I was rudely awakened this morning by a phone call from Tim Spite. Tim and his wife Gabe are the co-writers of The Spy Who Wouldn't Die Again opening tonight at Downstage. "Gabe's gone into labour and we're at the hospital", he tells me. "It looks like a Cesarian section. You'll have to cancel the show." My brain whirls into action: call in staff, contact audience, inform Board, reschedule media night." The list is endless. "How's Gabe?" I say. "Fine. It's April Fool's." Sadly, it didn't click, Tim had to repeat that phrase three times and add "It's a joke!". What? "Got you again!" Tim says gleefully, having done the same thing last year!
Work is not the opposite of fun! Work is not the opposite of fun! I chant. Work is not the opposite of FUN! My mantra while plotting revenge!
My previous blog stated my intention to implement small shifts in thinking in order to make a big difference to our company and our community. The first lesson to come out of the ENPL was from the "Ropes Course", Day Two. I took to heart the words of one of our team members who, like me, chose to be a member of the ground crew not a high-flyer. She said (I paraphrase): that when you are not close to the heat of the action - the main goal - you can feel isolated and proactively marginalised from the core group. I certainly experienced that and was aware this could happen to a person or be self-inflicted. I had to work hard to ensure my contribution was not dismissed and that my role was acknowledged as vital to the overall team success without my having to explain or rationalise my choices.
Keeping this in mind, I have stepped up my interaction with casual Front of House staff. After all, they are our frontline people, and have direct contact with our audiences. It's not that there was no contact or consideration for the great job already being done by a fantastic team of people. We had already instigated a different approach to our recruitment process of ushers and bar staff with good results before I left and run a customer service session with staff. In addition, programming had begun to provide cheat sheets of show information (previously generated for the Box Office) for use by FOH staff. This week, we invited casual staff to attend the dress rehearsal of "Spy" and a briefing session about the production. During the interval FOH Manager, Tony Hewitt and I discussed the show, its style and content, and then outlined our Resident Company programme (RC), its purpose and value and where this sat within the Downstage Business Model. Part of the first RC intake was SEEyD, the creators of Spy, and this world premiere marks the end of their three-year residency. (The benefits of this RC programme will be published in our 2010 Annual Report and made available on our website.)
Then I turned the spotlight on the staff with the first in a series of sessions to be conducted over the next few months, which had us examine some of the topics covered at Stanford. We are doing this in the context of our three strategic outcomes: our artists, our audiences, our community. This preliminary session was attended by all staff - during a production week (they really are stars!), looked at the traditions of theatre, the language and lore of enabling "shows to come in and shows to go out" year after year after year. Because regardless of the recent changes to our business model, the core business remains the same, the this company has an outstanding track record of being able to deliver to task and on time. This is project management of a very high calibre and under the current administration and Presenting Partners programme (PP), to budget. (Generating increased revenue through box office, donations and government funding is a separate issue.)
Little known fact: Downstage generates 60% of its income through ticket sales.
I then invited our Associate Producer, Sonia Hardie, to present one of her techniques that enables her to play a part in ensuring the "show must go on". This was a "props table", the area backstage that lays out all the properties or objects actors use during the production such as glasses, cell phone, bottle of fake whiskey etc... These are laid out on a table criss-crossed with masking tape, labelled with the character's name and divided into acts or scenes, depending on the complexity of the play. Mess with this table and you have Sonia to answer to. (Sonia now plays a mentoring role within the company, passing on her skills to incoming companies whose stage managers may not have had formal training).
This short demonstration easily translated into other areas of our work, illustrating that systems are essential for flow of work and team co-operation. Remove some of the elements without telling people, dumping rubbish on other's work, whether figuratively or literally, or simply not following the plan, step by step, makes for a rough and uncertain voyage. This discussion led into the importance of our Strategic Framework, a tool we have been using since 2008, and one that has enabled us to move forward with a clear path to follow into an unknown future. Using the same framework, we are now preparing the final stages of our application for multi-year funding for the next five years. And as they say in the theatre "the plot thickens!"
And finally, I invite staff and all interested parties to comment at any time and provide other perspectives on any of the content in this blog or the up-coming sessions.
