Hi Heather,
I feel your frustration! I have a few questions for you, and some suggestions…
You don’t mention why the admin said you’re not allowed to do a Saturday show. But you did mention something about the theatre being double, even triple, booked. Is it because of an outside event being in your theatre on the Saturday? Do you have a Theatre Manager who takes care of the scheduling and bookings or does a “Muggle” sitting in a desk at the admin building book the theatre?
Regarding the in-school performance, I’m sort of surprised that the admin allowed you to charge for the performance, usually an in school performance is free and serves as “marketing” for the run of your show, but I’m not sure why they limited the house to 200 – odd! Do you know what their “logic” is behind that?
You also mentioned that your kids aren’t allowed to use power tools. That’s actually as it should be, unless you are CTE certificated? The Dept. of Labor and Industries forbid minors from working with power tools (your scene shop), working at heights (your catwalks), using hoisting equipment (your fly system), etc. unless they are in a vocational education program. You didn’t mention if you have a separate tech class, or whether sets are built after school – and by whom, if your students aren’t allowed to use the power tools. I’m wondering would be possible for you to get your CTE endorsement in your state (if you don’t already have the endorsement)? In WA State there is an online program at a local community college, and you just have to take the Intro to CTE course in order to get your “Conditional” CTE Endorsement on your certificate. After that you can take your time to complete the course, as long as you are working towards it – say one course a year. So that might be something to look into if you want your students to be able to work with the power tools. Also have a look at how your school’s woodshop operates (if there is one).
The other obvious questions are…do they treat the sports program the same way? What is the policy for Saturday games? Who uses the stadium (is it rented out to outside groups?)? Does the stadium have a facility manager and support staff? What about the school’s woodshop, robotics, culinary, and other CTE programs? Help your admin to understand that Tech Theatre is a CTE and vocational subject. After all, entertainment is the backbone of our society, and in the ‘real world’ people spend more money on the entertainment industry than they do on the sports industry (despite the opposite being the case in high schools).
Another question – is your theatre recently built or has it been in your district for a long time? These days many high schools are being built or re-modeled with a state-of-the-art theatre on campus and once the keys are handed over it comes as a surprise to the admin that it has to be managed and staffed so that it is appropriate and optimal for educational purposes and suitable for practical and safe operational use. Shira brings up a good point – what is going on with other high school theatres in your district and how are they operated? If your theatre is a relatively new addition to your district, and the first of its kind, it may just be the process of the growing pains that you are experiencing. There are about 13,000 high schools in this country and many of them have theatres on their campuses, and most of those are experiencing this sort of resistance from their administrations. It’s not surprising because when a “Muggle” goes to see a show, all they see is the finished “magic” of the performance. So they don’t understand what goes on our theatres and the value of the programs to the students (even if they’re not going to go into the entertainment industry, as you know theatre inherently provides them with life skills – none of this ‘let’s do a group project’ contrived classroom scenarios). As Daniel mentions, I’m afraid you’re going to have to be the one to educate your administration (a process which, speaking from experience, can take a few years). It’s going to be up to us to stand together to educate the people in charge of the educators.
Shira is correct, this show may be a loss (in more ways than one unfortunately!), but for the future the scheduling process of the theatre needs to be addressed – for instance the three to five weeks a school show takes up needs to be booked in first each year, before all the one-day, two-day events are, which can then be booked around the large events. Also, school events should take first priority, followed by any other schools in your district that use your theatre, then finally outside events. (Although, once the scheduling process has happened at the start of each school year, a school event can’t then go and bump an outside event that has already booked your theatre.)
You mentioned, when you signed off, that you were about to meet with your principal. Would you mind sharing how that meeting went? It may be that you might have to talk to people in the district offices too before this is resolved. See if you can talk with the Facilities Manager (or who ever is the direct supervisor of your stadium manager), and see if you can talk with your Risk Management Manager about the liabilities of the tech theatre portion of your job. Good luck and please let me know if I can be of further help.
Beth
------------------------------
Beth Rand
High School Theatre Manager and Consultant
PRESETT, a service of RCDTheatreOps
www.PRESETT.orgWoodinville, WA
Original Message:
Sent: 09-30-2016 10:36
From: Heather Cribbs
Subject: Administration Restrictions
Does anyone have issues with their administration placing restrictions on performance? I'm not talking materials. Allow me to tell you my story.
This is my first year at this school (public high school). We're doing Monica Flory's Once Upon A Pandora's Box for our fall mainstage. I was told we're not allowed to do Saturday performances anymore (after I had already paid for 3 shows), so they allowed me a Wednesday in-school show. Let's fast forward. The in-school performance is this coming Wednesday. Administration e-mails me TODAY to tell me that we have a 200-ticket limit for our in-school show. Our auditorium seats 750. We're being forced to replace a performance with a possible $7,500 revenue (750 tickets at $10 each) with a performance that has a maximum revenue of $400 (200 tickets at $2 each). I know it's not all about the money, but my kids have worked HARD on this show because we've had every possible obstacle thrown at us (can't be here on weekends, no power tools, stage double/triple booked until today, etc.) and I want them to be able to share it with the school. my non-performing students will take up half of those seats alone (their required to see it)!
I have a meeting with my principal to discuss this in about an hour.
Anyone have any advice?
------------------------------
Heather Cribbs
Theatre Director
New Smyrna Beach High School
New Smyrna Beach, FL
------------------------------