rehearsal fee?

[The2Ateam]

My daughter has been attending Saturday performing arts classes for a year now. The company hold a big show with three performances every October - this is our first. I ha e already paid £100 pounds for a costume& there is another I have to make/source myself. I can only attend one out of three shows as tickets are £25 each. Today they have sent me an invoice for £87. This is for a professional chaperone to look after my DD back stage and extra rehearsals in the run up to the show - should I be paying for this? The school are obviously profiting from the show my daughter is performing. Am I being tight?

No. I think they are taking the piss.

I'm glad you think so. I do to.

The worst part is that parents of pupils get no discount or even first dibs at show tickets. They just went online and I had to scramble to get them!

£100 for a costume? That's rather a lot - is it just one costume or several?

I've never had to pay for a chaperone, our ones are parent volunteers that have done all the official paperwork etc. I pay about £30 a leotard for DDs dance shows but parents of older children often pay more. Rehearsals normally have a nominal contribution £1 a session but this helps cover the hire of the theatre etc.

We are not in London, it's a dance and performing arts academy and the staff are mostly volunteers excluding a couple of the dance teachers.

Also £25 a ticket for a student dance show is extortionate, I paid less than that for Stomp and Matilda at the West End

Yes, £100 is for one costume. I've got to make the other one. £57 for chaperones for three shows & £35 for rehearsals and chaperones who apparently need to attend rehearsals.

That's ludicrous. They do need chaperones, but chaperones do not earn that much! I would seriously question this.

Is it one of the big franchises? I teach school drama and always recommend our local independent youth theatre to anyone who asks because I think the likes of PQA/Stagecoach/My Stage School can be massive rip offs.

It's an independent one with a good with a management company and full time courses also. They have a good reputation and manage some famous people, but this show totally feels like a rip off, and especially that they will be profiting from it.

I've never heard of hiring chaperones for a 'school' performance. Either the teachers do it (drama), or the parents (dancing). Who are the chaperones?

This is what they say:

"Theatre law stipulates that children must be looked after backstage by a chaperone who is trained and licenced. With careful planning of the show to eliminate quick-changes, we are pleased to announce that we will be using external chaperones again for the show. This means that you get to come along and enjoy the show without worrying about anything that may be going on backstage! There will be a charge per performer for supervision throughout the rehearsals and shows, regardless of age. The chaperones will be at every big run through and dress run to make sure they know the show and the children inside out and they will cater to all of their back-stage needs.

The fee for this will be £55.00 per child (£0.92p per hour!) and we will be using professionally trained and licenced chaperones to look after the children during all big rehearsals at the studios, the week at the theatre and for the shows...".

That's ludicrous! I have a chaperone license - the "training" consisted of reading the info from th county council! At the youth theatre my kids attend, they use parents (including me) but there are always enough to ensure that parents can also watch one of the performances.

I've chaperoned, but only in actual professional shows. Theatre law does state that, but only in productions where performers are being paid.

You're a bit stuck though - your options are pay up or pull your DD out, which, presumably, would upset her.

Yes, DD would be upset if she couldn't perform in the show, so I won't pull her out - this year.

I used to get paid £35 per performance to chaperone professionally for Jo Hawes tours. (For dds dance school I did it for free)

Costumes have to be paid for but £100 is a lot for one outfit & rehearsal fees for extra shoes are standard but I think what you are paying seems excessive.

Chaperones are required in shows where people are paying to see the children, not just those where the children are being paid. Don't know why they're hiring their chaperones though, most schools have a group of parents with licenses.

Have they hired a theatre for a few days? That will be where a lot of the money is going, along with the ticket sale money. Most schools don't make a lot of money on their shows. Sounds like it's at the expensive end of the scale but rehearsal and costume fees are fairly standard.

I act as a chaperone for the dance school shows for a couple of nights - I do have a CRB/DRB from another source but the dance school will sort it if necessary. Is the show only on for one performance? How many costume changes do they have?!

The first time I chaperoned, I spent a lot of time opening snacks and standing outside toilet cubicle doors tbh. If it is only one performance I can see that the parents wouldn't want to miss out - the ones I do run for a few days so I can see a performance myself.

It's astounding how much it varies. I pay £45 per term for my DTDs' youth theatre (they're 10) and generally £6 for their performances, which are sometimes at a local school or college and sometimes at one of the two theatres in town. The staff at the youth theatre work their socks off - summer term performance was at a local school with lovely drama facilities. Tech/dress rehearsal the night before the show and then performance the following day with final run through just before. No extra charge for rehearsals outside of normal sessions. No charge for costumes, though we did get most of it ourselves. Chaperones were parent volunteers - all DBS checked though I also have the license for other reasons. The productions are very good. The kids love it. Ok, so they don't have an agency but several of the older kids are NYT/NYMT and have appeared in professional productions.

Are the youth theatres council subsidised or run by a subsidised professional theatre as part of their education commitment.

I had a colleague who taught for both stagecoach & youth theatre. She was paid the same rate for both but YT was cheaper because it was heavily subsidised.

AFAIK, youth theatres can apply for funding from the NAYT. As a school drama teacher, I've sat through an awful lot of youth theatre performances (I like to watch my students in out-of-school stuff) and there is no obvious link between how much it costs them and how good the performances are. Perhaps I'm lucky that my cheap local youth theatre is so good!

£87 per child???? How many children are in the show? Someone's making a tidy profit here.
It would irritate me the way they've tried to dress it up as being a benefit/favour they're doing you. "This means that you can enjoy the show without worrying." It's never occurred to me to worry about what was happening backstage in any of the many many shows my kids have performed in.

"The worst part is that parents of pupils get no discount or even first dibs at show tickets." This is because they know parents, grandparents and relatives are pretty much the entire audience. No one's going to pay to see a kids dance show unless they are either a massive dance fan or a relative, unless there's a well-known lead or something similar.
Great money-spinner, though, by the sound of it.

Some local councils and theatres are now really hot on the chaperone thing, and absolutely insist on licenced chaperones. They won't accept parent helpers with CRB/DBS clearance any more, but will allow parent helpers with chaperone licences. Also, if there are any children in the performances who have performance licences, then by law they would have to have a chaperone with a licence anyway.

The only reason I can think of for them using paid professional chaperones, is that they never get enough parent chaperone volunteers.

Bit of a cheek for them to suddenly bill you for it though, it should be included in the regular termly fees and then nobody would have sudden extra costs.

When I was involved in ice skating initially there were no chaperones, everyone adults and children in shared changing rooms

Within a year or two it had got much stricter and adults had to have a separate room, and chaperones were used for dress rehearsal and performances. Sometimes chaperones have been parents/coaches, sometimes professionals from the council

Chaperones are important and necessary but £87 per child to pay for them is ridiculous!

Have they asked for parent chaperones though?

I wonder if they've asked and not enough have come forward so they're now paying for some professional ones.
I chaperone and am quite frequently asked to help for performances my dc aren't in because not enough parents are chaperoned trained-which is a legal requirement. I do when I can, but when you're talking about 100 children performing (you need 1 chaperone per 12 children) I do find it irritating that they can't get 1 parent in 10 to do the 2 evening short training.

Councils are hotting up on checking out chaperones and the legal arrangements. I've been checked up on a few times recently. And they do pick up on everything and have the right to close the performance down with immediate effect if the legalities are not observed. Having said that they don't usually-they will usually find a way round if they can. However if your school was inspected last year and got a bad inspection, they may be under that threat-and they will act on it if they find you're still operating illegally. So if they can't get enough people to chaperone they may feel that charging a) is their only option to operate legally, b) may push some parents into getting training for next year.