Friday, November 20, 2020
In the Room Where It Happens: How Repertory Companies Plan Out a Season
Dance Magazine: Repertory company directors have a uniquely challenging yet rewarding responsibility when it comes to planning out a season. Without a company namesake to draw from, a troupe's artistic vision and reputation are cultivated through a collage of choreography contributed by outside artists. Whether reviving beloved classics or bringing in an up-and-coming voice for a world premiere, the process of crafting a repertory season can be intense. So what goes into the decision-making?
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I am not sure that this article provides any particular insight into the topic at hand. The factors seem to me to be superficial and obvious. As someone who formerly worked for a repertory dance company, I was in the room (although certainly not a participant) for many of these conversations. Aside from the ongoing pressure and desire to generate new work, the companies must also choose which of their older pieces they should have in their season. For a company that has an evening of several dance pieces under thirty minutes, part of the decision is about how long the show should be. There might be five pieces that flow beautifully together, but result in a three hour show. Another consideration has to do with casting: can the dancers currently in the company perform a certain piece, and how long would it take to teach new roles? Longer rehearsal periods can be more expensive and take away time from developing new works. Each company has its own approach, and there are dozens of factors that go into each decision.
I am with Chase, a lot of these do not really seem new or interesting. I am guessing this article is probably geared towards non theatre people to have an insight into how a dance company pieces its season together. What I did find interesting to me was the section about how they consult the dancers. I wonder how much is actually done. What stood out the most was the quote that they found “that it is a great way to find young, up-and-coming choreographers not on his [Edgerton’s] radar.” I do like this idea a lot because it does give opportunity to artists who may not even be considered. I guess this is a lot easier to do in dance companies as there is typically an ensemble of dancers that are always in productions. This kind of sourcing for directors or what not I think would not be possible in theatrical repertory companies as those typically have new casts for each season.
The discussion surrounding the choices behind a repertory dance company’s season selection is pretty on par with what happens in the theatrical world. One thing that did stand out to me as being different from what we typically see in theatre is collaborative artistic direction for the company. In most of the theatre companies I’ve seen they have had a single artistic director who cultivated the artistic path for the company, with the exception of companies that are fully ensemble based but even in those companies there is typically some sort of leadership. But they said this collaborative leadership is common for dance companies and they strive to have no less than 3 voices in the room to make those decisions. I think it’s a wonderful idea theoretically, but the execution must be complicated. I really enjoy collaborative processes but without a clearly defined leader any disputes could lead to a nauseating amount of going around in circles.
I think the application of using feedback when picking a season of work at any performance venue or company is a complicated one. It would be my hope that the artistic leaders of the team are taking in consideration the mission statement and any educational goals accordingly when picking a season, which are things that the audience of your performances is not quite as privy to. I think that having a group of leaders making the decision is essential to making a good decision, but I don’t think three people is enough (although I guess that depends on the size of the company). I thought it was interesting that this article did not mention money at all when thinking about selecting a season. Because of our capitalist society, ultimately all businesses need to make money at some point, even if they are not-for-profit. While I don't think this is the right way to think about a season – money shouldn’t be the goal – I think that audience feedback is important is order to make sure that your company isn't too deep in the red all the time.
When reading this, I thought that this would be an in-depth look at repertory planning based on the title and based off the length of the page I went in expecting a long read. This was not it and I think that that title shouldn't be that. Not only was half the page other articles, this read more like the first chapter of a 'for dummies' book before they go into more detail...more detail I wanted to read. I did, however, like the part where they discussed how not only can their shows be engaging, but also educational, and then briefly mentioned a piece of work being created about rising sea levels. I think it's also interesting how they do include their dancers in their repertory discussion and I wonder to what extent that is? Is it just at first pass, or are they included and heard all the way up to selection?
I would agree with other commenters that I was hoping for something that was a little deeper dive into repertory season planning specifically, as this all seemed like pretty basic information about show planning to me. However, I think it functions well as explaining the concepts to people not in the industry, and I thought the similarities to theatrical season planning were interesting. The concept of a group of artistic directors, rather than a single one, was a cool idea that could lead to a more diverse or nuanced season, if it’s not dependent on a single person. It was also good to see the idea of taking both the dancers and the audience into consideration, because that’s really the big thing in season planning - balancing what we want to do with what people want to see. When those two line up, that’s great, but when they don’t, that’s when difficult decisions about shows or pieces need to be made.
This article as many above have said is really just a basic overview of some of the more obvious and simpler challenges presented by repertory theatre are. As someone who has been apart of a multiple Rep companies, both as a cog in the system and driver of the bus, there are a lot more challenges that come up when deciding to due repertory theatre than just this. I think this article explains some good concepts and ideas to those who may know nothing of the sort, like this is a great article for my dad. But for those of us working in the world and for those who understand or have been apart of the process to any extent would be looking for more if we simply saw the title or were given a short description of the article. I love repertory theatre and I thinks its got a lot of benefits, and downsides, for theatre companies and the more people who understand the intricacies I think the better.
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