This week in my management class, we've been talking about tracking, variance, control and reporting--essentially, how to know when things get off-plan and start to fall behind or rack up costs beyond the expected budget, how to share that information effectively, and with whom you share it.

Easy enough questions, on the surface. But in order to answer questions about reporting, you need to know something about who you report to, and what your "status" relationships are between you and the people you are sharing information with. In other words, you need a clear picture of a company's organizational structure. We had a bit of a raucous class session examining what the "typical" organizational structure of a theatre might be, and I thought the conversation was worth sharing.

We've probably all seen the classic organizational chart: director at the top, designers under the director, "department heads" under the designers, and shop staff (in order of seniority) under the department heads (i.e., Director->Set Designer->TD->Shop Foreman->Master Carpenter->Carpenters). And, in some cases, this is a perfectly viable model. It is important to know that it follows very functional lines--the set people deal with the set people, the costume people deal with the costume people, and so on. This can often lead to interpersonal conflicts as tasks for a particular production arise that require skills that span disciplines: consider a giant sewn sheer sail scenic element, that no one in the scene shop is capable of sewing, a custom lighting position that needs to be created and rigged that the electrics crew is not qualified to install, or a costume unit that requires a fibre-optic effect wired into it. These kinds of tasks require skills that cross functional department boundaries, which means careful planning of labor allocation to ensure there's time and resources available at the right moments in the process to complete them.

Additionally, any department head lives at the convergence of priorities that can often be at odds: a technical director is tasked with realizing the aesthetic vision of a set design, for example, while at the same time staying under budget and getting the project completed on time. In many regional theatres, the department head works seasonal or year-round for a particular company, while the designers and directors come and go from project to project; this can sometimes have an amplifying effect on the collision of time/money/scope, as the designer, by nature of his or her short-term contact with the company, may value time and money less than aesthetic vision, and the department head, by virtue of his or her relationship with the company may sometimes feel pressured to sacrifice aesthetic vision for the priorities of time and money. Given this, suggesting that a department head "reports to" a designer doesn't seem to truly reflect the reality of the department head's situation: the department head may look to the designer for aesthetic vision, but also reports to the production manager/executive director/artistic director of the company.

We came to decide in class that an organizational chart that combines the strengths of functional organization with the strengths of a more flexible, project-oriented approach might more accurately reflect how the staffing and reporting of a production project functions. In more clearly diagramming the working relationships amongst production personnel, a hybrid model may help to clarify lines of communication while at the same time reducing stress, interpersonal conflicts, frustration, and anxiety, as misunderstandings that arise from emotional investment in a project (of which there is typically quite a bit in theatre!).

What is this mythical organizational hybrid structure of which we speak? Picture this: Consider that any theatre is made up of functional areas: the scene shop, the costume shop, the box office, the development department, etc. Our hybrid organizational chart will show these functional areas vertically--like we're used to seeing them: the Artistic Director on top, the Production Manager underneath, the scene shop foreman/costume shop manager/master electrician/etc. on the next level down, and the shop staffs for each area underneath them. So far, not terribly different.

The first change to the old model: we consider the directorial and design areas as their own functional areas, with the director at the top, the designers underneath, and assistant designers and assistant to designers and draftspeople underneath them. In other words, we have a staff of people (sometimes made up of anywhere from three to a dozen people) who realize the work that a design department (often comprised of a single person) visualizes for us.

The second change to the old model: we consider each design element (set, costumes, lighting, sound, video, etc.) as a project that has the potential to cut across functional lines, managed by a "project manager"--our traditional "department heads" of technical director, costume supervisor, etc. Each of these project managers is wrangling and organizing their particular project (completion of the set, completion of the costumes, etc.) from inception (an artistic director may ask of a technical director, "We're going to do Phaedra, and it's probably going to be designed by Johnny Abstract-Expressionist who worked here last year, how much do you think that might cost?") through to completion (i.e., strike).

To me, this seems both radical and obvious at the same time: radical, because I personally have never seen a diagram or description of a theatre's organizational chart that looks quite like this. Obvious, because this is exactly how almost every theatre I've worked at actually functions, to a greater or lesser extent. I've never worked anywhere as a technical director where I was expected to "report to" the set designer; rather, I've reported to the production manager, and worked with the designer and director to achieve a particular vision while maintaining the pragmatic parameters of "on time" and "under budget."

So, what are your thoughts on this? Is this crazy talk? Have my students and I deluded ourselves, or does this match your experience in theatre?