From the first company meeting it became apparent that each member of our company has experienced successful and enjoyable devised work, created using a collaborative workshop process, and we were all keen to continue in that vein.

We were all aware however that these previous projects had many differences to the project our company was about to embark on. Previous projects were often smaller, and involved fewer people, meaning that only three or four people had to make the artistic decisions, not eight or nine. It soon became clear therefore that in order for us to create a good, strong company that could produce art of a good quality we would need to allocate jobs to each member of the company. This by no means renders us a company under a dictatorship, but instead that the ideas that we come up with as a collective can be filtered through a hierarchy of decision makers.

Having stated near the beginning of our process that I was interested in looking into how the theatre company would be run from “back stage”, and all of the admin and rights involved it seemed appropriate that I should be allocated as producer of Hand Me Down Theatre.

From day one the experience has already been a massive learning curve. I have never individually produced a whole show before, though thinking about it, I have helped in producing many of the shows or pieces I have been involved with in the past…I just wasn’t aware at the time that the jobs I was doing came under the title of “producing”.
One of the first things I did once allocated as the producer was borrow “So You Want To Be A Theatre Producer?” by James Seabright. The contents page alone opened my eyes to the wide range of responsibilites that I am taking on, but the prospect of learning about these areas of the theatre in more depth actually quite excited me. Bring on the next three months I say!