Season Director - Springfield, United States - The Drama Studio, Inc.

Description

Season Director
The Drama Studio is seeking a Season Director for our regular performance season. In your cover letter, please indicate whether your availability is open to multiple or single productions.


What is The Drama Studio? Why you should work here:
The Drama Studio is an exciting, challenging, and deeply enriching conservatory for young artists. Many students think of the Studio as their second home. Our teaching artists have the opportunity to work with passionate and dedicated youth at introductory through advanced theater levels. The work is creative, thought provoking, and rewarding. Join us, and help young actors find their voices and discover their passions


The Drama Studio's Mission:

Our mission is to enrich and validate the youth experience in our diverse community via excellence in a conservatory-style acting training program.

As part of this mission, we seek to increase reading and writing proficiency rates among local elementary school students through unique and innovative literacy-focused outreach initiatives.

Responsibilities

Mainstage and Festival Productions
Description /

Schedule:

Directors are needed for two mainstage productions, one in November and one in March, and for plays in two student-written festivals in February and June.

All productions are staged in our black box theater for 65 seat capacity.


Responsibilities include:

• Developing and executing a creative vision for scripts chosen in coordination with other staff
• Collaborating with producers and designers regarding scenic, lighting, costume, and other technical elements
• Directing student actors with the goal of providing an enriching and educational experience while also maintaining a high artistic standard
• Working with and supervising student stage managers
• Working with staff to create a rehearsal schedule
• Holding multiple rehearsals a week (35 week rehearsal period for festivals, 56 weeks for mainstages)
• Running all auditions and making casting decisions
• Attending regular production meetings
• Work within budgeted production funds
• Work with student SM/ASMs
• Communicate production concepts clearly and in a timely manner
• Develop a production vision that demonstrates an understanding of Drama Studio's mission and goals.

Skills/Requirements

• A bachelor's degree or higher in theatre, education, related discipline, and/or special education
• Experience working with students on collaboratively written original material.
• Experience working with a diverse student population drawn from a broad range of cultural, religious, socioeconomic, gender identities, and political backgrounds.
• Experience working with neurodivergent students.
• Experience finding and directing plays that highlight the experiences of young characters and provide fulfilling and challenging opportunities for our student actors (previous productions have included contemporary plays such as The Wolves and She Kills Monsters, classical plays such as Antigone, Metamorphoses, and Romeo & Juliet, and children's classics like Pinocchio and The Secret Garden)

Preferred Qualifications:

• Bilingual (Spanish / Vietnamese) an advantage
• Experience with community collaboration and family engagement.
• Experience with technical elements of theatre, such as lighting design and a familiarity with QLab

Compensation
Compensation is commensurate with experience and qualifications and can be discussed during interviews.

Minimum $1500 per mainstage, $850 per one act


What is a Theatre Conservatory?

The Drama Studio was founded in 1987 as an institution where youth could study acting as seriously as they could study music, supported by a carefully designed curriculum, productions of quality scripts, and a strong scholarship program to ensure opportunity for all.

The term "conservatory-style" was used to describe a two-part process: first, a series of acting classes, offered sequentially from introductory to advanced levels, that would permit acting students to grow in their craft over a period of years, and second, a series of production opportunities that would allow students to audition, rehearse and perform at the same level of quality operating in the classroom.

Additionally, our outreach programs bring our conservatory approach to foster literacy in our Springfield Public School partnerships.


Job Types:
Part-time, Contract


Pay:
$ $50.00 per hour


Expected hours:
per week


Schedule:

• Evenings as needed
• Evening shift
• Weekends as needed

Education:

• High school or equivalent (required)

Experience:

• Directing: 1 year (required)

Ability to Commute:

• Springfield, MA required)

Work Location:
In person