Theatre Management Vocabulary

· Agit-prop production: created to disseminate propaganda by theatrically agitating an audience and thereby moving it to take future action.
· Guerilla theatre: political in content and propagandistic in purpose.
· Mission statement: serves as the standard by which a venture is ultimately judged to be a success or failure.
· Theatre or arts manager: any person who plays a part in bringing together or facilitating two or more of the four elements (performer, material, place, audience).
o Any person who helps bring labor and capital together in order to produce an end product (economist)
o May be anyone who has influence over the organizational behavior of a given internal and/or external theatre environment (sociologist)
· General manager: someone who supervises the entire process from beginning to end.
· A manager may be anyone involved in the following functions:
o Planning
o Organizing
o Staffing and casting
o Supervising
o Controlling
· Commercial producer: someone who decides on a property to produce (a play, a musical, a one-person show) and a venue in which to perform it.
· Trustees: responsible for the legal, fiscal and overall conduct of not-for-profit organizations.
· Impresario: an outdated term for producers who rarely own their own theatres.
· Shelled space: a space that is left as a raw, unfinished space to be completed at a later time when more funding is available.
· Pro forma: describing something provided in advance to prescribe form.
· Backers’ audition: commercial theatres will invite investors to come and see a staged reading or song to sell shares.
· Stop clause: a weekly box office gross amount that is agreed to in the license.
· White contract: a contract used for principle actors.
· Pink contract: a contract used for chorus actors.
· Showcase code: a code that permits producers to collect contributions from the audience or charge them a limited ticket price, but restricts the budget, the number of performances to 16, and the size of the theatre to fewer than 100 seats.
· Fiscal agent: can serve as the recipient of contributions on behalf of the group.
· Artistic board: a board that is often comprised of established artists who wish to support a company but are unable to do so financially.
· Enhancement money: given in the form of a contribution to help develop a particular property that the producer hopes will transfer to Broadway.
· Presenters: theatres and administrators who concern themselves almost exclusively with presenting productions that have been produced by others.
· Open-ended run: a production will continue at a theatre as long as it earns a minimum weekly amount at the box office.
· Fixed run: a production is booked into a theatre for a specific, limited run, usually ranging from one to twenty-six weeks in length.
· Budget: a financial estimate of future income and expenses.
· Financial statement: documentation of past expenses and revenues over a finite time period: monthly, quarterly, or annually.
· Break-even: weekly operating cost.
· Business manager: a person whose daily routine is keeping financial records, paying bills, making deposits, or supervising such activities.
· Petty cash fund: a separate cash – loan or advance – fund set up to cover small expenses.
· Cash float: the time between when the charge is incurred and the time it must be paid (using a credit card).
· Independent contractor: a person or group paid by a fee from which no tax deductions are made.
· Depreciation: the proportional part of the cost of an asset that has been allocated to a particular period, such as a year.
· Hard tickets: tickets reprinted by a ticket printing house.
· Soft tickets: ticket stock; used in ticket printers kept in the box office for a computer-based system.
· Point of purchasing printing: this computer system mentioned above.
· Hardwood ticket: a numbered blank form on which authorized managers or treasurers may fill in the appropriate seating information to issue to the customer in lieu of an actual ticket.
· Deadwood: all unsold tickets that remain after the performance for which they were valid.
· House seats: seats held for the use of the landlord or producer or company as authorized.
· Press seats: seats for opening nights and other performances as authorized by the press agent or publicity director.
· Dead seats: seats that may not be used at all because they have obstructed views of because they have been removed to make space for musicians or some other purpose.
· Agency seats: seats permanently assigned to be sold by ticket agents, which are paid for by the agency or released for general sale at a specified time prior to each performance.
· Special seats: tickets held until a specified time by the star, the director, or others and to be paid for by them or by the persons authorized to claim them.
· Go clean: to sell every seat in a house.
· Contributed income or unearned income: grants, contributions, and in-kind gifts.
· Grants: contracts to buy specific services.
· Foundation: an incorporated nonprofit organization set up to distribute funds or grants to people or projects that meet certain, and very exacting, criteria.
· Contribution: the generic term for all types of unearned income.
· In-kind gifts: a type of corporate support; they may be in the form of goods or equipment.
· Marketing: all the functions required to get goods or services from the production stage to the final user.
· The Marketing Mix or The Four P’s: product, price, promotion, and place.
· Three More P’s: positioning, packaging, and people.
· Advertising: any type of promotion that is paid for in increments of time; such as a newspaper ad or billboard space.
· E-Marketing: all online activity, such as website, email marketing, and e-newsletters.
· Personal sales: all non-media personal contact, such as telemarketing, or a table set up at a mall or fair.
· Merchandising: all commercial type communications, such as t-shirts, cups, and other merchandise that carries the logo of a particular company or show or institution, when those items are given away for their promotional value as opposed to those sold in theatre.
· Unpaid promotion: those that leverage, or generate free media coverage.
· Publicity: any mention or coverage about an organization or its products in the media that is not paid for.
· Public Relations: general efforts over a period of time that attempt to increase public awareness, interest, and support for an organization and its products.
· Sponsorships: can generate considerable free coverage.
· Customer profiling: the process of using relevant and available information to describe characteristics of a group of customers and to identify what discriminates them from other customers or ordinary customers.
· Publicity Plan: must be an integrated component of the overall marketing plan, from selling tickets to supporting fundraising efforts to increase visibility.
· Press interview: a one-on-one question-and-answer session between a media representative and someone else.
· Public Service Announcement (PSA): contains much of the same information and wording as a press release written for the print media, except that it is intended to be read over the air.
· News tip: simply a memorandum sent in writing or emailed to appropriate media people, informing them about some special activity that they may consider newsworthy enough to cover in person.
· Video News Release (VNR): a video clip, approximately a minute or two in length, usually produced commercially, and made available to television stations and networks by satellite feed.
· Logotype (logo): when a trademark incorporates the name of the product.
· Signature (sig): when the logo (or name) of the product is used in combination with the symbol of the product.
· Display advertising: any printed promotional piece that uses composition and layout that go beyond straightforward reading material.
· Precanceled stamps: stamps that are purchased at the post office and affixed individually by the sender.
· Postage meter: stamps that the sender must purchase in meter from a manufacturer who also supplies a license application.
· Permit imprints: a permit number that is supplied by the local post office and printed directly onto the mailing piece at the same time that the rest of it is printed.
· Advertorial: a section of a newspaper or special edition of a magazine that has approximately fifty percent editorial selections and fifty percent advertising.