Show Budgets
Printed From: Community Theater Green Room
Category: Theater Administration
Forum Name: Money Talk
Forum Discription: Questions about fundraising and promotion
URL: http://www.communitytheater.org/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=3317
Printed Date: 11/22/24 at 4:27pm
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 8.05 - http://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: Show Budgets
Posted By: tonyboling
Subject: Show Budgets
Date Posted: 7/30/08 at 12:36am
On average how much do you budget for a musical and how much for a straight play?
Our musicals are anywhere between $7,000 and $12,000 and straight plays are around $2,600 and $3,000.
Just curious what everyone else spends.
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Replies:
Posted By: kaelidancer
Date Posted: 8/12/08 at 10:37am
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
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Posted By: tonyboling
Date Posted: 8/12/08 at 10:49am
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we don't have an actual theatre. We rent stages at the community college or a high school. Maybe that's why our cost is a little higher. We also do 2 weekends.
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Posted By: jayzehr
Date Posted: 8/12/08 at 7:31pm
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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.
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Posted By: Cravens
Date Posted: 11/03/08 at 6:23pm
We do a straight play for about $5000.00 and a musical at about $11,000. We have 12 performances. We also have our own theatre. These are budget numbers, and we usually come in under that, due to the fact that we recycle most of our sets. We are also a theatre that has been in our building for 25 years and producing shows for 51 years.
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Tracy
www.longmonttheatre.org
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Posted By: dexter74656
Date Posted: 11/03/08 at 6:42pm
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.
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Posted By: John Luzaich
Date Posted: 3/26/09 at 5:57pm
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Going back to Tony, the original poster asking how much various theatres spend on shows, musical and non-musical... our budget is between 5 - 8,000 for a non-musical, 12 - 15,000 for a musical. (we spent about $21,000 on Pippin) I know there are theatres that spend much less and some theatres that spend more. There's no right or wrong, it depends on your circumstances and mostly, your royalties. Since musical royalties are based on three factors, there are theatres that produce the same show for less money than we do and some theatres that spend more than we do. Royalties are beyond our control. (well, yes, we could produce few performances and therfore pay less roylty, but you know what I mean).
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John
cfct@cfu.net
http://www.osterregent.org
http://www.facebook.com/osterregent
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Posted By: dramacorrect
Date Posted: 4/13/09 at 12:16am
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.
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http://tinyurl.com/6c4okhd - Theatre Articles
http://tinyurl.com/3wvu3eg - Web Apps to Save Money
Community Theatre Fundraising
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Posted By: John Luzaich
Date Posted: 4/17/09 at 11:21am
Sounds like we might have similar sized organizations. What's the community theatre web site address? Ours is http://www.osterregent.org - www.osterregent.org
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John
cfct@cfu.net
http://www.osterregent.org
http://www.facebook.com/osterregent
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Posted By: actnaturally
Date Posted: 4/17/09 at 12:02pm
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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.
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Posted By: PWProducer
Date Posted: 5/10/09 at 9:56pm
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Our budgets are usually in the $50,000 or more price range (musical).....we only do one show per year though and that is in an outdoor venue. The cost is so much in that we must rent all lighting and sound equipment. As a non-profit our ultimate goal is to at least break even and hopefully make a little extra to save for a rainy day. This marks our 60th year and hopefully we have another 60.....
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Posted By: lparks
Date Posted: 4/01/10 at 3:10pm
you can check-out the budget breakdown sheet for our upcoming production of 'Dracula' the musical here:
http://www.brtlive.org/BRT EXPENSE SHEET.pdf
Thanks!
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Landon Parks,
Producing Artistic Director,
Bloomington Repertory Theatre Co
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