As I had never been in any other theatre company before I started Catprint, I had to work out all our working procedures from scratch. So, theoretically, we may do things completely wrong, I don’t know! I have picked up clues and ideas along the way by asking a million questions to anyone I thought could answer them for me. I like to listen and I like to organise. I used to be paid a lot of money to streamline companies working procedures to improve their productivity and quality, so it’s been great using those skills on myself and Catprint, to make sure our shows run like clockwork.
There are 3 things that help me that I could not do without.
1. The Production Team & their spreadsheet.
At the moment we have 11 wonderful members on the production team taking care of virtually every task for the show. If they weren’t there doing all of that, Catprint would not continue to exist, so I can’t thank them all enough for that. (If you are local & have some time to give, we are always happy to have more helpers to share the load. Please let us know.) The spreadsheet (which is a 20 page, colour coordinated and cross referenced excel document which took HOURS to create) lets me organise who is doing what and by when effectively. I can thus remind, check progress and mark complete, every task for every show; finance, fees, artwork, hospitality, make up, photography, props, publicity (banners, digital, print, postages) road crew, set building and last but not least, wardrobe. I then allocate and tally points which we convert into our thank you present cat badges, to acknowledge everyone for the time they have given in service to the group.
2. My annual wall calendar
Being able to see the whole year in advance in a single glance is fantastic. As you can see there is a lot on it already before we have even started yet. We have meetings, workshops, trivia nights, show performances and Koha previews all locked in ready to go. I still have bump in and out dates, fundraising bbq’s, banners for Blithe Spirit and more workshops to add yet. It helps me spread the load evenly and its an easy way to keep everything in perspective. By the end of the year I am quite attached to it because it shows everything we have accomplished and I hate throwing them out. I always feel sad until I get a nice new empty fresh one and hang it up. Even though it’s blank, it’s full of marvelous possibilities and dreams to make come true.
3. Sticky notes on my computer desktop
One upon a time I used pen and paper lists. There is nothing quite like the satisfaction of crossing things off. But when I ended up depending upon a list of all my lists I knew there must be a better way. So then I discovered virtual sticky notes. I love them because I don't waste any paper and I have learnt to the get my satisfaction from deleting a line or an entire note altogether. It works! Anyway, this is how I manage to integrate Catprint into all my real life tasks. I have a main sticky note with all my daily tasks on it as well as smaller ones that by their position and colour, indicate urgency, subject and time frames. How vital the information on them is, correlates directly to how far out we are from opening night. This is one of the best systems I have ever created and it is really fantastic... as long as I have power. Once I lost power for 2 days, less than a week out and it reduced me to tears. I now keep a back up list of scheduled appointments on an actual calendar. Just in case.
So that’s it – that’s how I keep everything on track. I think if I had to juggle all of that in my head simultaneously I’d go quite mad. It would be no fun trying to remember it all and it wouldn't leave any space for being creative or progressive. As a system, it seems to be working very well. My regular two-weeks-from-opening, mini nervous breakdown, seems to be shorter and less severe than it used to be. It’s almost time to pick up the pace now after a lovely xmas and January break and start working towards what is going to be another wonderful year of brilliant local community theatre.
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