Robert Cohen - Theatre, Brief Version-McGraw-Hill Education (2016)

Sports, games, and serious theatre have always been related, and some plays combine these different “playing”
motifs. Richard Greenberg’s Take Me Out takes place in a baseball locker room in America, Eric Simonson’s Lombardi
in a football locker room, David Storey’s The Changing Room in a rugby locker room, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The
Beautiful Game on a soccer field in Ireland, and Thomas Meehan’s musical adaption of the well-known film Rocky
concludes in a boxing ring. Pictured here, Rocky the Musical premiered in Hamburg, Germany, in 2013 before heading
to Broadway. © Photographer: Ralf Brinkhoff for Stage Entertainment Germany
almost entirely consumed. The theatre enterprise may
involve hundreds of people in scores of different efforts.
Most of these people are actually backstage, where the
audience can’t see them, silently and invisibly making
everything run smoothly. There are so many different
tasks in the theater that one kind of theatrical work, stage
management, consists entirely of the coordination of all
the other activities.
The work of the theatre is generally divisible into a
number of crafts:
Producing includes securing all necessary personnel,
space, and financing; supervising all production and
promotional efforts; fielding all legal matters; and
distributing all proceeds derived from receipts.
Directing consists of controlling and developing the
artistic product and providing it with a unified vision,
coordinating all of its components, and supervising
its rehearsals.
Acting comprises the most famous and visible of
theatrical work, in which actors perform the roles of
characters in a play.
Designing entails the creation of visual and aural
elements of a production, including the scenery,
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properties, costumes and wigs, makeup, lighting,
sound, programs, advertising, and general ambience
of the location.
Building includes the realization of the designers’
vision through the work of carpenters, costumers,
wig-makers, electricians, makeup artists, recording
and sound engineers, painters, and a host of other
specially designated craftspeople who construct the
“hardware” of a play.
Crewing consists of technicians who execute, in
proper sequence and with carefully rehearsed timing,
the light and sound cues and the shifting of scenery,
as well as oversee the placement and return of
properties and the assignment, laundering, repair,
and changes of costumes.
Stage managing consists of “running” a play
production in all its complexity in performance after
performance.
House managing includes the responsibilities for
admitting, seating, and providing for the general
comfort of the audience.
There is one task that does not take place during the
enactment of a play, but is absolutely critical to the whole