Theater teachers: What media sources do you use to get show and product ideas for productions?

Question

I need to find professional journals, magazines, catalogs and web sites that contain ads and listings for products that go into producing a school musical. How do you get your set design ideas? How do you come up with choreography? Basically, what is the one-source shopping for this stuff? Is it through trade shows? Conferences?

I am NOT looking for a list of links that are the result of an uninformed Yahoo Search. I'd like real leads to real resources that real theater teachers use.

If I were interested in marketing DVDs that taught choreography for school musicals, where would an ad catch your eye, or how could I get your attention to consider such a product?

Answer 1

The main way I get that information is at an annual conference--Texas Educational Theatre Association. There's a huge vendor show, and it's a great place to check out new resources in person and talk to the experts who sell them.

I also look at ads in publications from EdTA and the magazine "Technical Theatre."

Gotta agree with poster above, though--our budgets are so tight that I do most everything myself on a shoestring. A product has to be pretty fantastic to justify spending any of my pittance of a budget on it.

Good luck to you! I DO think there's a market for what you're creating.

Answer 2

It's hard to answer your question because I don't know the particulars of what you want. I work for a public school, so I have to make due with what the department already has. I do a lot of minimalist sets! Beyond the local costume rental place I don't really use any "media".

I get set design ideas based of of my reading of the script, my budget, other productions I've seen, and ideas from the students in my tech class.

For choreography, usually I call on my years of dance training, enlist the help of a colleague who is VERY into dance, or from videos of past broadway productions. One could hire out, or, depending on how hands-on you are, let the kids do it themselves!