Building a successful theatre company is similar to building a house, both need a strong foundation to support the end product and the foundations of a theatre company starts with it’s hierarchy. Each member in the theatre company needed a role and these roles needed a structure.

Figure 1

In Kick a Pigeon Theatre company majority of our members were keen to act, therefore when we discussing the roles we soon realised majority of the company would have to take on a production and acting role. We decided the only two roles which should not be partnered with an acting role were the director and the producer.

The role of producer caught my eye, as I did not want to act within the company nor did I want to take on a creative role such as directing. The role of producer plaid to my strengths and previous experiences as a leader. The role required dedication, organisation, confidence, communication skills and of course money management, these being skills I knew I possessed. Yet, I was still unsure of what any theatre company or show required from a producer, so I found myself researching the role and other blogs from various theatre company producers. From my research I discovered ‘the producer is responsible for delivering a good show, on time and in budget’ (Seabright, 2010), it was my responsibility to ensure our show was a both financially and entertainingly great.

Our first task as a theatre company was to decide on our name, we already knew we wanted our name to reflect our genre and the personalities of our company member whilst being different and unique. We decided to take a day to think of a list of names which each member brought to the following production meeting. Yet, it was Kick a Pigeon which stood out the most to us, perhaps because of the back story which endlessly had us in laughter or because the name suited our farcical style of comedy, the name stuck with us and felt like a right match to the collection of individuals who built this theatre company.

Words cited:

Seabright, J. (2010) So you want to be a theatre Producer? London: Ashford Colour Press.

Figure 1: Bailey, N, Kick a Pigeon, (2017) Hierarchy Diagram. Lincoln: University of Lincoln.