“Universally, a producer ensures that a production happens on time and in budget” (Hescott, 2015), therefore, this has been my primary focus for Sherbet Lemon Theatre since the very beginning. The role of producer is a big one and involves many different responsibilities, namely production deadlines and the ensemble, however, “no one in the industry would deny that the producer does control the budget” (Baggaley, 2008).

 
I took various different approaches to organising and keeping on top of the company budget, one was dividing our University funded £200 between people who needed it. For example, Set Designer (£80), Costume and Props Manager (£50), Marketing (£50) and Fundraising (£20). Once these figures were given out it became apparent that we would need more than our assigned budget in order to fund our show. To read more about this see what our Fundraiser, Emma, has to say by clicking on the ‘Fundraiser’ tab. Alternatively, see my blog post on working with Fundraising. Once our money started coming in from Fundraising, I began to split the money between each sector as required. For example, as can be seen on our budget spreadsheet in the ‘Technical Documents’ tab, Set Design needed an extra £20 on top of the original £80 budget, this was then taken from fundraising.

 
In order to keep an eye on what was being spent and what it was spent on, I put a few things in place to ensure I was kept up to date at all times. The first was weekly production meetings which were ran by me and our Stage Manager, Chloe. These production meetings allowed us all to discuss what needed to be bought for the show, which I then made a note of and transferred it to the budget spreadsheet. My second method of keeping up to date with money spent was by sending each person with a budget a ‘mini-budget sheet’. An example can be found here: Example. I found this was the most effective way to stay up to date with things we had bought for the show as I encouraged members to keep the sheets updated after each purchase.

Costume and Props Budget

Here is an example of one of the budget mini-budget sheets.

 
Some words of wisdom to end this post:
“Whatever the job involves and whatever it’s called – producing, creating, facilitating, enabling, realising – theatre can’t happen without it” (Baggaley, 2008).

H.M.

Baggaley, L. (2008) What’s the Producer’s Role? England: The Guardian. Available from https://www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2008/apr/04/whatstheproducersrole [Accessed 22 May 2018].

Hescott, T. (2015) Explained: what does a producer actually do? England: The Stage. Available from  https://www.thestage.co.uk/features/2015/want-next-cameron-mackintosh/ [Accessed 22 May 2018].