New Course for Stage Managers Puts Collaboration Center Stage

Barbara Butts is best known for being a beacon behind the scenes.

The associate professor of instruction in theatre at the School of Communication is a guide and mentor to up-and-coming student stage and production managers in the department. With professional experience at Chicago’s Lookingglass and Goodman Theatres among others shaping her expertise, Butts has spent nearly three decades at Northwestern creating curricular and experiential pathways for changemaking theatre majors whose passions for leadership reside decidedly offstage.

And good leadership, as she can tell you, is highly collaborative.

Last spring, Butts taught the second iteration of “Theatre 390: Arts Leadership & Innovation Collaboration,” a course offered jointly with the Theatre School at DePaul University.  

“My guiding question when developing this class was, ‘What could research universities like Northwestern and DePaul do to prepare student leaders to meet the moment?’” Butts says. “And how could we help them learn to prepare the industry to meet the needs of leaders like them after they graduate?”

Theatrical productions are inherently collaborative and highly complex, regardless of scale, and have gotten more so in recent years as the industry is reimagining outdated business models and creative decisions. Butts developed the course so her students knew just what it was like to research, design, and asses accessible, sustainable, and professional solutions to the modern problems theatres face.

Butts is teaching alongside Diane Claussen, associate professor of theatre studies and head of the theatre management program at DePaul and a former managing director at the Virginia Wadsworth Wirtz Center for the Performing Arts. The partnership works, Butts says, because they share educational values, are working within the theatre management field, and understand the challenges that students face when entering the industry.

“Northwestern’s (major in) theatre and DePaul’s BFA programs have different strengths, but we realized the benefits of combining our students,” Butts says, “and I’ve witnessed our students become agile at understanding how to navigate their program and student theatre commitments while working outside of their comfort zone with industry professionals.”

At the beginning of each quarter students are asked to evaluate their own creative spaces and practices. They research other universities to support their evaluations’ findings and then use the framework they build from that process to “consult” for professional theatre companies, reimagining labor and new works selection practices.

Their final project is a comprehensive presentation to present their findings to the companies.

Ultimately, the course helps students to expand their network, identify local thought leaders they admire, and create welcoming and successful theatre models in their future work. Butts knows it’s unique and is eager to see how many more students this course helps shape into the leaders and managers the professional theatre industry needs to thrive again.