We caught up with Felicity Paterson, our Senior Producer at Omnibus Theatre, to shoot the breeze about her role, working with up-and-coming theatre makers and what advice she has for anyone seeking a career in producing.
OMNIBUS THEATRE: What does a Senior Producer do?
FELICITY PATERSON: Very good question. A few different things. One of my main jobs is to produce our in-house productions. For instance, at the moment I am working with Marie McCarthy, our Artistic Director, on a new adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando which we will mount in 2019. We will have an initial research and development week in June, and we are working with a fantastic creative team including our Associate Writer Lucy Grace, so I am very excited about this. As a young organisation with no source of guaranteed funding or statutory support, our capacity to produce shows more regularly is limited. Some theatres will produce six in-house productions a year, and we would like to produce two or three annually, but for the moment a lot of our time is spent fundraising for productions – applications to trusts and foundations, Arts Council England, things to do with corporate sponsorship, and individual donors. When I’m not working on our own shows and commissions, I also programme our work for younger audiences and families and run Engine Room, our development program for theatre makers culminating in a scratch performance in front of an audience. We’ve also just launched [Working Title], a new-writing scratch evening based on what has worked well for Engine Room. We now have all pieces confirmed for the first evening in May, with new plays from brilliant writers like the fantastic Nemo Martin. I also work with Marie on our Associate Artist program. This entails communicating with them, looking at funding applications, or supporting them with various in-kind resources available to us as a venue.
OT: What is your favorite part about being a Senior Producer?
FP: My favorite part is seeing artists develop. Now that Omnibus Theatre is four years old, we have some artists that we have known for three or four years and who have brought quite a few shows to us. It’s great to see how their work changes and improves. Developing that relationship over time is one of the most satisfying things. It is also exciting to introduce theatre to new audiences such as in the family theatre program. It’s just so exciting seeing a six-year-old experience live theatre for the first time and find it completely magical, it is a wonderful thing to see.
OT: What is the most challenging part about being a Senior Producer?
FP: Some roles are part time when they really should be full time to support our output, but his is not currently possible due a lack of regular guaranteed funding. I have some wonderful colleagues that I wish could be here more.
OT: What advice would you give young people who are pursuing a career in producing?
FP: I would suggest go and see as much theatre as possible. See everything and anything even if you think it won’t be your cup of tea. Also, be as familiar as possible with all the different roles of theatre. As a producer, you must oversee the entire creation of a show so know what a lighting designer does, how a composer works, all the different creatives involved in realizing a production.
OT: If you weren’t working as a producer, what would you be?
FP: I didn’t know I wanted to be a producer specifically, but I knew wanted to work in theatre since I was a young teenager. Then I graduated and was trying to get into theatre, so I joined Omnibus just after it opened. As Omnibus Theatre grew more, we needed someone to produce things, and so I did this more and more and luckily discovered I really liked it. But, if I was not producing theatre, maybe something with food? I think food and theatre have many similarities.
