how much to do a productions
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=479
Printed Date: 11/22/24 at 2:19am
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Topic: how much to do a productions
Posted By: Guests
Subject: how much to do a productions
Date Posted: 11/18/03 at 9:56am
| How much overall would you say it costs to do a production, with a royalties costing $1,100, theater rental costing $2,200(60 seats) and no actors/tech staff are being paid. The show is Gypsy, and there's going to be a cast of about 20. How much do you think for costuming and set building etc. do you think i should have? I'm sorry if that wasn't clear, but you can ask questions to clear it up. |
Replies:
Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 11/18/03 at 12:45pm
|
For a 12 performance run in a 140 seat theater the group I normally work with spends around $10,000 to put on a musical. This includes royalties, production expenses, publicity, saleries for musicians (which we can't get for free), but does not include rent. In your situation I would figure on around $1000 for production expenses (costumes, props, set etc). If you really work on the cheap and beg and borrow a lot you may be able to get this number lower. You say your staff is not being paid, I assume this also includes musicians. In my area it's almost impossible to get musicians to work for free and this becomes a big part of the expenses for a musical. Also, don't forget the cost of script/score rental, this can be serveral hundred dollars for a musical, and it's not included as part of the royalties. Dan |
Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 11/18/03 at 3:57pm
| Are you supplying lights, gels, do you have to have union workers? how elaborate is your set? How much costumes are you going to have to buy, or fabric sew, what about PR, tickets, programs? There's more to a production than sets and costumes. You have to consider incidentals, refreshments at intermission, etc... |
Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 11/25/03 at 10:59am
| I counted rental of materials from TAMS-WITMARK under the royalties categories. I have several friends who are very good muscians who offered to do it for free. And the sets can't be too elaborate. It's not a huge space and it's on the floor. And I also want to know about printing costs etc. Like I have no idea about any of this stuff, How much would it cost to print programs and tickets etc... |
Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 11/25/03 at 7:25pm
|
When we do a production our printing costs for programs typically run about $700 to $800 for 1000 to 2000 copies (we have a 16 page program which is printed on a web press and sell advertisements and sponsorhips to defray the cost) -- we could get by a lot cheaper by making single page photocopied programs which around here are about $.20 a copy (front and back). If you can get a business to make the copies for you and call it a donation, maybe you can get by with just the cost of the paper! Same thing with your posters...I think that is the route I would encourage you to go at this point. Maybe somebody in your group works for a large company (or even a small one) that would welcome the opportunity to help out with printin. |
Posted By: AnonymousActor5
Date Posted: 3/24/05 at 11:52pm
| oh my god! 10,000 dollars? the last show i put on it only cost 2000! including rights. but since i am starting a theater company i have been trying to figure our budget as well. My colleagues figure around 1000 but sadly after researching, i had found it to be 5000, does this number seem normal? or do you think it is too expensive? |
Posted By: Scott B
Date Posted: 3/27/05 at 12:07am
| A very small, rural theatre company that I work with (seats 85) basically figures about $4300 for a musical. I believe that's for a three week/12 show run. This does not include rent. |
Posted By: fresh
Date Posted: 5/30/06 at 7:25pm
| We are currently running Gypsy with a cast of 35 in a theater that seats 250. Our budget for this show is $27000, which includes royalteis in excess of $6000 and rent of over $7500. We are charging $20 per adult attendee. |
Posted By: k8tt
Date Posted: 6/01/06 at 11:03am
|
Geez, our CT is a pauper compared to you guys in the big leagues! We are in a rural area and are very small. All volunteers except the part time bookkeeper. We rent space for $1000 Cdn. for two weekends (6 shows seating up to 80) and keep our fingers crossed that we make anything above our costs. The last show made almost $2000 (and that included concession sales!). We beg, borrow (not steal yet, though) and empty our own homes of props, costumes and set pieces. Sometimes props and costumes budgets are only $100 each! Our last big musical lost money and I have a feeling our current drama won't make anything. People around here only want to see comedies. Of course, we are non-profit and are donating a percentage of the proceeds to charity. |
Posted By: Scott B
Date Posted: 6/01/06 at 11:33pm
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We are quite small as well. We have no sponsors, advertising, or corporate contributions. Our shows have to make enough money to pay for the whole budget. Our last one was budgeted at $4500 and I believe we took in around $5300. We don't have our final figures in yet, but I'm guessing that we came in around $4100. We have no space, so the church let us use their facilities. We gave them a $400 donation even though they asked for nothing. It probably does litte more than cover utilities, but they know we're non-profit as well. We may look at a play this fall to help bring down the expenses even more, but then we'll probably lose the church if the show doesn't fit. This is a tough business to be in.  |
Posted By: Kathy S
Date Posted: 6/01/06 at 11:49pm
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K8tt, just wondering, if you are really paupers, why do you give away part of your proceeds to charity? Do you have an arrangement where there is a charity that sells your tickets for part of the take? Do you think giving away a portion is helping your theatre or not? I'm sure it very well could be helping, I don't know, we've never done that. There is always so much that we need to buy that we really need our shows to make money. The one thing that we have done all along is to give our concessions to a non-profit group every night, but THEY bring the goodies and sell them, taking home the donations, too. Although, since we just did a huge renovation and are still trying to get the bills paid, we have decided to do concessions ourselves on the current show. |
Posted By: Gaafa
Date Posted: 6/02/06 at 12:26am
|
We only get into charity by offering the organisation blocks of seats
for a performance from $5 each, for the $15 tickets, depending on the
amount taken! They can flog them to their own membership for what they
like & keep the difference. If they want to take the whole house,
they can take over the performance & do whatever they want in the
way of raffles or whatever! [usually on a mid week night] Some mobs
make around $2000 & more for the night for little effort!
------------- Joe Western Gondawandaland turn right @ Perth. Hear the light & see the sound. Toi Toi Toi Chookas {{"chook [chicken] it is"} May you always play to a full house} |
Posted By: tristanrobin
Date Posted: 6/02/06 at 5:31pm
| just out of curiosity - how are you casting "Gypsy" with only 20 people?! |
Posted By: Gaafa
Date Posted: 6/03/06 at 9:50am
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I?ve been trying to get our mob to forget about charging a price fixed for the tickets! Just have an open house & request entrance by a monitory donation. I did this a long time ago in a country town & didn?t specify the donation being of money! We got everything thing from boxes of Tomatoes, fruit to even frozen chook! What I should have been specific about was it had to be non perishable! We did get some of money, so we ended up doing a quick auction after the shows & we made more out of that than flogging the seats. When I started the theatre 2 years ago here, & directed our inaugural production, of ?Stepping Out?. As it was the first community theatre in Cockburn City, although they put a price of $12/$10 for the tickets. I gave out a whole heap of comps to the general public, in order to get an audience. I placed a number of donation boxes around the foyer, when we did the final tally. We made around 60% more, than we what we would have done, by selling the tickets & got good audience numbers to the shows as well! Although they have kept up the donation boxes, the return from productions since then, have just covered costs! For their present & 4th production, they have increased their prices for each season. It is now $15/$12 & they don?t give out comps any more. As they think by charging the full wack, this will give them better returns? But all it has done is reduce the punters & the revenue. Instead of playing to decent houses & increasing their audience base over a the shortest time! Ah well!  ------------- Joe Western Gondawandaland turn right @ Perth. Hear the light & see the sound. Toi Toi Toi Chookas {{"chook [chicken] it is"} May you always play to a full house} |
Posted By: k8tt
Date Posted: 6/12/06 at 8:58am
|
Whew, just finished the run of Marvin's Room and I think we won't have much to donate to the cancer charity. The Publicity manager partnered with this Breast Cancer group thinking that they would help promote the play and bring in patrons. But the partnership did not help fill seats. I am still upset that we put on this drama (AD's choice, not Play Committee's choice). We had to beat the bushes to get 3/4 of the house full each night (and one of our matinees was only half full). Everyone who saw it liked it, but the audiences want comedy. Lots of our regular patrons didn't attend because they didn't want to see a play about cancer, even if parts of it were humorous. |
Posted By: Playwright
Date Posted: 6/12/06 at 1:40pm
| I hear you! Marvin's Room is an awesome play! I'm premiering my own play in four weeks. All the ticket proceeds are going to charity. The tag line for the play says- A story of family, love, laughter, loss and the enduring human spirit. We are deliberatly not giving away the story-line. Tickets are selling slowy at a steady pace but suprisingly opening night is selling the best so far. Once the cast members get their orders in then we'll sell even more. It's summer theatre and not a flat out comedy so I'm not expecting sold-out nights. Wishing for some but not setting my expectations too high. |
Posted By: John Luzaich
Date Posted: 3/11/08 at 3:06pm
|
Actually, we were just looking at numbers last night. We had a budget/finance committee meeting (8 members) and then our full board meeting (18 members). We're in our 30th year. We own our own 500 seat theatre building, produce 4 plays a year, present a small artist series and do a number of rentals. For our community theatre produced plays (non-musical) we spend in the $4,800. - $8,300. range. For musicals we spend usually in the $12,000 - $14,000. range. But, for the last play we spent about $5,000. and brought in about $20,000. for a profit margin of $15,000. For Pippin we spent about $23,000. and brought in about $47,000. for a $24,000 profit margin. ("brought in" - meaning individual admission ticket sales, a portion of season ticket sales, sponsorships, concession and any other contributions or fund raising for that specific show). ------------- John cfct@cfu.net http://www.osterregent.org http://www.facebook.com/osterregent |
Posted By: jayzehr
Date Posted: 3/12/08 at 8:24am
| How much did your 500 seat theatre cost you and/or what do you think it's worth at the moment? |
Posted By: John Luzaich
Date Posted: 3/12/08 at 9:59am
|
Hey Jayzehr,
Our building was built in 1910. It was a legit theatre for 8 years, then a movie theatre for most of it's life. The building was run down and fly system back stage area not structurally sound. It was closed down for a few years and the family that owned and operated the movie theatre gifted the building to our community theatre organization. The community theatre had been producing two plays a year for 16 years on a junior high school stage. We spent about three years fund raising and restoring the building. It is listed on the National Registry of Historic Places and the board raised and spent about $1.2 million as it re-opened in 1994 as a legit theatre again. We've since spent another $225,000. on restoring all of the seats, waterproofing the roof, replacing 5 doors, building an orchestra pit and insulating the back stage areas. The building is valued at about $1.4 million. I'm the general manager, a full time employee, and have been here about 10 years. We have another full time employee, one part time employee, 474 volunteers on our list, an 18 member board and a 15 member "friends" board (social support and fund raising group). ------------- John cfct@cfu.net http://www.osterregent.org http://www.facebook.com/osterregent |
Posted By: ticketjunior
Date Posted: 5/18/08 at 9:55pm
|
Just for people looking for numbers. Our theater groups just did Beauty and the Beast. Cast of 60, lighting, customs, scenes, sound, etc, ...basically everything for just a little over $7,000. We did three performances and sold approximately 1500 tickets at $10 per ticket. ------------- -James P. Walters Phone: 404-272-4778 http://www.ticketjunior.com - www.ticketjunior.com "We're the little guy in the ticketing business." |
Posted By: JoeMc
Date Posted: 5/18/08 at 11:17pm
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For our first production in our new refurbished venue.
I have proposed we adopt 'Pay what you like - Admission. Or Admission by donation.
The 5 performance season would cost about $[AUD]1200 & it holds just under a 100.
But I feel we will recover a lot more than charging our normal ticket price/seat. Also get a lot more bums on seats. ------------- [western] Gondawandaland "Hear the light & see the sound! TOI TOI CHOOKAS {may you always play to a full house!} |
Posted By: avgsuperheroine
Date Posted: 6/22/08 at 9:21pm
We had this same problem with Moonlight and Valentino. We had people complain that it was the worst show we've ever done (the acting was fabulous, trust me, we've done a lot worse)--I think it was just too "real". I think Marvin's room we did ok, but we also did a special performance (a joint venture) of WIT and we had to cancel ours because we only sold 8 tickets. Yep, 8. ------------- http://www.dramaticallycorrect.com - Dramatically Correct Cast Gifts http://www.freewebs.com/costumeorganize - Costume Shop Organization Tips |