Drowning in Administration?
We’ve been working for months on this new Theatre Company but haven’t even held a single production meeting for our first show. Some Board Members have expressed concerns that we’ll end up being all talk and no action, that maybe we’re obsessing too much over administrative busywork when we should be doing theatre. Sometimes administrative accomplishments are exciting (such as filing our Initial Articles of Incorporation as a Nonprofit with the State of Ohio) but other times I feel like we’re crawling along at a snail’s pace and I feel myself utterly uninterested in mundane things like bylaws, bank accounts, business plans and rental contracts.
So now is a good time to remember why we’re bothering with all this “boring” business before we get to the good stuff: because we want to be a theatre that lasts. We don’t want to be a flash-in-the-pan company that produces two plays and disappears before the public has a chance to learn that we exist. We’ve seen other companies start by doing theatre and then eventually they deal with the business end. But it seems like all too often, those companies fizzle out. We want to try a different approach to see if we can get different results. That’s why we’re laying this foundation of structure, accountability, transparency and foresight.
I do believe all this work will be worth it in the long run. I just need to keep my eyes on the prize: really good theatre for really good audiences.
Treading Water,
Tricia
Tags: Administration, Business, Mission