Director's Notes Act 2: Budgeting

by Michael Litchfield

One of the first things, other than people, that your sponsoring group is going to want to know about, is what it will cost to do this show. There are several areas that will need to be considered: Locality, Set, Costumes, Props, and ‘Other’. Depending on what is chosen, this amount is obviously going to fluctuate. When we did it, we rented a space, made most of the costumes, built a brand-new set, including a stage extension, and I think it came to around $5000 (CAN). With the exception of 2 techs during show week, that price is based on ALL VOLUNTEER service. (This would include Xerox costs for scripts and music.) Like I said though, it will all depend on how extravagant you’re going to make this, and what resources/connections are available to you. Work the cost out for yourself.

Performance Locality

One thing that you’ll need to do right at the beginning while arranging the proper exec committee, is choosing a facility where you’ll want to put the show on. In my own case, I went and checked out what it would cost to properly equip our church building with appropriate lights and sound, EXCLUDING the man-power it would take to get everything into place. I then checked out what it might cost to use a professional theatre. As it turned out, and on average, to rent a theatre space for 2 tech days and 3 performance days (in our case), was only 15% more. So, we decided to go with that.

If you are NOT doing this show in your church building, you will have to see about whether the theatres are available, accessible and will allow an ‘amateur’ company to perform in their facilities. You will also have to make sure seating capacity is sufficient to facilitate all your desired guests. Depending on the size of the theatre and depending on how many people will be attending the show, you’ll have to decide how many shows you’ll want to do. My suggestion is that you do 3 or 4 shows (2-3 evenings, and 1 matinee), at least.

One of the big reasons for getting familiar with the script is that when you go and meet with the theatre booking agent, they’re going to need to know some info about the technical requirements of the play, so they can properly book an appropriate amount of time, and therefore compile an accurate cost for the use of their facility. You’re going to need to know how many lighting zones you want to work with, for example. [In our case, I think we ended up using 8 zones. We had Stage Left (SL), Stage Right (SR), Down Left (DL – primary corner), Down Right (DR), Down Center (DC), a few cycs for our background/sky, an ‘angel’ zone and then a general full stage fill. This could be changed though, depending on your own creative prowess!] Take a look at your lighting needs, and then decide what you want to do.

Also, whether or not you are at your church building or renting a space, make sure that there is enough room DL for your primary corner stage extension. This is fairly important. You’ll want a section of the stage/something that will facilitate 11+ kids and 2 primary teachers (Sisters Larsen and Hansen), and not be in the way of the ‘Ancient’ cast (all those acting out Spencer’s dream-sequence), and who are situated and required to move around on stage (i.e., you just don’t want people bumping into each other, it kind of ruins the effect).

Make sure that you also have enough room for your set in the wings, off stage. This will require you to have some sort of idea of how you are going to construct the set. You don’t have to have oodles of detail, just a rough picture, so you can make the call in choosing an appropriate theatre space.

Set Design

As mentioned above, it will be advantageous to fabricate a rough sketch of what your set is going to look like, and what it’s going to take to build it. (It’s fortunate to have the Liken series on DVD, because it can give you a guide to some of the set design, as was the case for our own production.) Once generally conceived, a rough cost estimate can be formulated, and be used to construct an estimated total budget for this project.

When this project first started and it was just me, although it wasn’t going to be me who was going to build the set, I still tried to create a set on paper, and then went and price checked all of the resources needed to construct it. From my original design to what actually appeared on stage, there was a bit of a difference, both in price and actual design. Whereas my original design came to a total of almost $700 (excluding the stage extension), when things were said and done, the cost came to close to $1200, but that included the stage extension. Depending on your level of confidence regarding the detail of your set design and your pricing behind it, you may want to give yourself some room for negotiation on this. For example, add say, 15-25% on top of what you think the cost will come to.

In terms of WHEN the set is actually constructed, it should probably be scheduled to begin about 2 months prior to performance. This should allow you to be ready by show date. This means that you may need to do a bit of reminding/nudging the sponsoring group early, so that the people designated to do set will have enough time to do it.

Finalized set

When the whole thing was done, we actually didn’t start on the set until 1 month before the show (although it can be done, I wouldn’t suggest it!). Fortunately, I was blessed to be able to work with some wonderful people who were able and willing to dedicate themselves to the cause despite the lack of time.

In general, there were 3 set types that were fabricated. The first, which stayed on stage throughout the entire production, was the mountain background.

When we made the mountains, we used four 4’ x 8’ smooth plywood sheets (framed in the back, for strength purposes). We then mounted A-supports (forming acute triangles, fastened at the base at just under 90°) to the back at 5 locations to facilitate the sets ability to stand on its own. Once in place on the stage, the sheets were then attached using joiners, and screwed into place. The set (the actual plywood sheets) sat between 12”-16” from the back wall. We also used sand-bags to ensure that the mountain pieces did not fall over (which would be a disaster!).

Had we started to prep the set earlier (2 months before the show), I might have had time to actualize the cutting out of the top of the mountains. This would have created a rather beautiful stage silhouette, using bottom-lit lighting. As it turned out, we painted the mountains onto the plywood sheets, and then instead of cutting the outline of the tops out to create the silhouette, we simply painted the area of the plywood above the mountains, the same off-white color as our backdrop wall. Once we put lighting onto the set piece, that area that we had painted above the mountains, blended into the actual wall. Even though this didn’t create the same silhouette as the other idea would have, because there were no lights behind the background mountains pieces, we didn’t have to take space from the depth of the stage (i.e., with no lights behind the mountains, we were able to snug the mountains pieces closer to the wall).

Another piece that needed to be fabricated was the wall to Laban’s palace. The DVD lent some insight into the creation of this particular piece (as it did for the look to the mountains). The walls were fairly simple to create. There were 2 pieces: one with 2 walls that when set on stage formed a 90° angle, and another with 3 walls, forming somewhat of a staircase (from a birds-eye view). Again, these pieces were fabricated from the 4’ x 8’ sheets of finished plywood. Remember, depending on what kind of lighting you want to use, what the stage-light and audience incline angles are, and from where that lighting is originating, you may have to adjust the height of these walls. For us, 8’high was fine. We were able to position lights in order to properly light the tops of the walls. Shadows were minimized, and effects were maximized, and no one was able to see the top of these walls.

The set piece that we were particularly proud of was our cave set. It was designed using 5 sheets of the same 4’x 8’ finished plywood (and therefore, sat 8’ high). On stage, the 5 sheets were positioned side by side to create a semi-circle, with an ‘entrance hole’ in the middle piece. Behind the entrance hole, we put a sixth piece, so as to block the background set and back-lighting from seeping in. On all areas facing or seen by the audience, we stapled tar paper to the plywood. We crumpled it up to create texture, and were very pleased, especially under the stage lighting – it looked great. We didn’t paint it either. It looked great just as it was. We also made sure that we stapled tar paper onto the top edge of the plywood, as well as the left and right sides of the cave, to avoid making the edges appear linear (i.e., we wanted to create a ‘rocky’-looking cave set). It was simple, inexpensive, but VERY effective. We also wanted to make the cave somewhat engrossing, so as we added tar-paper from the bottom near the floor then going up to the top of the plywood sheets, we made it increasingly thicker, so that the set created an illusion of a gradual blending of the walls into an imaginary roof – as if you took a cross-section of the inside of a real cave.

While I’m discussing tar-paper, I should add that we also used it to make set rocks – one that was used to sit upon and another that was used later as coverage for the cave-beating scene. The one that we designed to be sat upon was fabricated out of a 5-gallon pail, on top of which we stapled the tar-paper. The one we used as cover, we designed using a tote container. Again, we stapled the tar-paper on top of it. Both looked great and worked perfectly.

Costumes

In order to supply the sponsoring group with a somewhat accurate budget assessment, I needed to also find out what it would cost to finance the costume side of things. As I have had the opportunity to be in several productions in the past, and have known past costume designers, I was fortunate to have a few connections already established. This turned out to be an invaluable asset. These few connections ended up lending a few costumes to the cast and cause. In your gathering of estimates, if you happen to already know someone who has pertinent costumes, accurate to the play’s setting and time-period and you’re able to reliably borrow them, you could, as we did, end up economizing on the budget.

When I first went and investigated, I was advised by a costume maker/designer (who had A LOT of experience), that in terms of budget and as pertaining to a production such as this one (after having explained the general parameters and scope of the show), I should probably set aside $40-$100 (CAN) per costume. As I spoke to her, I had her narrow the range, to become a little more specific. She told me that if I were to budget $50 per costume, that would probably suffice. This would mean that with 18 ‘ancient’ cast members, I would have to spend $900 (CAN)! But, with her being able to lend me 8 (ancient-cast) costumes, I was able to significantly influence my costume costs…FOR THE BETTER! Yessss!!! Borrowing makes your life easier!

Props

In all honesty, I’d have to say that I didn’t specifically budget for props. My idea was that we would simply borrow or make (out of donated materials) our own props. And in the end, that is pretty much what happened. We kept track of whose things were whose, and took very good care of what we had been entrusted with. This saved us from inflating our budget.

So pan out and see what is available.

Below is a list of a few items we needed for the production:

A toy car, a tent, walking sticks, a cactus, a water pouch, a sweater, a towel, a hoe, spears, Laban’s sword, palm trees, a couch or two, tropical plants, a ‘Book of Laman’, goblets and silverware befitting of a palace, some fake food, a musical instrument, bags of treasure (used to trade for the plate of Laban), some chairs, sandbags, brass plates, drawing straws, primary-room decorations, a fake garden (for the first musical number), an apple (fake), elegant fabrics, a couple of tables, etc.

This is not all of the props you will need, but it’s a start. Review the video and then use your imagination.