20,000 mark. 

I work with a very small community theatre that is entirely volunteer run.  We spend about $1500 for a straight play and $5000 for musicals!  And that is usually the top of the budget for us.  Although we are working at increasing our patronbase so that we can look at doing some of the more expensive shows without losing a lot of money on them.

We also work with local companies for donations in exchange for ads in our programs and tickets to the show.