Meet Our Team: Management, Production and Stage

Coordinating a production is no easy task. Just scratching the top of the list there is scheduling, budget management, meetings, rehearsal reports, show reports, paper work like you wouldn’t believe, stage blocking, and knowing and understanding each area of a theatrical production. 

It takes a team of highly organized and dedicated individuals to effectively manage a show.

For the Ensemble Project, we call them Team Eli. Eli Funk has untaken the enormous task of Production Manager, and Eli Moores is rocking the script as Stage Manager.

Production Manager, Eli Funk, and Stage Manager, Eli Moores. Photograph by Kirstin Shale. 

Eli Funk and his schedule. Photograph by Kirstin Shale 

A Production Manager is responsible for realizing the visions of the producer and director (and in our case, the class) within the constrains of technical possibility and budget.

Funk is an English major drama concentration, with an extended minor in theatre and, as of last week, has finished his final course and is set for graduation. He’s been on stage, off stage, and around the stage, but this is his first time as Production Manager. His biggest challenge? Everything.

“The whole job, none if it is easy…my process is to throw dates at a wall and hope something sticks.”

Funk is our master scheduler, communicator, and keeper of the funds.

Eli Moores spikes the stage floor. Photograph by Kirstin Shale. 

Everything that goes on in a rehearsal, this man knows. His job is to make sure that the show they are creating in rehearsal, is the same show the designers are designing for. 

Moores is working on a sociology major with a minor in theatre and this his is first time Stage Managing a production, which is a new challenge on its own. He also finds challenge in working in a space away from the main theatre, away from the comforts of home. 


His words of advice:

"Theatre will teach you many useful skills, if not it will teach you how to tie knots or fold paper origami."

-JI Milliken