and Music

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contradiction – structure and freedom – think about how children grow: with structure that
allows their safety and promotes their exploration without harm.”
While pursuing our dream as artists, we often find it quite difficult to find employment in the
places we desire, not necessarily because we lack the hard and soft skills required for the job,
but because the competition is fierce and there are too many job seekers in quite a narrow job
market; a market which – at the moment – gets even narrower due to the current economic
crisis. A way out of this difficulty and a path that more and more artists choose to follow in
recent years is the formation of their own company.
Forming a company means forming a team. In the process of that formation there are several
factors to be taken into consideration in order to ensure that the team is built on a solid
foundation, which can guarantee its sustainability and high productivity.
Although they sound alike, teambuilding skills are quite distinct from teamwork skills. “Team
building focuses on the formation of groups, while teamwork concentrates on the function of
groups; both are vital for success.” (Ingram, n.d.) In order to explain in a clear way the stages
of the building of a team, we will use a fictional example of a music theatre company formation.
Team building begins with a clear decision by either the founder – who in the first stages of a
company usually undertakes the role of the “leader” – or the founders of the company “to
encourage or even to require team operation by the company’s members” (Mackin, 2007) in
order to realise the team’s common goal. This means that the group of people who agreed to
join this new company – actors, musicians, dancers, technicians – accept the proposal by the
company’s founder to work together as a team in order to produce and perform music theatre
for the public.
In this initial stage ground rules and procedures are essential to be determined and agreed by
the company's members, as well as the potential consequences for breaking those rules, in order
to establish an organisational “safety net” for the operation of the team. Ground rules are
behaviours that we expect of one another to encourage tact and diplomacy. Without rules, chaos
can impede progress; like city roads with no traffic lights. Examples of ground rules for a music
theatre company can include:
- Beginning and finishing rehearsals or organisational meetings on time
- Coming prepared for rehearsals (knowing their lines, the song lyrics, etc.)
- No smoking or drinking during rehearsals
- No talking simultaneously in meetings and listening to each other
- Treating everyone equally and with respect to each one’s points of view
- Asking questions in order to ensure understanding
After common goals, aims and objectives have been set, and ground rules and procedures have
been agreed upon by all team members, the company is ready to start functioning. According
to Mackin (2007) “teams have two major “sides” or functions: task and maintenance, or the
intellectual (thinking) and the people (feeling) sides. Both sides are equally important. The task
side requires planning, goal setting, analysis, review decision-making, and evaluation.” The
theatre director, the musical director, the choreographer and the set and costume designers
belong to the task forces of the company. “The maintenance side requires attention to how the
process is unfolding and how to involve participants.” The company’s administrator, the stage
manager and the performers are among the company’s maintenance forces.