Producing in Practice

Brighton Festival 2026 | Brighton Festival 2026 |

Brighton Festival 2026 | Brighton Festival 2026 |

Producing Assistant

Throughout 3 weeks, I worked across 14 music, theatre, literature, dance and community productions including:

  • London Symphony Orchestra with Antonio Pappano

  • Dark Noon

  • Akram Khan

  • Clod Ensemble

  • Kohlhaas

  • Asian Dub Foundation

  • St John’s Passion, Britten Sinfonia

  • Fevered Sleep

Highlights

Running a day solo

Artist liaison · Stage management · Time management

Midway through the placement, I ran a full logistical set-up day for Clod Ensemble on my own, standing in as producer. That covered artist liaison, stage building and the complete production set-up, coordinated start to finish without another producer on site.

Highlights

Solving under pressure

During a classical production, a stand had mistakenly been given to us from another production. Their team came to reclaim it about a minute before our rehearsal started, and the room froze, no one wanting to interrupt the conductor. I stayed calm, took the brunt of the reaction, and told them a solution was already in motion while I took the stand off stage myself, in front of the orchestra. Rehearsal went ahead with a temporary fix while I spent the afternoon tracking down a second stand, driving across town and checking storage closets, until a colleague located one. I picked it up with minutes to spare before that night's performance.

Crisis management · Decision-making · Resourcefulness

Additional Roles:

Beyond the highlights, the placement covered front-of-house support, venue and artist liaison, box office, and stewarding, alongside the physical side of production: stage building, prop sourcing, tech support, and setting up dressing rooms.

As a runner, that meant sourcing whatever artists needed in their dressing rooms and making it happen quickly. I also helped facilitate private member drinks after shows, supported with deliveries and comms, helped run workshops, and carried out health and safety checks throughout.

The takeaway:

This placement became the case study for my MA dissertation on the unseen work that makes an event feel live, and why bringing people together is so important in a digital era.

Working amongst diverse producers and types of productions, and moving between crisis and calm has taught me more about the entertainment industry than I could have learned from the outside, letting me put what I'd learned during my masters programme into practice. My previous career in hospitality and tourism set me up for this more than I realised, as I hadn't expected how much the skills I'd built at Backroads would carry over. I took what I'd learned producing luxury active travel trips globally and applied it to the entertainment industry.

Learn more about my experience with Backroads here.