This A-to-Z guide on staging theater musicals and plays, by six-time Tony-award-winning producer and writer Stewart F. Lane, focuses on the practicalities of production and is aimed at educators and arts aficionados who want to light up their community’s marquis.

Lane has produced such storied Broadway musicals as La Cage Aux Folles, Woman of the Year, and Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder. Here, he expertly discusses topics such as budgeting, fundraising and casting. Theater is a “people oriented” collaborative process, he writes, noting that a show’s success rests on both its “stars” and backstage talent, including the producer, director, stage manager, and those in charge of the set, lighting, sound, and costumes. Some, he adds, will be wearing double hats, and everyone needs to be prepared to pitch in and improvise when things don’t go as planned.

Lane makes clear that shows aren’t just about standing ovations. Well-staged productions of plays like Howard Sackler’s The Great White Hope, which concerns personal freedom, and Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage, with its “antiwar message”— can raise awareness in a community. For groups that want to stage original work, a nuts-and-bolts chapter on playwriting is provided.

Lane covers the nuances of licensing and streaming fees and also provides detailed schedules laying out production deadlines from one year in advance to opening night. Well-focused chapters cover set design, lighting, sound, costuming, and rehearsals. On this latter topic, the author stresses that prior to selecting the show, the production team should consider what singers, actors, dancers are available for the lead roles. When talent is in short supply, Lane advises scaling back or divvying up the demanding parts so no one voice or pair of toes is overwhelmed.

All topics are clearly delineated, with the added advantage of Lane’s lively vignettes from his long career on- and off-Broadway to illustrate.

Concise and comprehensive, this handbook is a must-have guide for ensuring that the show, indeed, goes on.

Also available as an ebook.