We have our orchestra members on site and playing for four rehearsals and one open dress during production week, and nine performances (14 "shows" total).  We do not pay high school students, but do pay college students and "adults."  Our per show payment is $20.00 per orchestra member. 

 

Are we in the ball park?  We're in western Pennsylvania.  Thanks!

We rearly use muso's as such but  this site AACT topic may help?

http://www.aact.org/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1264992276/1#1 - http://www.aact.org/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1264992276/1#1

 

G'Day,

~neal

 

If we had the budget, we would love to pay people.  This theatre has never had that. 

 

I'm an advocate of backing tracks but I TOO love the immediacy, the lush richness of a real orchestra with players expending their air to accomplish good sound.  BUT I also realize the limitations of that for a LOT of people and company's budgets. Just too hard to afford live musicians and finding them too - when the pool is so shallow with players who want to earn a few bucks, have some fun, and be appreciated for what they bring to a musical.  So I used tracks - which I sequenced by the way at great expenditure of time - and most of the casts I've used - save the one or two dissenters - loved using them. I mean, yeah, it's theater Karaoke - but it's a useful tool.  The only viable reason any of the dissenting actors who didn't like it, could come up with, was that if they messed up at least live musicians could hopefully follow and get you back on track (or not).  My contention is that actors who do musicals (or any show for that matter) should know their lines, lyrics, melodies, parts or whatever and using tracks is unforgiving....you HAVE to know it cold. THAT was the only argument that they had though - live musicians could CYA!!

 

ANYway, if you're going to do musicals, then it's the nature of the beast that you're going to have to have the budget to cover things regular shows do not require.  Planning well ahead, fund raising or whatever it takes - is the order of the day in those cases...unless you're a wealthy theater company (haven't ever been connected to too many of those) and have a nice reserve to employ.

 

TonyDi

Many musicians do not, or it is broken :-(

Either you get too loud, or much too loud. 

 

However, we just did Sound of Music with about 40 musicians on the floor in front of the stage. Only 2 actors had wireless and everybody else had to get by with PCCs on the edge of the apron. Every actor that spoke up and spoke clearly could easily be heard. I was quite impressed.  I don't have any idea what they were paid.

 

I agree with this statement.  I have had leads in many of our musicals.  I have also been vocal director a few times, I've directed once, I've played in the pit, and I've conducted the pit. 

NO ONE in our organization is ever paid - not the directors, the actors, or musicians - everyone volunteers their time.  Paying a pianist $1000 for the run would amount to 1/6th of the budget for our musical.  Paying the musicians $20 a performance for 10 performances with an average of 9 musicians in the pit would add another $1800 - causing the pit to cost fully 1/2 of what our normal musical budget is...... and that would be impossible for us..... not to mention offensive for the director  (who easily puts the most time and effort into the production) and the actors - who get only the audiences appreaciation for their efforts.

While finding the musicians is never difficult for us - it is getting harder to line up pianists.  But the issue isn't the money - it is the time commitment.

I was with another CT that paid $35/rehearsal and $50/performance for two or three weekends of performances.

 

I've directed 10 musicals over the past 15 years and only one had an all-volunteer orchestra...the worst mistake I ever made. Most were rusty on their instruments, to put it kindly, or high school students so that the cast was upstaged by all the missed notes, honking and squeeking. Further, two of the better musicians just up and left the second weekend because...they got paying gigs!

 

I have a MFA in directing, so I grit my teeth when musicians expect to be paid stating their years of study, etc. Truly, I understand the feelings posted here that we should all be doing this for the love of community theatre. But, the reality is that good musicians expect to be paid.

I completely understand both positions. I used to do a lot of work for free, but I've found that some groups really don't appreciate volunteers very much. Being that I have been working in production (theater, television, concerts, etc.) since I was a youngster (over 50 years of production related work) I've decided to back off from doing volunteerism especially for organizations that do have some money..