The Stage

Producing a response

Published Monday 21 December 2009 at 15:50

After Julius Green’s assertion that the Birkbeck creative producers MA was the only course of its type in the UK, I and my cohort at Birkbeck were amused at the number of correspondents who subsequently wrote to this paper to prove otherwise.

I’m sure there are many fine courses that include elements of producing, but as a fellow student commented, Birkbeck was the only producing course any of us had heard about. I speak as a writer who fell into producing as a result of establishing the Maverick Theatre company in Birmingham in 1994 and spent many fruitless years looking for training and advice. Apart from the excellent SOLT new producers workshop, the only help I received was through these pages.

I would like to know of any courses available for producers as I’m currently arranging with Maverick another Introduction to Creative Producing workshop after the hugely successful first workshop at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane last month. The one day, not for profit workshops are designed to present an overview of the industry and are a starting point for further producer training, and the sort of general course that would have saved me many years of hard knocks.

Please send details to nick@nicholashennegan.com. By the way, we all get our MA results this month and I can report my first post MA production is a comedy drama called Hancock’s Finest Hour, starring Paul Henry and touring the UK next spring before a London run in the autumn. Then we’ll all get to see how useful the course was.

Nick Hennegan

Creative Producer

Nicholas Hennegan Limited

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