Playwright and Humorist, Kobina Ansah, has disclosed how much goes into stage plays and why the public needs to support them.
He stated that most often, people do not know what goes into producing a stage play or putting together a production. “So when I tell people that we can spend close to 10,000ghc per production, they get surprised and go like wow for just a stage production?”
From his point of view, this tells him the kind of perspective people have about stage plays without knowing a lot of resources go into it.
Talking to Foster Romanus on e.TV Ghana’s Late Nite Celebrity Show, he said, “We had to cancel rehearsals for emergency wedding for instance because it was supposed to show last year but due to the lockdown, it was postponed to this year and later this year too it was cancelled. That alone should tell you how much we have spent over these years.”
He emphasized it takes a lot of time, effort and money to produce a stage play and that is what people do not understand.
Giving an overview of some things that go into production, he added, “First of all you need to get the venue, then you need to bring in your light, your sound because we do live band. Your props, set design, costumes and a lot goes into it aside from the promotion on TV, radio and newspapers. We focus on bloggers to promote our shows and that shows how much goes into production.”
He mentioned that people need to understand what goes into it and also realize that they spend a lot on their production.
“Unfortunately, a lot of production houses do not have sponsors which means everything is self-sponsored. So if you don’t get people buying the tickets and attending the show, it means at the end of the day you are running a huge loss and that is why people need to understand that we need them as much as they need us,” he added.
Kobina said, “If our audience wants us to keep producing insightful stuff, then they need to support us by buying tickets and coming to watch our shows aside from sharing on social media and all that.”
By: Gyamfuah Owusu-Ackom
