Two kinds of money, and only one of them responds to anything
Split every line into money spent once and money spent again. Lumber, cloth, paint, rights, rehearsal space and the poster print run are spent once and are gone before the house opens. Breakaway glass, food on the props table, laundry, batteries and whoever stands in the lobby are spent again for every performance.
On a typical amateur or small professional show the first group is eighty to ninety-five per cent of the total. That single ratio decides most of the arguments a production has. It is why cancelling a performance saves almost nothing, why adding one is nearly free, and why the difference between a four-performance run and an eight-performance run is not double the cost.
The average is the wrong number for every decision
Take a show with $4,400 fixed and $150 a performance. Over eight performances that is $5,600, or $700 each. The $700 figure describes the past accurately and predicts nothing. If somebody asks what a ninth performance costs, the answer is $150. If a performance is cancelled, the saving is $150. If you cut the run from eight to six, you do not save $1,400, you save $300 and you push the cost of each surviving performance from $700 to $883.
This is the arithmetic that makes people extend runs and it is also the arithmetic that catches people who extend them thoughtlessly. The marginal performance costs $150 in materials, and whatever a venue, a crew and an audience actually cost you, which is why the running line has to be honest rather than tidy.
Contingency belongs on the build, not the run
Running costs are known to the dollar by the time you are spending them — you have bought the batteries before, you know what the laundry costs. Build costs are estimates made months out against quantities that move. The contingency on this page applies only to the build lines for that reason.
Ten per cent is a starting figure and it is low for a show doing anything it has not done before. A set with a moving element, a costume plot with period tailoring, or any effect that has to work eight times in a row all belong nearer twenty. The honest test is whether you have built this thing before.
What the sheet leaves alone
It does not estimate what your licensor charges, because that is a contract between you and them and it varies by title, by house size, by ticket price and by whether the run is amateur. It does not estimate what anybody is paid or under what terms. Put in the figures you have actually been quoted or have actually agreed; the value of this page is in the shape of the total, not in the numbers it does not know.
Questions people ask
What does one performance of a show actually cost?
Two different numbers, and confusing them causes most budget arguments. The average cost is the run total divided by the number of performances, which is useful for setting a ticket price and useless for deciding whether to add a night. The marginal cost is the running spend alone — consumables, laundry, front of house — because the set, the costumes and the rights are already paid. On most shows the marginal cost is a small fraction of the average, often under a quarter of it.
How much contingency should a production budget carry?
Ten per cent on the build spend is a common starting point and it is thin for anything new. Raise it when the set has a moving element, when the costumes involve tailoring rather than pulling from stock, when an effect has to repeat reliably, or when you are working with a supplier or a space for the first time. Running costs need much less contingency because by the time you are spending them you know what they are.
Does extending a run save money per performance?
It lowers the average cost of a performance, because the same fixed spend is spread over more of them, and it does that quickly at first and then slowly. Going from four performances to eight can nearly halve the average; going from eight to twelve moves it far less. What extending does not do is make the show cheaper overall — each extra performance adds its running cost, plus whatever the venue, the crew and the audience actually cost, which are the items most likely to be missing from a first draft of the running line.
Where do performance rights and royalties belong in the budget?
As a build line if you are quoted a flat fee for the run, and as a running line if you are charged per performance. Which of those applies, and what the figure is, comes only from your licensor — it depends on the title, the house, the ticket price and the kind of production. Nothing on this page estimates it, and a rate somebody quoted for another show is not evidence about yours.
How do I work out what a ticket has to be worth?
Divide the run total by the paid attendance you actually expect across the whole run, not by the capacity. That gives the cost each attending person carries, and it is usually a sobering number on a short run because the fixed spend has nowhere to hide. It is the starting point rather than the answer, because ticket income is not the only income and not every seat is sold at the same price — the box office break-even calculator handles the mix.