production hierarchy — The Grunt

On your first day at a corporate job they probably gave you an organizational chart. It had boxes and lines and everyone's name and title and you could see exactly who reported to whom and how information was supposed to flow through the organization. I've never had a job that came with an org chart. I've never even heard of anyone in this industry who got an org chart. What you get instead is a call sheet, which as we discussed Wednesday tells you some of this if you know how to read it, and the rest of it you have to figure out in real time, in a building, while other things are happening.

Since nobody handed me a chart when I started, let me hand you one now.

**The Producer.**

The producer is the person or entity responsible for the show existing at all — they hold the money and the vision and the relationships with the venue and the artist, and they are ultimately responsible for all of it. On a large festival this is a whole organization. On a smaller show it might be one person who is also doing their own advance work, driving their own rental truck, and texting the artist's manager from the parking lot at load-in. Producers range, in my experience, from people who are genuinely brilliant at the big picture and smart enough to hire people who handle everything else, to people who are in slightly over their heads and compensating with enthusiasm. Both types can produce a good show. The first type produces it with considerably less drama.

**The Production Manager.**

The PM is the person I care about most on any given call, and if you're coming up in this industry, they should be the person you care about most too. The production manager translates the producer's vision into logistics — they do the advance, they build the schedule, they manage the budget, they coordinate between departments, they are the single point of contact for everything that needs to be coordinated. A great PM is like a very calm person doing a great deal of math in public. A bad PM is like watching someone try to juggle with one hand while putting out a fire with the other, which is entertaining to observe and terrible to work under.

The PM is not the person you go to with every problem. The PM is the person you go to when the problem cannot be solved at any other level. Before you go to the PM, you talk to your department head.

**The Department Heads.**

Every department on a production has a head: a Lighting Director or Head Electrician, an Audio Engineer or FOH Engineer, a Head Carpenter or Technical Director, a Head Rigger, a Video Director, a Stage Manager. These are the people responsible for their respective domains — for the work their crews do, for the gear their departments use, for the execution of their part of the production. Department heads report to the PM and manage their crews. They are where most of the real decision-making lives on a day-to-day load-in call.

When something goes wrong in a department, the department head knows about it first and handles it first. If they can't handle it, it goes to the PM. This chain exists for a reason. Short-circuiting it — going directly to the PM about something your department head should handle, or going to the producer about something the PM should handle — is how you mark yourself as someone who doesn't understand the chain, which is not the impression you want to make in the first hour of a call.

**The Keys.**

One level below department heads are the "keys" — the key positions within a department. The A2 in audio (the person who handles stage monitors and mic coordination while the A1 runs FOH). The Best Boy in lighting (the second-in-command to the Gaffer or Head Electrician, handling crew and equipment coordination). The Key Grip. The spot callers and follow spot operators. These are the people who make departments run — experienced workers who don't need to be told what to do next and who often effectively supervise the other crew without having the title of department head.

If you are coming up and you are trying to get better, make friends with the keys. Watch them. Ask them questions between calls when they have a minute and are clearly not in the middle of something. The keys know where all the knowledge lives.

**The Crew.**

Everyone else. The stagehands, the loaders, the run-of-show crew, the day players who got called for a specific skill on a specific call. The crew is where the physical work gets done — things get moved, hung, plugged in, taped, built, struck. Good crew shows up on time, does the work, asks questions when they don't know something, and stays in their lane while also being ready to do whatever needs doing when something unexpected comes up. Good crew is worth more than good equipment, and if that sounds like an exaggeration, you haven't been on a call where someone sent you great gear and terrible people to run it.

**The Artist and Their Team.**

The artist — the performer, the act, the band, whoever is actually doing the thing the audience came to see — exists somewhat adjacent to this structure. They usually have a tour manager who interfaces with the production manager, a technical director or production coordinator who interfaces with the department heads, and depending on the scale of the operation, various rider requirements and preferences that need to be accommodated within the production's logistical reality. The relationship between the touring team and the production team is its own whole thing that I will give a full post to eventually, because it deserves one.

**The Stage Manager.**

I've saved this one for last because the stage manager's position on the org chart depends enormously on the type of production, and because I have strong opinions about the stage manager's value that I want to express without accidentally burying them. In theater, the SM is the production's operational nerve center during the show itself — they call every cue, they are in communication with every department, they run the world. In live events and festivals, the role is more variable. Sometimes the PM also serves as the running SM. Sometimes there's a dedicated stage manager who runs the show from the wings while the PM handles logistics. Sometimes the structure is so loose that nobody has the title and the job gets distributed.

Wherever you find them, the stage manager or the person doing that job is the person who knows where everything is supposed to happen and when. In a crisis, they are the calmest person in the building. If they are not the calmest person in the building, that is important information about how the rest of the show is going to go.

Nobody will give you this chart. Now you have it. Get in there.

— Dots

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*Next week we zoom in on rigging — what it actually is, why it matters, and why the person holding the rope has more in common with a structural engineer than you might think.*

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*THE GRUNT is written by Dottie M. Soldati (they/them). Find them at soldati.rocks.*