Fire the Widget Makers?

New York Theatre Workshop has fired their entire production staff, effective 30 May, 2008. While cutting production staff is looks like an easy way to save on the annual budget, it speaks to larger issues if the way to solve a theatre company’s financial solubility is to fire the very people who make the theatre magic happen.

As one of my friends is fond of saying, in a theatre there are people who make the widgets and people who sell the widgets. People who market the widgets can sell them all day long, but unless there are people who actually make the widgets, they’re selling nothing.

This has been a battle that’s been fought at most theatres. The Production department is largely an expense oriented department; Production spends money but doesn’t really bring any in. Marketing, Artistic, and Development are the departments that bring in revenue. So when boards and whatnot are looking to save money, its easy to cut down on the section of the company that only spends money while bolstering up the departments that bring money into the organization.

The problem with this line of thinking is that there is that the product you are marketing [the theatrical production] is woefully underfunded and understaffed. While it is possible to produce shows without huge, Broadway-sized budgets is possible [I've been doing it all my adult life], producing shows does cost money. That money isn’t always spent on the sets and costumes that you see, but also on the labor to build, maintain, and run those sets and costumes, the labor to hang, focus, and program the lighting instruments, the various designers [sound, lights, scenic, costumes, etc.], and the stage management team to run and maintain the artistic integrity of the show throughout its run.

I find the decision by New York Theatre Workshop to eliminate their production staff to be a huge mistake and will prove to be a detriment to their productions. The article referenced above already states that the season will be reduced and the scale of productions diminished because they will be relying on job-ins and temporary labor to be their ad hoc production crew.