Professor Theater Management/ Theater Researcher at University of Music and Performing Arts Frankfurt/Main
Workshop week in Berlin/ MA Theater&Music Management at HfMDK Frankfurt It was our last visit to the @Berlin University of Acting Ernst Busch for the summer semester. In the picture, a group of students from our master's program is working with the dramaturgy students on a mission statement (another group is sitting in the other part of the room). The focus was on three parts of a very complex workshop cycle. On the first day, we started to create a mission statement in three groups: the groups developed a statement for the State Theater in Karlsruhe, the Deutsches Theater Berlin and a city theater. The mission statement is the essential prerequisite for functional communication and production processes at all levels of a cultural organization and at the same time a protective instrument for all employees. Employees should be actively involved in the development of a mission statement, esp. in the formulation of the main values & headlines. In the second part of the workshop, we developed the financial structure of a public theater. Step by step, we examined the key elements on the expenditure and income side and developed sub-budgets based on the real conditions that we currently find in the theater landscape. This also includes the consequences of a just canceled NV Bühne collective agreement, which shows the full fragility of the theater system and the unreliable and weak agreements between employers and unions. The main aspects that were discussed were follows: * the high personnel costs of + 80%, which is due to the precious repertory system * the still too low average fees for artists - compared to musicians, technicians, and administration * the immense management costs, which are on average between 4 and 10 times higher than the ø fee for artists * the low budget share of ø 10% for artistic production costs * the low income due to the subsidized ticket prices. Can we therefore speak of a structural financial crisis? Possibly. In any case, we can speak of a structural asymmetry in fees when artistic directors earn up to 8-10 times more money per month than a young actress. There was a also a fine workshop at the Berliner Ensemble on modern marketing and communication tools - thank you to Ingo Sawilla. And in the nights: theater, theater, theater.... The interdisciplinary collaboration with the dramaturgy students of the "Ernst Busch" University has already enriched us enormously at the last workshop in Berlin. It is exciting for our students to see and experience how projects and concepts develop from the interdisciplinary ideas. Theater is teamwork in which the individual must be prepared to merge her/his artistic input with that of the other colleagues to the point of insignificance. Anyone who wants to stand out here, be it an artistic or stage director, or a leading actor, has not yet understood the magic principles of theater "ensembleism" and endangers the theater at least as much as any offensive or toxic desire for power.