Music Victims

How to cheaply but efficiently put on "The Sound of Music"?

A small community theatre that I'm working with has all the talent they need to put on Sound of Music, it's the funds that they're lacking. So. I need help figuring out how to cheaply do the sets, costumes, and props? Any fundraising suggestions would also be great!

Public Comments

1. You can probably find everything you need at a thrift store. There are all kind of clothes I find that are out of style. You might find some stuff that you can use as costumes for only a few dollars a piece. Furniture and other stuff is really cheap, also.
2. Can you get a local business to donate something of value and then hold a raffle?
3. In my experience you can get a lot of stuff donated by local theater companies. If there is a smaller regional theater in your area, you might try calling and inquiring if they have any costume bits or set pieces that they might either lend you or rent for a small fee. This could be too expensive but sometimes they will do it for a mention in the program. Likewise, you can solicit donations of pieces from community businesses by giving them program ads or a mention in the thank yous. This is often less expensive than renting stuff. If you get enough businesses to go in that you can save all the set money, you might want to put that money into a better program for your sponsors. With the Sound of Music, since there are a lot of kids in the show, parents are often willing to help out and provide costumes for their children. Maybe one of the parents is good at sewing and can put together the curtain costumes or the sailor suits for the kids. Or sometimes parents will go to thrift stores themselves and buy clothes. You could ask your cast to provide what they can for the show. Bridal shops are great places to get cheap gowns for the party scene- you can buy the floor models from last season often for as little as $20 or $30. Many women may want to buy their own dress and keep it after the show. You can make nun veils with cheap black and white fabric and ask all the nuns to provide their own black dresses, etc. The set for Sound of Music can also be minimal. You need a table and chairs for the courtyard at the Captain's House, and a desk and chair for the convent. Other than that, a lot can be done with imagination and inventive staging. You can stage the wedding using the aisles in the audience and the ceremony in front of your curtain, and people are so thrilled to see a wedding dress (again, bridal stores or possibly from a cast member or thrift store) right in front of them that they don't notice you don't have a big fancy church. Suggestions for fundraising would be to put the money you DO have into a nice program so that people will want program space and give you lots of donations. Other than that, there are the usual (cheesecake sales, bake sales, car washes, chocolate bars....) and the more inventive (sending your kids cast into malls and performing and then asking for donations) but I have found program space and ads to be very useful. Parental assistance and cast assistance is also a good tool. If you get everybody excited about providing costumes because they get to pick their own, it's not always bad. As a last ditch effort you can try to make money off advance ticket sales. When kids are in the cast, their families and friends often buy large numbers of tickets. You could charge people more for "meet and greet tickets" to have the cast meet with them before or after the show and sing or shake hands, too. Another thing some groups do to sell more tickets is to double cast the show so that more families will want to come (because more kids are involved). Probably even the kids who are IN the show will buy tickets to see the friends they made during rehearsals. It's a bit insidious, but it works like a charm to sell tickets. The last thing I have seen some community groups do is to run two productions of whatever show (in this case Sound of Music) at the same time, and to have one cast be entirely children. You can charge the kids a production fee of between $100 and $300 and then they will be eligible for larger roles like Maria, Captain, Max, Elsa, and Mother Abbess. The kids who do the Youth Show can even get a ticket to the adult production as part of the "tuition". You use all the same sets and have the kids provide their own costumes. You don't have to provide any comp tickets for these shows and can make a lot more money. Anyway, that's what a lot of theaters are doing now to make extra money to fund shows during the recession. Best of luck to you and your theater company!