Play Selection, a Science or Crap Shoot

Choosing a season plays for any type of theatre has many requirements and there are numerous factors to be considered in selecting a play to produce.

The number one factor in any type of theatre is of course money.

The more actors needed the higher the salaries will be, but also the costume costs will be higher in larger cast shows.

The number and style of scenery required, props, lighting, sound and even special effects all add to the overall costs of a production

In professional theatres they must select plays that will sell tickets.

In academic theatres selling tickets can be important too but the plays also have to fit the teaching goals of the program.

In my time at Brockport we have selected our seasons in several ways over the years with some ways working better than others.

Currently we put out a call for plays and ask faculty and students to suggest plays to be considered.

A committee reads through all of the plays and pares them down to a smaller number and then all of the faculty read the plays and select a season from the.

In the past there was a department document that outlined all of the many types of plays and how often the department should produce them.

Some years ago I was on the selection committee and we tried to follow the guide but found it not to be possible.

There are many factors that change from year to year.

The number of students available, their skills, the ratio of male/female students are just a few of the things that can effect what is selected.

For many years the directors would pick the shows that they wanted to do and unless there was some objection we would do them.

Time and money is the great limiter.

We try to pick a smaller shows at the beginning of the school year and larger ones later in the year when the student have more time to rehearse and the crew time to build bigger sets.

I recently noted that the season we had chosen for 1989-90 was not the season that we did.

The season listed in the program for Mother Courage and Her Children in April of 1989 was the following:

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Cyrano de Bergerac, Purlie Victorious and the ever popular A Play to be Named Later.

I am sure that The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was selected because of the large number of female roles but in the fall it had been replaced with Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean which also had a large number of female roles.

Cyrano de Bergerac was the only play that we did not change and produced in December of 1989.

Purlie Victorious was replaced with its musical version Purlie and moved to the fourth slot.

The play to be named later was NigHt of tHe pterodActyls which was a children’s theatre piece.

I do not remember why we had all of the changes that season but it was not the only time we have had to change a play.

Sometimes we have chosen a play for which the rights have been pulled back by the publisher because it might be running on Broadway or other professional theatre.

In the past plays have been changed because of staff changes, because another play became available or simply we just wanted to do something else.

I will be writing about the 1989-90 season, its plays and the new scene designer in upcoming Blog posts.

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