The Creative Theatre Producers Club

Happy New Year...

A bit late, I know, but I hope you had a great holiday season and you were able to create some 'me' time. I know the New Year is a time for thinking of plans for the next year or two ahead, but I thought I'd let you know first about two opportunities for February as they are both likely to sell out and I wouldn't want you to miss them.

Our first 'Masterclass' - and 'An Introduction to Creative Producing'. The Masterclass is with Guy Masterson.  How to Conquer Edinburgh.   Tuesday,  6th February, 2018

If you've been around for any time, you'll know of Guy.  King of the Edinburgh Fringe and the master of one-man shows (not a title he relishes, by the way!)  I've been working quite closely with him for the last few months and I really think anyone aspiring to make a career as an independent in the arts should take this opportunity to meet him and pick up a few tips about how he has managed to tour the world over 25 Edinburgh Festivals.  He is remarkable in so many ways I think you will find useful.  Not just as a talented performer and an Olivier Award-winner, but his whole attitude is quite refreshing and unique.  Working with Guy has certainly made me reassess a few things and I think it may be the best 15 quid you ever spend!  And talking of that, I wanted the event to be informal and accessible, so I've booked a room at a fairly quiet pub, The Wheatsheaf on Rathbone Place (off Oxford Street) in Fitzrovia, W1.  The formal bit will be upstairs, and then we can have our Christmas Party and informal get together downstairs afterwards! It's £25 on the door - so I'd encourage you to book in advance (£15) and save a tenner! There's a virtual ticket too, for £10, but it won't be the same! I'm also trying a new box office supplier.  Let me know what you think of them! Next up, you may have already done the workshop, but here's the blurb from Maverick anyway...

An Introduction to Creative Producing. Soho. Saturday, 17th February, 2018. "An M.A. in a day...!"

Our Special Offer Newsletter...

Well, here we are.  The time of special festive offers and of course, pantomime.  (Oh yes it is...!)

We have been talking about having a Christmas get-together. There are now an amazing 130 of us!  But due mainly to the scrum of things I’ve been working on up to the festive season, I thought we might have a Christmas get together - next year!  In January.  Probably in London as that is where most of us are based.  Unless you fancy somewhere else, in which case, please let me know.

As I’ve mentioned before, being a producer, especially an independent producer, is a hard slog and you should congratulate yourself on surviving another year. We might not all have castles like Cameron, but meeting the rent is no less an achievement - especially in London. And don’t forget, Sir Cam had 14 flops before he found his first hit.

And talking of surviving - I’ve gone back to my Writer/Director roots for the first time in many years this Christmas. I’ve crafted a national theatre tour with the Olivier Award winning actor, Guy Masterson. He’s a prodigious talent is Guy and also understands what a slog our business can be. Which is why he’s prepared to break his theatre tour to perform in - a Pub!  It’s my doing and a nod to my early roots with Maverick Theatre in Birmingham.

So if you’d like to come to The Wheatsheaf,W1 this Sat or Sunday 16 & 17 Dec, it’d be great to see you and there will be mince pies afterwards.  And the odd drink!  There's only two shows available now (Phew!) and I can’t offer you free tickets with such a small capacity - I’ve done the figures, and as you know, Spreadsheets Are Our Friends - but if you use the code ‘Charles’ when booking, you will get 50% off!  So an adult ticket will be about £9 and kids a fiver. Bargain! Beat that Old Vic!

Tickets and info from - 

www.TheChristmasCarol.co.uk (And if you run your own venue or space, you might like to book it for next year!)

So hopefully I’ll see you this weekend - come and see how to make excellent theatre in a non-theatre space. I have a few desires to roll out a national pub project perhaps...

And if you can’t make the weekend or our January meet, at least try and have some ‘me time’ over the holiday period. ‘Normal’ people have no idea how exhausting it is constantly thinking, planning - and worrying - about making theatre.

Bless us all, every one.

Onwards!

Nick x

White, working-class kids take note.  Dream Big - or else!

This will be one of the stranger blogs you might read about success.  But let's face it -  the arts is a strange business. And, with the Creative Producers Club (www.CreativeProducers.Club) and our new Theatre Training initiative coming next year, I’ve been thinking about how important it is that you are as prepared as you possibly can be for the challenge.  And, now, as old and bruised by this beautiful business as I am, I want to make sure you don't make the cock-ups I made. Because I now know I had massive success with my first ever play - Henry V - Lion of England.  But at the time I had no idea. And I let everything slip through my fingers!     It might be worth qualifying this.  Because I also now know the reason I didn’t recognise success was due to my background.  As a working-class kid born and bought up on a council estate, theatre was not on our radar.  I’m sure things would have been different if it was, perhaps.  But that’s for another blog post! Here’s what happened to me anyway, because whatever scale of theatre you are writing, directing or producing,  I think you need to be aware of what success might look like.  Especially if you’re a council estate kid like me. So.  It is to the Edinburgh Festival of 1992 I want to take you. Or actually, before that.

1. ‘Let’s face it’, I thought back in the late years of last century, ‘Shakespeare is incomprehensible shite’. I’d been to see “The Merry Wives” at the RSC because ‘Bergerac’ was in it.  No idea what was going on.  But I knew the world rated Shakespeare, so when I heard on BBC2 one Saturday afternoon that Henry V was on, I decided to give it one last shot.  And it worked. It was Ken Branagh’s version.  He gave much of the text a modern emotion.  Frankly, I was relieved.  But having been switched onto Shakespeare and having seen the film I thought there was another, more accessible way of telling the story.  I decided to write it.  For one person.

I wrote my version of ‘Henry V’ with no great ambition and after the pub when the TV finished (it did in those days) over a period of a few months. I figured I could probably perform it myself if my radio career crashed, even though I wasn’t ‘officially’ an actor.  I was a radio presenter and producer on a freelance contract. Even in the days when pop radio was making documentaries and I won a Sony Award - like a radio Oscar -  for the station, it was a bit like being a footballer, but with much less money. You know the gig is going to finish eventually.

2.  I realised I probably needed an actor to get the show on its feet. I was right. First success.  I got a mate, Rob Stanson, from amdram.  He'd been to the Actors Centre in London for a year. In fact he was the only young male actor I knew. Then another pal from amdram, Trish, reminded me her artist partner, Robb, also wrote music. I ditched the band ‘Imagination’ (opening track, ‘Just an Illusion’!) and Robb wrote a superb score for Henry.  More success.

3.  I hired the small puppet theatre at the Midlands Arts Centre in Birmingham for £50 for the first show.  Plus technician.

4.  It turns out actor Rob was casually matey with Jasper Carrot’s management, Starward. They came and saw the show at the mac and approached us in the bar afterwards. They offered to take us to the Edinburgh festival.  Success!  Why?  I think they fancied Rob Stanson as a talent - but mainly they were impressed we’d had a standing ovation at the end of our show in Birmingham at the mac!  I’d thought people were running for the bar!   We got to the festival.  I’d never been to the Edinburgh Festival before either, so didn't know what to expect. I was a bit peeved that Starward were not going to pay us a fee. Although it was not going to cost us anything!  Like I say, I’d not been to the festival before..!

5.  We had a five bedroom flat for the three of us, overlooking the Meadows.  I started to think we might have done okay when I met other theatre companies who'd had to pay accommodation, venue fees, marketing, flyers and poster and a host of other things.  One theatre company was sleeping on the dirt floor of a barn 12 miles outside Edinburgh. They were grovelingly grateful when we allowed them to sleep on our (carpeted) floor!

6. We were getting audiences of around 40.  I was disappointed but now know that was even more success for an unknown new play.  The average audience in Edinburgh was four!  

7. In 1992 no reviews carried ‘stars’!  Hard to imagine now, but true.  But our reviews were all straight raves.  They would have been mainly 5 star reviews.  “Highly recommended.”  “A theatrical tour de force’”  And reviews from good publications.  The Scotsman, The List, The Stage, etc.  We used to joke that we’d got another “theatrical Tour-de-force”.  I assumed that was normal.  I know now it was another great success.

8. I had no real idea what we were to do after Edinburgh, because I’d never thought about it.  This was a show I’d written for me to perform, remember?  Although I was so blown away by the energy and democracy of the fringe, I was forming plans to try and do something similar in Birmingham.  Maybe.  So when we had approaches by many - dozens - of bookers and producers I didn’t really know what to do with them.  I often referred them to Rob, the actor, for a chat!  Even so, I still had a bunch of business cards from interested venues and organisation from around the world.  More success!

I stuffed the business cards and contact details in an envelope.  About week Three I then lost the envelope one night after a boozy session with the venue staff!   The one person I do remember whose card I had was the then head of arts for the new South African Government.  I know because I saw him five years later in Stratford-upon-Avon - when he remembered me!   He told me he was keen we should have toured South Africa.  He couldn’t afford the RSC because much of his budget had been transferred into building new housing for the people of the townships, so we were the answer to his creative prayers.  Had the writer/director not got a bit pissed and lost his details…!

This is not an exercise in navel gazing, or me telling you how great I am (obs I  am!!)  so much as a cautionary note.  

It’s also inspired by a friend who has recently won a theatre award - and doesn’t really appreciate he has!  This award was so out of reach, he’d not thought through what would happen IF the impossible happened and he actually did win!

It’s been a couple of months since I last posted here.  But I’m trying to sort a script and music for our national tour of A Christmas Carol later in the year.  I finally managed to get a group of international journalists together to come on the London Literary Pub Crawl, so we’re having our official opening 5 years after we started!  I’m working on a TV script; I’m trying to negotiate with a National Trust garden to present a play in November and I no longer have my assistant, who has decided to travel the world.  Although postcards have been promised.  So spending time on this site is not really a priority.

I’m delighted that Roller Diner,  a musical I was loosely involved in creating with writer and friend Stephen Jackson at the Billesley Pub in Birmingham years ago, has gone on to win the prestigious Verity Bargate Award and is now playing at the Soho Theatre.  And like everyone, I’ve been moved by recent events in London and Manchester.  I met a friend in the Soho bar who came to see Roller Diner. 

“Thank god for this.” he said.  “I felt like weeping most of the day, watching the constant TV news pictures of the burning flats.  But life goes on.  This has set me up for the week.”  

The scale of a tour is judged by the number of seats of the venues your production is going to tour to. And we all normally start small. Partly through lack of confidence or cash and partly because we just need to work things out. The numbers are not set. The Arts Council used to have a guideline, but generally small scale is considered to be anything under around 200 seats. 200 - 500 seats is around what is called a middle-scale tour and anything over around 500 seats would be considered large scale, although some maintain that large scale starts at 600.

As a new theatre company, writer or actor touring for the first time the problem is not so much what size tour do I want as what size tour can I get? I produced a show for three weeks in the back room of the Billesley pub in Birmingham - capacity 80. After its three weeks in Brum, its fourth week was at the Tameside Hippodrome - capacity 1200. Same show. Same actors - apart from the talented John Marques who was already in demand.  We had to add some panels to the set to make it fill the cavernous Hippodrome but we were only able to get in to the Hipp because we had built a reputation on the small scale. And through the small-scale I learnt one crucial, hard, torturous lesson.  Anathema to an artist but you’ve got to understand it. It's all down to... and I shudder even now... its all down to ... the deal! There, I've said it. It’s The Deal that will make or break a show or tour.

Julius Green, someone I consider a friend, was the hard nosed, but wonderfully kind, producer of Bill Kenwright Ltd and he knows all about this. But more about Julius later.

First out you have to ask, why do I want to tour? And where? But mainly, why? Touring is notoriously expensive. Would you be better off finding a room locally and putting on the show yourself. That’s how I started.

By Kenneth Wardrop, Edinburgh Napier University and Anna Leask, Edinburgh Napier University

The Edinburgh Festival is upon us again, a three-week spectacular that turns the Scottish capital into the biggest arts destination on the planet. It is in fact a number of different festivals, with the leading Edinburgh International Festival and Edinburgh Festival Fringe returning for a 70th year since their inception in 1947.

From thousands of options this year you could take in Hollywood actor Alan Cumming singing cabaret; the latest Broadway version of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie; or Icelandic rockers Sigur Rós. Top comedians Alistair McGowan and Bridget Christie will be treading the boards, while those who like their Scottish experience clad in tartan will want to catch the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo. Also not to be missed are the Book Festival and Jazz & Blues Festival.

Far from being confined to August, Edinburgh now holds 12 independently organised festivals throughout the year covering everything from storytelling to science to films to the city’s world renowned Hogmanay celebrations for New Year’s Eve. The city’s success as a leading cultural tourism destination is closely tied to the festivals' ongoing strength and their enduring appeal to global audiences. This is why Edinburgh likes to call itself “the world’s leading festival city”.

Most of Edinburgh’s festivals are still very much on an upward curve. Where the Fringe, which is considered the world’s largest multi-arts festival, sold 790,000 tickets in 1996 and 1.5 million in 2004, it sold 2.3 million in 2015. The Edinburgh International Festival has risen from 418,000 to 441,000 in the same period; while Book Festival audiences have rocketed from 63,000 in 1997, the first year it became an annual event, to 350,000 last year.

With further audience growth expected this August, the city’s combined festival offering attracts a total of 4.5 million people a year. This is similar to the FIFA World Cup and only behind the Olympic Games – both of which take place every four years.

The Scottish economic impact of all these festivals has also gone up and up. Between 2010 and 2015, it rose from £253m to £313m as festival-goers spent money on everything from Edinburgh accommodation to visits to the Wallace Monument in Stirling. Then there are the harder to measure social and cultural impacts, with 89% of local festival attendees agreeing recently that the festivals increased their pride in the city and positively influenced their attendance at other cultural events the year round.

Smile people! Edinburgh Napier University

Future proofing

So what’s the secret? Apart from the benefits of being a beautiful historic city that is small enough to navigate easily, much can be put down to these separate festivals working together – with support from the city council and the Scottish development, tourism and arts agencies. They carried out the festivals' first economic impact study in 2004 in recognition of the rise of competitors such as South by South West in Texas; and all the festivals at Quartier des Spectacles in Montreal.

Next came a £75m investment in the city’s arts infrastructure: refurbishing the Usher Hall, Assembly Rooms and Kings Theatre; an extension for the Festival Theatre and new stands and seating for the Tattoo on the esplanade of Edinburgh Castle. Following a strategic review in 2006, the festivals then formed an umbrella organisation, Festivals Edinburgh, which has helped them collaborate in things like marketing and lobbying. This is one reason for the rise in air routes to and from the city. More traumatic has been the birth of the tram network, though one line has finally opened.

The August offering has also benefited from the Fringe’s ad-hoc approach to growth. The Fringe is not managed in a traditional sense but through an open-access ethos that allows anyone to register as a performer in its programme provided they can secure a suitable venue. It is a story of organic growth helping to create an iconic and trusted brand that has arguably become synonymous with the city itself. The name has even been adopted by other arts festivals like Adelaide, Vancouver and Dublin as a marker for alternative cutting-edge arts and open-access programming.

Fringe benefits. Edinburgh Napier University

Edinburgh is also seen as a vital destination for countries looking to improve their own arts festivals. The Fringe World Congress held its inaugural meeting in the city in 2012 to bring together Fringe directors and organisers, while the British Council Edinburgh International Festivals Academy launched in the city this year to share best practice for festivals.

Glitch management

None of this is to say that everything has proceeded perfectly in Edinburgh, of course. The Film Festival encountered severe difficulties in 2011, for instance, while the Fringe had major issues with its box office system in 2008.

Numerous competitors are also growing strongly. For example the biennial Manchester International Festival in England, which has focused exclusively on new artists since it launched in 2007, saw a 5% rise in attendance figures in 2015. Manchester is also investing heavily in venues such as The Factory for the future. Venice’s Biennale festival is another event that is seeing strong growth.

Though these are much smaller and narrower than Edinburgh’s offering, the Scottish capital will undoubtedly continue to track them in its efforts to stay ahead. If it does this and the festivals keep working well as a group, Edinburgh will remain a world leader in staging international arts events.

Kenneth Wardrop, Visiting Research Fellow, Edinburgh Napier University and Anna Leask, Professor of Tourism Management, Edinburgh Napier University

This is an extract from Geoffrey Brown of Euclid’s 26 June, 2016 response to the leave vote and its implications for those applying for EU Funding.

I will be upfront here – I think this will be a disaster for the UK across a range of areas – ranging from reinforcing a nationalist and isolationist tendency in the age of globalisation which will result in the UK being left behind by larger and more powerful trading blocs and countries, through to negative impacts on opportunities for European collaboration and funding.  There is a huge question mark over the future of the UK, and it is not completely fanciful to say that the Leave result could lead to the breakup of the UK – both Scotland and NI voted to remain in the EU.

But I want to use this newsletter to provide a brief overview of the practical implications for those interested in developing partnerships and applications for EU funding.

Firstly, in theory, the UK will continue to be eligible to be able to lead, or be a partner in, applications for EU funding – whether for Horizon 2020, Erasmus+, Europe for Citizens and Creative Europe – and this will certainly continue until the end of the 2 year period that will be triggered when the UK government invokes Article 50 – which at the moment seems likely to be sometime in the autumn.  It is possible that there could be agreement for the UK to be eligible until the final deadlines in 2019 for the current round of these programmes (the current funding round ends in 2020).  The UK will also continue to distribute its share of the EU Structural & Investment Funds via DCLG & the LEPs in England, and the various designated agencies and partners in the devolved nations and regions of the UK.

Beyond 2019/2020, however, this is likely to all change, and will be based on which of the several options is the one chosen by the UK for its formal relationship with the EU.  There are... a range of possible alternatives yet to be fully explored.

There are a few things you need to do if you are starting to produce theatre.

Are you producing as an individual?  You should always set up a Limited Company to protect yourself.  It's cheap and easy to do-it-yourself at Companies House online.

Think about insurance too. You'll need something even if it’s just employers liability.

This is the very first post to the blog of the new website.  It’s for you if you make theatre.  You might be a producer, theatre company, or keen amateur. You might want advice on fees, wages, contacts, contracts, or you might be an actor, writer or stage manager wondering just where to start.  Or as an established producer, you might just want somewhere to have a rant!

Welcome.

Welcome home.

Welcome to the club.