Expert: Wanda Reinholdt - 11/14/2007

Question
My high school acting troupe has a continued history of excellence. However, we still have one small quarrel. All of my theatre friends and I believe that we are good enough to do les mis for our spring musical. We have the necessary skill and personel, but our theatre director doesn't show any sign that he will choose it. We thought we had proved that we were good enough when we presented "All shook up" with almost flawless execution, but he still won't say anything about les mis. What else can we do to prove that we, as a theatre troupe, are good (or great) enough to do Les Miserables? I would really appreciate your input.

Answer
Hi Etrus...Thanks for writing.  I appreciate (and I am sure that your director does as well) that you and your friends want to do Les Mis.  It is a wonderful musical.  

But there may be some very good reasons why your director is not going where you want him to go.

Have you considered that he might need to prepare for the year ahead of time?  Most directors for high school have to submit a budget and/or plan for the year ahead of the year.  It just might not be possible for him to automatically approve something that you want.  

And the other thing is that most directors have accountability.  They have other people to answer to.  And so they have someone else to sell their ideas to.  So when they do up their plan,  it goes through someone else.  And only upon approval can they move ahead.  

They other thing that you might want to consider is that your director may have the actors to do Les Mis but he might not have the budget or the production crew or resources to pull it off.  When a director plans, they look at all the resources at their finger tips to figure out whether or not they should move ahead.  

So I encourage you to talk with him and ask him if it is possible and be open to hearing his reasons for it not being possible.  You can also ask him what kind of process he needs to go through to get approval to do a show or if he even thinks that Les Mis is possible.  You might be surprised about what you learn.  

I am sure that is not what you wanted to hear.  I'm sure that you are good enough but that might not be the issue at all.  

It's something to consider...

Wanda