Theatre & Stage Production Budgets: Rehearsal Weeks, Cast & Crew Costs, Royalties, Seat Pricing Zones, Box-Office Break-Even & Touring Deals

What you'll build

What you will be able to do

Each lab ends with a concrete result that you build yourself and the checker confirms, cell by cell.

• Cost the one-off spending that gets a new play to opening night, add a contingency, and see how much each planned performance has to earn back.
• Cost every role from different rehearsal and performance fees, add fictional on-costs, total the whole company in one formula and budget per diems for the tour.
• Convert every running cost to a weekly amount, whether it is billed per week, per performance or per month, and add them up to the weekly nut the box office must cover.
• Pay a fictional royalty of 8% of the gross with a weekly minimum, flag the weeks where the minimum applies, see what is left after the nut and find the gross that breaks even.
• Price a seating plan by zone, take out the seats that are never sold, compute the maximum gross per performance with SUMPRODUCT and find the true average price of a full house.
• Measure the share of seats sold, the pooled average ticket price, the tickets each performance must sell to cover the nut and royalty, and how many weeks it takes to pay back the production budget.
• Forecast the gross at five touring venues, value three fictional kinds of deal at each one and let a formula name the deal that pays the company most.
• Compare the actual box office with the budget, track how much of the production budget has been recouped, estimate the weeks still needed and chart budget against actuals to decide whether to extend the run.