Director of Productions and Programs
Organization: Live Arts, Charlottesville, VA
About Live Arts
Founded in 1990, Live Arts’ mission is to forge theater and community. Located in Charlottesville, Virginia, on the historic Downtown Mall, we are the anchor tenant in a four-story contemporary non-profit arts center, producing a compelling season of mainstage plays, musicals, new works, and events, together with the nearly 1,000 volunteers and artists who bring the building to life.
We believe that theater-making is a civic engine; here, we practice the humanity, artistry, collaboration, criticality, and dynamism that empower us to be more engaged community members. How and what we make reflects a community-building process, and ours is stylish, creative, rich in imagination, collaborative, and aware.
We are proud to be a community theater, in that order.
Staff at Live Arts value integrity, inclusivity, and learning. We are passionate ambassadors for theater that challenges, entertains, and broadens perspectives. We make art that asks questions and we are inquiry-driven, too. We believe in human contact, intimacy, and dignity. We are interdisciplinarians who take accountability, respect agency, and share labor.
We believe in access and a volunteer-driven civic arts culture across Charlottesville. In honor of this, staff shares responsibility for volunteer retention, recruitment, welcome, and coordination appropriate to their work. To demonstrate and support our human-powered systems, staff attend required productions and institutional events; make introductions; support fundraising; build networks of contribution; demonstrate values in line with our organizational commitment to equity, belonging, and respect for diversity; and serve as public ambassadors. We meaningfully use data and feedback from across our community.
We make extraordinary things. We make sure people want to be here. We make more possible.
General Role Description
The Director of Productions and Programs (DPP) is the senior operational owner of Live Arts’ production, program, and rental calendar. The DPP builds the systems that allow artistic and public activity to move from decision through staffing, rehearsal, performance, restoration, and review. The role is not the artistic selector or technical director; it is the organization-wide producer, calendar owner, and primary staff liaison for execution.
This description identifies primary responsibilities and is not exhaustive. Live Arts may assign related work consistent with the role, mission, employment classification, and reasonable organizational need. Material changes to status, baseline hours, compensation, or reporting will be communicated in writing.
Core Responsibilities and Primary Ownership
- Maintain Live Arts’ authoritative calendar across productions, rehearsals, performances, classes, camps, rentals, meetings, institutional events, public programs, space use, and major development and communications dates. Forecast capacity, resolve conflicts, identify cross-departmental dependencies, and ensure that new commitments are operationally confirmed before they are announced or contracted.
- Build and administer production processes from first meetings through strike, including recruitment of production volunteers, contracting coordination, schedules, notes, access, and venue restoration.
- Own the common rental and co-production workflow from inquiry through closeout, including feasibility review, calendar and space confirmation, scope, contracting coordination, deposit status, walkthroughs, technical and hospitality requirements, staffing and volunteer needs, house management, event particulars, restoration, and final documentation. The Executive Artistic Director (EAD) retains authority over material partnerships, unusual financial terms, artistic alignment, and institutional risk.
- Coordinate institutional events and public programs, assigning accountable owners for hospitality, technical needs, access, marketing, data, cleanup, and security.
- Track production commitments and rolling expenses, including borrowed or rented equipment and materials, return dates, deposits, and cross-departmental cost implications.
- Maintain show readiness and production commitments in coordination with the EAD, Technical Production, Education and Outreach, and Business Management; surface budget, staffing, and volunteer risks before expenses or commitments are incurred.
- Supervise or operationally coordinate Audience and Volunteer Services, Box Office attendants, PSMs, house managers, and assigned project/production personnel.
- Chair internal production meetings; own show-specific production meeting processes from the first all-team meeting through final pre-technical meeting, including agendas, notes, deadlines, follow-up, and coordination with production stage management.
- Recruit and onboard production stage managers and other assigned production personnel; orient them to Live Arts spaces, access, communication systems, safety expectations, volunteer policies, and building procedures.
Working Relationships, Decision-Making, and Shared Responsibilities
- Reports to the Executive Artistic Director.
- Coordinates extensively with Technical Production, Education and Outreach staff, and volunteers.
- Supervises audience and volunteer services and box office operations as assigned.
- Works with associate production team members across Technical, Education, event, and Production needs.
- Serves as primary staff contact for directors, stage management, renters, and house management after artistic or contractual authority is established by the EAD.
- Recruits, welcomes, retains, and coordinates volunteers appropriate to the work, creating conditions in which people want to participate and return.
- Uses community feedback, survey findings, and institutional records to improve the work and remain accountable to participants.
- Attends required productions, volunteer events, season announcements, assigned fundraising and community events, and other institutional calls identified in advance.
- Participates in fundraising and community engagement appropriate to the role, including making introductions and representing Live Arts accurately and generously.
- Exercises sound judgment and protects access, dignity, agency, confidentiality, safety, and appropriate boundaries.
- Maintains accurate calendars, records, time, budgets, and handoffs; communicates foreseeable conflicts and requests approval before exceeding authority, schedule, or budget.
- Coordinates organization-wide readiness for designer runs, technical rehearsals, performances, strike, and restoration; confirms schedules, access, communication, hospitality, staffing, and handoffs. Technical Production retains authority over technical work, safety, build priorities, and technical personnel.
- Co-stewards the Live Arts’ volunteer communications and weekly collaboration newsletter with the Director of Education and Outreach (DEO). Gathers, verifies, and communicates production, program, rental, event, audition, and technical opportunities; coordinates responses and connects volunteers with the appropriate staff leaders for timely follow-through.
- The EAD retains authority over the selection and appointment of directors and, in consultation with them, designers and other principal artists. In advance of finalizing teams, the DPP may confirm schedule, scope, expectations, available resources, and institutional capacity with prospective artists.
- No department may independently commit Live Arts’ space, production capacity, staffing, or public calendar. Departments establish the content and requirements of their work; the DPP confirms timing, space, capacity, operational feasibility, and institutional calendar placement in consultation with the relevant director and the EAD.
Qualifications and Capacities
- Demonstrated production or project management, producing, stage management, performing arts operations, or comparable experience across multiple simultaneous projects.
- Exceptional calendar, meeting, documentation, budget, and follow-through discipline.
- Ability to lead artists, volunteers, employees, and renters with clarity, hospitality, healthy boundaries, and a respect for differences.
- Working knowledge of production departments, venue operations, contracting, accessibility, safety, and event closeout.
- Capacity to work independently, make operational decisions, and escalate artistic, financial, legal, or safety issues appropriately.
- Upholds and affirms the mission and values of Live Arts, including flexibility and excellence.
- Enjoys, values, loves, or otherwise respects theater, artistic and cultural life, and volunteerism in Charlottesville, the regional area, and beyond.
Status and Reporting
Full-time, salaried employee reporting to the Executive Artistic Director. Benefits-eligible, exempt, and at-will in accordance with the state of Virginia.
Equal Opportunity
Live Arts is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, creed, religion, national origin, ancestry, citizenship status, age, sex or gender, pregnancy or related conditions, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, marital status, military or veteran status, disability, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. Reasonable accommodations are available throughout the application and employment process. No specific educational history is required or expected for this position.
