How to Form an Equity Theater Company

New York is a great place to experience incredible theater throughout it's Broadway Theater District. The great thing is that you can put on the same caliber of productions in your city by starting an actors equity affiliated theater company. It's a lot of work, but by starting an equity theater company you can truly jump start the arts community in your home town.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Things You’ll Need:

• Lots of community support

How to Form an Equity Theater Company

1. Evaluate the market. An equity theater company is just like any other business. If you don't have a market to sell your procuct to, your business will fail. Do Broadway tours come through your town? If so, do they do well? What is the population of your town? Where is the closest equity theater? These are all questions that you need to ask yourself before you consider starting an equity company. If the market doesn't look that great, you may want to consider starting a non-profit community theater company instead.
2. Educate yourself. Potential funders and investors will check your experience. If you have never even been in a stage production or taken any business courses, you are going to have a hard time getting people to get behind you. Volunteer at the community theater in your area, take some business courses, and if at all possible earn a degree within either the business field or theater management. You want to get yourself in a position where investors will feel comfortable giving you their money.
3. Get the community involved. It takes a village not only to raise a child, but to raise a theater company as well. You cannot do this on your own. Your community will be your support as well as your income, so getting them involved in the process as early as possible is crucial to the success of your company.
4. Make a plan. You must have a business plan of how much money you need, and your justification for using that money. Any bank, grant company, or even individual lender or contributor will ask you for a business plan. You must also have a plan for the continuing costs of your theater company. How will you pay your monthly bills? How do you plant to pay your actors, staff, and production costs? These are all important questions that you have to have answered before you start looking for financing.
5. Raise the funding. There are a host of grants, loans, and fund raising ideas out there for theater. If you do not have a lot of experience in grant writing, you may want to look at hiring a grant writer. Get the word out to anyone you come across. The more promotion you put out the more funding you will get.
6. Download the contracts and get started. As an equity partner in theater you will have to live by their contracts. Like a rider for a concert, the equity union requires you to provide a certain level of wages and accommodations. You must also live by all their rules that are set out in the contract. This quite often can be the most grueling part of the process considering the contracts are long and thick. You may even want to hire a lawyer to help you sort through the terms so that you do not violate any points of the contract which could potentially threaten your entire production.

Tips & Warnings

• Make sure all your funding is in place before starting your production. Never rely on income from ticket sales before the tickets are sold.
• Follow your equity contract to the letter. Even one small oversight can cause a huge problem in your production and could potentially lose you your cast.

Who Can Help:

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