-Here’s the thing. I’m a sixteen year old who’s been interested in theatre my entire life. I want to become a theatre teacher when I’m older.
Throughout high school, my similarly-obsessed best friend and I have been searching for opportunities to direct and produce our own shows. We’ve both had extensive experience acting in plays and musicals, directing short scenes in class and even creating short films… but when it comes to directing, because we’re students… we’ve found pretty much nothing. So one day we had an idea.
Why not do it ourselves?
Last summer, our independent theatre company, Scratch Theatre Co., was born. We’re a 501(c)3 non-profit run by students in the DFW area of Texas, aiming to bring opportunities to young thespians. Whether you want to direct, act, do lighting or make costumes, we want there to be a place that you can do it, without having to spend money or travel long distances.
Now that the company was created, we needed to decide on our first project. Using a loan from a family member, we purchased the rights to a play (Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors) and started figuring out how to produce and direct it.
Surprise! Producing a play requires money. You have to be able to rent a space to perform, purchase the rights to the material, buy costumes, concessions to sell, props and sets, do makeup and arrange lighting and sound, not to mention all the labor of producing a good show… from scratch. (See what I did there?)
The budget needed to produce this show from the ground up is about $4,000 USD. That includes the rights purchase, the cost to rent our performance space for the duration of rehearsals and performance days, the costs of insurance, costumes, sets, props, and marketing. We believe that teaming up with Nouns would allow our first production to get the funding it needs to be brilliant. Investing into our projects would also introduce Nouns to a younger audience; the next generation of people who will be creating great things. Nouns is such an incredible community with so many creative people who remind me a lot of my partner and I: people who want to give others opportunities to do what they love.
Please let me know if you have any questions. I love looking through all the posts on here.
Thank you!