How Does One Start a Small Theater Group?

I can tell you how I started my own theater group. Which is still alive and well (and still growing) nine years later.

I live on an island with a permanent population of 3,500 people which doubles in the summer. It has had a large 200+ seat theater for many years which, in the late '90's was doing five or six productions a year. The trouble was that is was a closed shop - it was about impossible to break into - either as an actor (which I was) or as a director (which I became). After dealing with them for several frustrating years, I was told to go away - that I was bugging them. The actual words were more like "When are you going to realize that there's no room for you here?"

So I decided to start my own theater and call it The Actors Theater recognizing that it was for and about actors. I found several other disenfranchised actors and a few techies and even a director who wanted to participate. So we incorporated. That was the easy part. Even getting our 501(c)(3) from the IRS was easy back in those days.

Raising money was not easy. The people who could afford to give were already propping up the large theater and were not ready to fund another theater which would likely take audiences away from the large theater. I found that you have to be successful and not really need the money before people will donate. Donors are afraid of "propping up a dead horse". Which means that the last donor to pull their support from a failing enterprise is blamed for it's demise.

I finally talked my wife into letting me risk $4,000 to put on a play. I ended up directing and producing it although I had very little experience in either. Since it was my money and since there was not much of it, I found places that would let us rehearse for free and built a set in a friends garage and had all the actors wear their own clothes. We made several thousand dollars on the production and started to build a name for ourselves.

It took us five years to gain institutional credibility - to reach the point where people knew of us and came to our productions in large numbers and donated money. During that five years we did shows anywhere we could get a room for free - unused stores in a mall, back rooms at a bar, conference rooms in a resort - the idea was that we had no ongoing expenses. We had expenses only when we were doing a show. We slowly built to a full season of five or six productions and found a building that we fixed up for the owner and built a theater into it in the process.

Money is no longer an issue - the donors are always there when we need them - never for operating expenses - they are paid by profits from our productions. Donors love to give for capital items. They underwrite our productions so the income from them can be used for operating expenses.

What does all this mean for you? If you WANT to have your own theater group forget about it. If you HAVE to have your own theater group then start. Find one or two others who feel like you do and do shows. Don't make it about money and how to pay yourself - make it about art. Find a restaurant and do dinner theater, find an empty room and invite people you know to come and bring their friends. Let it happen slowly and don't expect everything at once. I can't imagine my life without the theater in it. I'm in the middle of rehearsals for Lend Me A Tenor and already working on the next show.

We have now been going for nine years and we continue to grow. The other theater has cut back to one or two productions a year - usually the big shows that we can't do in our little theater.

What is the reason for our success? I think there are two main reasons. First is "quality". We do quality scripts, quality acting, quality directing and quality production values. We train our actors and others constantly to make us better and better.

It takes five really good shows to wipe out the stigma of one bad show. I won't put it on until it is ready. I've delayed or rescheduled shows that weren't ready for presentation. I've canceled them when I couldn't cast them well. WE DO GOOD WORK.

The second reason for our success is a very small group of volunteers who are willing to do anything and everything to make our shows a success. I regularly scrub the bathrooms before a performance. I mop the stage. Whatever it takes. There are now several dozen that participate at some level in our productions but it is the few of us that really make it a success.

Hopes this help.

To quote a small show company: Just do it!!

Doug