The Art of Making It Look Easy
Our season announcement is always one of my favorite events of the year. We finally share months of hard work and showcase the roadmap of the year ahead. However, like any good show, the event fails to capture what happens behind the scenes to pull it together.
I often get asked how we select shows. After now pulling together four seasons for QCT, my honest answer is still “I don’t know.” Because each time it has been wildly different. But I wanted to pull back the curtain a little on how we put together our 2026 season.
Planning started in March with Brendan, Ethan, and me. (Before Ethan was even on site as our new Artistic Director.) There’s an ongoing list of shows that live in our heads and are buried on various spreadsheets of things we would like to see in the future. We are limited in our show selection by what is available for licensing. Brand new titles and anything that is on a national tour, regardless of when the work was originally produced, are often not available. (For example, COME FROM AWAY originally opened on Broadway in 2017 and just finished its national tour, so it is finally available for us to license in 2026.) Licensing houses will also look at locations so as not to have two theatres in the same area perform the title at the same time. And some work is restricted to certain types of organizations. On top of that, we have our own internal “rules” about how many years before we repeat a title, both from our stage and from other area theatres. And then we have to look at whether we have the resources to pull a title off. With each of those, the list of options gets shorter and shorter.
Ethan, Brendan, and I will look at our goals, both artistically and administratively, and think about what titles might help us reach those goals. This year, we asked the question, “Why this show this year?” The list narrows down, and then we start putting the puzzle together. We started with a couple of titles that we were pretty sure of and started filling in. We start to drill into calendars and budgets, still at the top level. In addition to working on the show budgets, I am usually working on our overall organizational budget, so we know how shows will impact the overall bottom line.
Through this process, we found that some shows would work and some wouldn’t. As we swapped different titles into the puzzle, we looked to make sure we were covering a wide range of story types and volunteer opportunities. (This show is male heavy, this one provides opportunity for high school students, this show leans on the comedy, this show is going to be tech heavy so we shouldn’t do another tech heavy show right before or after it, etc, etc) Unfortunately, it is rarely swapping one for one and instead when one shows changes it cause an avalanche of half the season changing with it as we try to check certain boxes.
There’s a lot of convening, having conversations all together and individually with various members of the tech team, breaking to read scripts and putting tentative budgets together, reconvening, rinse, and repeat. After we have a tentative lineup, we meet again (more formally) with Lorne, Harrison, and Jayden, so they can break apart our best laid plans and tell us they need more time for this show or more money for that one. We make changes and talk some more.
This year, as we got closer to having the mainstage season together, we also started talking about adding additional programming. We had three goals at the beginning of the planning process: more plays, using the black box space, and newer works. It has been a struggle to find out where these fit into the calendar and how we have the resources to produce them.
As 2025 progressed, we were able to have more conversations about how to make the black box space functional. As season planning progressed, we also came up with a plan for how we could pull resources in to add the additional programming. This caused us to once again go back to budgets and calendars and rework things again to try to make it fit. We are looking at ticket prices and tentative class programming and utility costs to try to make it all work. Eventually, the rest of the staff joined in to offer feedback from their departments.
After we have things relatively set, our budget goes to the board for approval, and we move forward with signing licensing agreements. And while it’s a huge accomplishment, we still have a lot to do before reaching the finish line. Schedules are filled in more with tech dates and marketing dates and box office dates. We work on designing logos and season ticket packages. We start talking about top-level marketing plans and production needs, and line up anything that we need to. We start reaching out to our partners to talk about trade agreements and sponsorships.
I think there is a misconception that we finalize things in the summer and wait until fall to announce because we like holding on to the secret. And while it is fun to build anticipation, in reality, we just need the time to get the work done. Prior to getting board approval to move forward, we spend about 4 months planning to a point where we feel confident in a budget. After they sign off, we spend two months trying to pull details together before we are ready to share.
As we dig in, things change, and it takes time for us to have the answers to the questions we know people are going to have. Production dates, audition dates, when we are posting audition information, where classes fit in, when tickets are ready to go on sale, etc, etc. This year, we were finalizing some dates even the week before the announcement (and honestly, there are still a few questions that we are working to answer, even now, a few weeks after our announcement).
But by our season announcement, we’ve solved countless problems, and we have a beautifully packaged lineup to share (just barely). Hopefully, we’ve pulled everything together and made it look easy.