Production Manager – 25/26 Season

Filament Theatre is seeking a Production Manager for their 25/26 season. Filament Theatre, on Chicago’s Northwest Side, has been creating innovative theater for young audiences since 2007. Filament’s mission is to create a more equitable society by celebrating and amplifying the perspectives and experiences of young people through the performing arts. Filament Theatre is a leader in creating and championing new and unconventional work for young people. An ideal candidate for this position will have experience with and an understanding of new work development, immersive theater, TYA, and/or community-influenced art making and shares in Filament’s management philosophy that People are more important than Art.

Position Duties and Expectations

SCHEDULE:

• Review and update any existing schedules
• In collaboration with the Artistic Director, create and communicate the production schedule to the production team including production meetings, design meetings, design checkpoints/deadlines, load-in / tech schedule, and strike schedule.
• Accountable for keeping the full production on schedule and notifying the production team of any schedule revisions.

FINANCIAL:

• Insure Filament’s production stays on budget by working with designers to keep all production elements on budget and creatively solve all technical and financial challenges;
• Using his/her/their best judgement and knowledge of the production to allocate and/or reallocate budgeted funds as needed.
• Collect all receipts and either issue expense reports or submit advance requests to the Managing Director for production team reimbursement.
• Maintain accurate and up to date records of production expenditures.
• Submit a final production budget vs actuals including all reimbursement receipts both in spreadsheet form and scanned as an addendum.

PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT:

• Hire, schedule and support technical staff (SM, TD, Carpenter, ME, Scenic Painter, Load-in crew, strike crew)
• Draft contracts for production team members
• Meet with the Artistic Director & Managing Director as scheduled.
• Check in and support all designers to maintain Filament’s cultural policies and mitigate interpersonal issues or any other production challenge. Inform Artistic Director & Managing Director immediately of any issue that may affect the production in a negative way.
• Support design team in making environmentally sustainable choices when possible. (referring to the ToolKit).
• Support Stage Management Team and cover in the event they become unavailable.
• Lead production meetings and be present at all technical rehearsals, previews, and strike to support the varying needs of the production.
• Supports safe, healthy, supported working conditions.
  Works with the Managing Director to update (as needed)
• Upholds high standards of safety, following OSHA and CDC guidelines while in Filament’s theater space (Communicating any safety concerns to Managing Director)
• Attend anti-adultism training alongside guest artists;

RUN OF SHOW / STRIKE

• Review all tech and performance reports and make sure the production has what it needs (For Example if SM writes that the production is running low on snow, PM is responsible for ordering more snow and delivering it to the production).
• Create and execute a tech and strike plan.
• Work with technical team and Filament’s staff to return Filament to its standard state after the production and make sure all tools, props, set pieces, lights, sound equipment, costumes and any other production assets are returned to their proper place.
• Educate designers and production team as to Filament’s policies, rules and regulations regarding space use, activity and cleanliness.
• Meet with Managing Director and other organizations renting Filament’s space to create a plan for for cohabitating productions.

Descriptions of 25/26 Season Productions: 

*Candidates who only have availability or interest in one or more productions but not the full season will still be considered.

Fee breakdown by project: $1,500 for FORTS (remount), $1,500 for RAIN (duplication), $2,000 for Farewell Opportunity (world premiere full production), potential for additional per-project fees based on availability and interest.

FORTS! Build Your Own Adventure!

Dates: September 14 – November 9 (load-in thru extended closing)

About Forts! Join families as we return for a remount of Filament Community’s favorite show.  Enter a world of play and creation as Filament Theatre transforms into a play-space for children and parents to build new worlds. Using found and recycled materials like cardboard boxes, sheets, clotheslines and more, build adventures of your own devising. With theatrical design elements working together to support creative play, families are swept away in the adventures of their own making! FORTS welcomes families to build and imagine together.

RAIN: for babies and their carers

Dates: September: pre-production trip to Australia, Mid December – Mid January: Build and 3 week run. Festival Presentation May 2025, National tour fall 2026

About RAIN: A north american reproduction of the Australian-based installation experience for the very very young. Co-produced in collaboration with Threshold, an Australian Theatre Company for the very young, Rain is an immersive multi-sensory relational experience. Created for 10 babies at a time 0-crawling and their carers, Audiences are invited to slow down, notice and wonder. RAIN is a mesmerising and intimate sensory experience for babies and their families in which they are invited to slow down, notice, and wonder. Both an installation space and a performance that honours the baby-caregiver relationship as sacred and precious, this participatory experience introduces tiny audience members to the generosity of rain—its sounds, its shapes, even its wetness. A trio of performers on cello, voice, and movement act as gentle guides in a brand-new world of surprise, delight, and opportunities for connection through sound, touch, and performance.

FAREWELL OPPORTUNITY

Written by Georgette Kelly, Directed by Julie Ritchey

Dates: Feb-March: rehearsals, April-May: performances

About: World premier production, 5 actors, interactive 45-60 minute play. Anticipated significant design needs in lighting, puppetry, and costumes. Description: In June 2018, Halley visits the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab and meets the Opportunity Mars rover. The two have something in common: a curious spirit and a shortened life-expectancy. Halley and the NASA scientist in charge of the Mars mission find themselves transformed by an unlikely friendship—with each other, and with a rolling robot millions of miles away. With poetic language and magical realism, Farewell Opportunity explores the question “How do you keep on roving when you—or someone you love—faces a dust storm that threatens to block out the sun?”