Running Theaters: Best Practics for Leaders and Managers »

Duncan M. Webb is the founder and president of Webb Management Services, a management consulting firm serving the arts and cultural industries, and a professor of NYU's graduate program in Performing Arts Administration. He lives in New York City.

For the past 15 years, Webb (performing arts administration, New York U.) has been an arts management consultant to people who build and operate theaters. He presents a practical guide to contemporary theater management, based on interviews with 59 facility managers from the U.S. and Canada. Coverage includes the theater manager's job, facility operations, programming theaters, audience development, financial management, fundraising, facility development, strategic planning, staff and volunteer management, board development, education and performing arts facilities, community development, historic theaters, campus theaters, and broad trends in the field. For students of theater management and arts administration, performing arts facility staff and volunteers, and others involved in the development and operation of theaters. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Library Journal

Theater management consultant Webb lists three goals of this book: to provide a much-needed guide on facility management, to help readers understand how theaters succeed on an operating basis, and to show how facility managers respond to the complexity and shifting pressures of their jobs. Addressing those who are paid theater employees as well as volunteers, supporters, and students of theater management, he makes two pressing issues very clear. First, theater management today is not simply running a building, and second, every theater is unique, so that no two facilities run the same way. With that in mind, Webb covers many aspects of theater operations, from management and facility operations to programming, audience development, financial management, strategic planning, and issues of staff, volunteers, and boards, plus education and community development. Chapters include definitions of terms that are complemented by telling excerpts from more than 70 interviews with professional facility managers from the United States and Canada. This helpful volume provides a strong dose of real-life experience and much food for thought and discussion. Highly recommended for all theater collections.-Laura A. Ewald, Murray State Univ. Lib., KY Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.