Review by Barbara Matthews, Producer and Consultant.
(Central School of Speech and Drama, London, 2000, ISBN 0 953 772 9 34, £5 [£6.72 inc. p&p*])
More a magazine than a book, Creative Producing is a legacy of a symposium on The Creative Role of the Producer organised by the Central School of Speech and Drama and consists of 14 articles about producers. Throughout there are useful quotes, both for students and for those of us who still have difficulty explaining to our mothers what exactly it is we do!
The focus is biased towards the subsidised sector and producers working with performance artists and new work. Though it would have been interesting to include a producer from the conventional field of commercial theatre... unless the suggestion is that such people do not operate in a creative way.
Each piece has a title such as The Juggler, The Instigator and The Advocate. These in themselves give a useful list of the roles a producer has to play, and the articles give a valuable insight into what drives a producer and where the rewards lie. The creative rewards, that is. There is no real attempt to examine the financial aspects of the job.
The suggestion implicit in the title, that a producer is not always creative, is challenged by several of the contributors. The introduction by Anthony Dean suggests that maybe such a creature is not new, but re-emerging. One wonders why there was ever a period when creative producers were not to the fore. As Julius Green points out, Shakespeare and Wolfitt both fitted the bill; and Michael Morris states ?successful artists in the world have always got successful producers behind them.? Maybe the educational establishments that introduced the concept of arts management have something to answer for? If so, this re-emphasis from Central is to be applauded.
* SAM?s Books is a specialist supplier of books for arts professionals. For further information and invoicing, t/f: 01883 345011 e: books@sam-arts.demon.co.uk, w: http://www.samarts.demon.co.uk