Tuesday 3 July 2018

The Great Gatsby - Show Manager - Job Advert

The Cast of The Great Gatsby. Photo by Helen Maybanks

THE GREAT GATSBY - SHOW MANAGER - JOB DESCRIPTION

The Great Gatsby is looking to work with a highly skilled, friendly, efficient and Show Manager. This role is key to the day to day running of The Great Gatsby, being responsible for all FOH and audience-facing duties, as well as working alongside the Stage Manager to maintain the weekly running of the production. We are keen to meet people with a strong sense of initiative, imagination and organisation to join our high energy family.

The Great Gatsby is a heart-racing immersive adaptation of F Scott Fitzgerald’s seminal jazz-age tale. The show takes place in a custom built set, installed in a secret location in London Bridge. The show first opened in London as part of VAULT Festival in 2017, before moving to its new home in June 2017, where it has been running every since.

The show runs Wed-Sun each week, although hours will be required outside of show times. Total hours will be 46 hours per week.
Pay is at a company rate of £530pw plus holiday.
Contract period runs from 1
st August until 21st October 2018.

Desirable:
Previous experience as an ASM and FOH Manager. First Aid Trained.
SIA Trained.
Keen interest in pursuing a career in theatre.

Some working knowledge of immersive theatre. 

The role will include:
- Managing the nightly box office list from the Ticketing Manager, including guests and groups, and welcoming all audience in to the building.
- Management of all aspects of front of house – including prepping all audience facing areas, both in and out of world.

- Liaising with offices and other tenants regarding the use of any shared space within the venue. - - Being the primary first aider on site and maintaining first aid kits.
- Management and scheduling of security staff, including feedback on performance, booking extra security when needed and briefing them upon arrival.

- Floor management throughout the show, including audience movement and communicating with Security and the management of latecomers.
- Management of charity money.


- Writing of Front of House reports (to include issues on ticketing/audience and actor behaviour) and sending to the Stage Manager before midnight on the day of the performance to be included in show report.
- Being on radio for the entirety of a performance and dressed appropriately and visible on the floor.
- Cover the Stage Manager when they are on holiday, including the operating and running of the show.
- Helping the Stage Manager source items needed for the production (this will involve travelling within Zones 1&2)
- Contributing to the professional aesthetic of an Immersive theatre set including cleaning, polishing, and maintaining the general upkeep and cleanliness of the venue.
- Collecting, delivering or picking up costume/props on a weekly basis.
- Assisting the Stage Manager in the upkeep of costume including sewing, measuring, doing minor alterations, researching and sourcing (as instructed/needed by the Stage Manager)
- Assisting the Stage Manager in fixing/building/problem solving practical issues around the set. Supporting the Bar Manager with stock deliveries
- Attending rehearsals where necessary.
- Attend fortnightly Management meeting with the General Manager.


To Apply:
Email Katy@Hartshornhook.com with a cover letter and CV by Monday 9th July 2018

Thursday 1 February 2018

10 Years Since...

Dear Jamie, Dom, Jethro, Danie, Nic, Niamh, Lucy, Tom, Alex, Ral, Simon, Matt, Sarah and Fran,

10 years ago we made this...
Metamorphosis, at York University, 2008
 I am not quite 30. I turn 30 on the 9th April this year...it's rapidly approaching. 

On the 24th January I opened a show I had long been dreaming about. NeverLand is a freeform immersive musical about JM Barrie, and about him writing and imagining the world of Peter Pan. It's a damn hard show and one I'm still not sure I have the right skills to finish, but I'm learning fast and trying damn hard. 

Also on the 24th January I got a message of my very good and longstanding friend Jamie Wilkes - 'It's 10 years today since the first performance of Metamorphosis'. 

In our 2nd year at York University we made a version of Berkoff's Metamorphosis. We were pushing at something and we didn't know what, or how, but we were pushing and pushing and pushing. One night, late at night, Jamie and I were in the Drama Barn (the wonderful imaginarium of York University's drama society) looking at the space. We decided to rebuild the whole set at about 2am. We built a house - the dining room, a bedroom, a living room, a kitchen. It filled the whole of the Drama Barn. 
'Where do we put the audience?' we asked. 
'They'll just have to sit in it all' was the answer. 

Metamorphosis, at NSDF 2008

And so, in that little moment of early hours delirium we hit something which has steered the last decade of my life. More than a 3rd of my whole life. And that more-than-third of my life has been amazing. And it has, for the most part, been because of and related to that decision. The life long friends I have made, the glorious memories I've stored, the things that have inspired huge decisions and risks and journeys. 

There's a peculiar ven diagram. The last 10 years have, although by no means invented, seem to have profligated immersive theatre. And, somehow, York University crops up over and over in the people who make it. The titans of Les Enfant, the huge family of Secret Cinema and then, very often, those of us who came crawling out of the gorgeous run down incubator of York University's under resourced Drama Barn. 

Metamorphosis, at Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2010
Metamorphosis took us out of university to the National Student Drama Festival. It took us up to Edinburgh to run a ridiculous amount of shows. It helped us build an idea, and identity, to imagine something we didn't know how to finish. But, more than everything to do with a theatre industry, it contained and convalesced so many people I hold nearest and dearest in all the world. That question - 'Where do we put the audience?' - has, genuinely, shaped a whole 10 years of my almost-30-years of life. 

NeverLand at VAULT Festival. Photo by Helen Maybanks
So underground in the heartwarming tunnels of VAULT Festival - surrounded by a festival full of amazing artists imagining things they need an incubator to figure out how to finish, in a venue that has housed another significant ring of the ven diagram, opening a show that I could never have even imagined 10 years ago - I get that message of my wonderful friend Jamie. 

'It's 10 years today since the first performance of Metamorphosis'

My stomach leaped for the last ten years, and also for the next. 

The Drama Barn at York University is a wonderful place and, even though I'm sure those of us in it at 3am one morning moving around furniture don't know it, it is responsible for a huge amount. A huge amount of a niche section of a theatre industry, and a huge amount of a large proportion of my life and, surely, of other people's.

10 years is a long time. But I still feel like I'm moving around furniture, trying to figure out how best to tell a story with an audience in the very centre, surrounded by some of the nearest, dearest and best of people. 

NeverLand at VAULT Festival. Photo by Helen Maybanks