A Week in the Life of a Creation Producer
A Week in the Life of a Creation Producer, and many other roles…
My colleagues have often commented on how wildly varied my day to day role can be working for Creation and to highlight this I thought I’d put a particularly varied and mad week into a blog. Over the last 7 days at Creation I have fulfilled the role of Education Workshop Assistant, Marketing Assistant, Film Assistant, Van Driver, Front of House Manager and of course, Producer.
FRIDAY
This week I worked as a Workshop Assistant for Creation’s Play in a Week Workshops. I worked with Nemo who was an amazing leader, and a fantastic group of 6-8 year olds who staged a performance of the classic A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I spent the week working with Nemo running drama games with the participants, helping manage break and lunchtimes, and helping our participants, young actors get into their roles and devise scenes from the play! This was very different to my day to day job of Producing, where I was completely immersed in working with our young people, who all worked really hard and put on a great performance at the end of the week!
MONDAY
After a weekend of rest from a full on week in workshops, Monday started a very different week! I collected a whole load of equipment and came into Oxford for the beginning of the final week of rehearsals for Animal Farm. I helped coordinate equipment needed for the week, stopping by rehearsals and making sure everybody had everything they needed. I put my Producer hat on as well as my Front of House hat on to complete a number of tasks including liaising some dates for our summer show (at Creation we have to be thinking two or three steps ahead even when we’re in the busyness of bringing our current show together), I also had to buy some props for the show to support our Stage Managers, and also follow up with our Front of House volunteers ready to help make our performances run smoothly (they are amazing!). Then in the evening I took on another role, we met around 70 amazing volunteers to film a crowd of sheep for our show! I took on the role of Techie, placing lights and having to stand on a ladder holding a light to make sure we got the right lighting we needed. My arms did start to ache after a while!
TUESDAY
Tuesday was a totally different day! I met with our other Producer Katie (who is brilliant and is often steering the Producing Ship while I’m having to fulfil other tasks and sometimes completing other brilliant and random jobs that we need to do!). We collected a van before driving nearly 200 miles to collect technical equipment, set materials and other equipment from Central London, we then stopped off in Tooting, South London and the beautiful countryside near Hemel Hempstead. It was a very long day but being able to collect and bring back all the stuff necessary to bring our show to life was great. Katie turned the van into her office for the day, carrying on the work of the Producers in-between loading flight cases and large amounts of MDF into a van.
WEDNESDAY
On Wednesday I once again put on my Producer hat, but of course this wasn’t all! After having a Production Meeting, setting up an Equity Meeting for our company (a meeting for our company to chat with a union representative which is really important!), I ordered some more props and completed some contracts (one of the key tasks of a Producer!). I then put on my best brown jumper and borrowed my brother’s lovely suede brown jacket to film a cameo in our production of Animal Farm, all I can give away is that I have to get my ‘neighing’ just right for the camera. Sam Rayner who was our amazing Stage Manager/Associate Director and Waiter in Boatman Town (who I think definitely wins the medal for multiple hat wearing) has been doing an amazing job of filming material for Animal Farm with our incredible director Helen, and was fantastic at getting the best performance out of me, yes it did take a few takes!
THURSDAY
Thursday, as you probably guessed it, was another very different day. I was glued to my computer doing as much work as I could to support our marketing department in publicising our production of Animal Farm to schools and local organisations. Our Marketing Manager Tamsin does an amazing job of publicity and organising our marketing strategy and supporting her in her work was a really fulfilling day. When we need a bit of a marketing drive, a bit of teamwork goes a long way! In between this we also had a production meeting about toilets! I then had a lovely time accompanying our Artistic Director Helen and our wonderful new General Manager Sian (who you’ll all be delighted to get to know over our productions this year) to OTG’s production of The Importance of Being Earnest, starring my good friend Alex Lushington. From toilet chats to an Oscar Wilde classic, it was a good day at the office!
FRIDAY
At the end of the week I kept on my Producer’s hat by checking a venue contract (very excitingly coming up) and replying to some emails, before once again becoming Creation’s resident Transit Driver, picking up a van and driving around Oxfordshire (it was a beautiful day by the river in Henley!) collecting set pieces, props, lighting and sound equipment, ready for the production team to do an amazing job at fitting up the venue with lights, sound and set for our Production of Animal Farm. It looks amazing!! The Production, Stage Management, Technical, Design and Creative teams have made the venue and production look absolutely amazing.
SATURDAY
And to finish off the week, I returned the van to the helpful team at Enterprise Bicester, before having a rest, and enjoying reading one of the plays we are producing in the summer, where I will be putting on another metaphorical hat, which I am very much looking forward to.
Next week I will be in tech rehearsals and along with the amazing production and Creation team, getting everything ready to open the show and run Front of House at our production of Animal Farm which opens on Wednesday 24th April.
It looks fantastic and the whole team has been working so hard on it. Book your tickets now, this brilliant adaptation is unlike any you’ll have seen before and is not to be missed!
You can book tickets here!