Who We Are...

About Managing Director Grant Knutson...

What We Do...

Minion Productions helps enable independent performing artists to create, produce and tour original work by:

• assisting them with administrative and production needs
• helping them develop their business and marketing skills
• creating a community for artists to communicate and share resources.

Minion is a Seattle-based organization that works directly with independent performing artists that do not have the support of a large theater company. Simply put, we actually like organizing, scheduling and budgeting (well, we like it better than your average artist). We're here to help indie artists accomplish the part of their work they often aren't so good at and are rarely super enthusiastic about.

The thing is, the business side is something that is part of the package. Artists do themselves a disservice when they don’t take the time to focus on the business side and administrative side of things, such as:

• marketing, scheduling, fundraising,
• finding a venue, communication with venue owners,
• finding a production team or designers,
• building an engaging artist platform and using social media,
• running front-of-house at events,
• and all the other essential busy-work that often gets ignored.

Sometimes we do this by working directly on a project, sometimes we facilitate training that the artists need in order to do the work themselves, and sometimes we simply help locate the outside help that a project needs in order to continue.
Minion will works with artists on three levels:

• Consult - Providing short term services to artists such as advice, research, training, or helping them gather the staff or resources they need  for their project.
• Collaborate - Working with an artist through the entire life of a project by providing - or assisting in - the administrative, production and marketing aspects of their project.
• Partner - Working with an artist on their entire season by providing or assisting in the administrative, production and marketing aspects of all of their projects until they are able to provide those services for themselves. Partners will maintain artistic control of their projects, but will have access to the resources of Minion Productions and operate under the purview of Minion's Directors.

 
We're a small, flexible organization and we want to stay that way, so we only work directly with a handful of artists at any one time. But we want as many touring indie artists as possible to join us on our forums, such as this website. We hope it will become a stronger resource for everyone!