It's August. If you are a spring producer, the show has been struck for months and you know exactly what this stretch of the calendar feels like, even if nobody has ever handed you a word for it. I call it load-out syndrome. Still lit, nothing running. The power is on, the lights are up, and there is no show. You are technically working. You are answering things. But the engine that ran you from January through the gates is idling, and some part of you has not fully…
Read MoreYou ran the team debrief. You sat in the room while the department heads walked through what held and what broke. You captured the near-misses. You wrote down the protocols worth keeping. You did the organizational work, and you did it well. There's one debrief you didn't run.The one where you're the only person in the…
Read MoreThirty-six seasons is a long time to do anything. It is long enough to see every kind of festival leader succeed and fail. Long enough to watch brilliant operators burn out in…
Read MoreIt is 2am -- or it is 5am, which is the same thing by that point in the production week. Something has changed. Not the thing you planned for. The other thing. The one that wasn't in any of the scenarios you mapped before the event opened. Your operations director is looking at…
Read MoreYou approved the $40,000 staging upgrade without a second thought. You signed the lighting package. You didn't blink at the hospitality rider that costs more than some people's annual salary. But when it came time to invest in yourself - - in your own development as the person who makes every…
Read MoreIt was a Sunday. Main stage. Ninety minutes to showtime. And the headliner's representative just told us the beloved closing artist that fans had been waiting for all day wasn't coming. Details were a bit sketchy…
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