What's the producer's role?

It's one of the most mysterious jobs in theatre - so let's find the truth behind the cigar-chewing, money-grabbing cliches

Lee Evans as one of Mel Brooks' Producers. Photograph: Tristram Kenton

As a theatre director, I'm used to people either asking me exactly what it is I do or assuming that I'm really some kind of actor. But at least the director's role is generally understood within the industry. A recent series of discussions set up by Stellar Network at the Young Vic made me realise that the role of the producer is much more mysterious.

In the first Young Vic event, 30 directors gathered to discuss what a theatre producer is or does. In the second, 30 producers attempted to articulate their own job specs. Both sessions uncovered how vast and self-defining the producer's job actually is. According to Stage One, which exists to promote new commercial producers, the job involves being "responsible for making arrangements for every aspect of the production in order to prepare it for presentation to the public on stage, subsequently managing it during the course of its production run and finally making all necessary closure arrangements".

This is a job description that suggests the producer is boss of all they survey. But there are producers throughout the industry working in completely different contexts. There are frequently notices on the Arts Council jobs list, for example, from young directors seeking producers. Who employs whom? And what do these directors think they'll be getting if they find a producer to work with them? Unpaid fundraiser, administrator and bill-sticker often seems to be the sad truth. No wonder producers regard emerging directors with suspicion.

The mistrust is often mutual. Those old cliches come into play: the cigar-chomping producer with dollar signs in his eyes, vetoing the extravagant requests of the tantrum-prone director. It's profit versus "artistic temperament", and the picture doesn't flatter either party.

Those old stereotypes need not apply. For a start, producers and directors are no longer all men. Think of Thelma Holt, one of the industry's best-known producers, Kate McGrath, Sonia Friedman and high-profile directors like Katie Mitchell, Marianne Elliott, Rachel Kavanaugh and Melly Still. And commercial producers are no longer the only producers on the block; people calling themselves producers now work at every level in every sector of the industry.

But stereotypes come from somewhere, and perhaps all directors secretly do think that producers lack creative heart, while producers wish directors would show some common (financial) sense. Producers hate to be seen as solely or even chiefly concerned with the money required to make art, but no one in the industry would deny that the producer does control the budget. And this can lead to tensions when cashflow limitations force a choice between creative elements, such as the extra actor or the extra week in rehearsal.

The boundaries are constantly shifting however: English Touring Theatre has recently made the unusual move of appointing a producer, Rachel Tackley, as artistic director - a post traditionally occupied by directors.

Like Tackley, many producers now add the word "creative" to their job title, staking their claim in the artistic product as more than mere facilitators. At London South Bank University, a new course in "creative producing" hopes to teach how to fuse "the producer's vision and creator's art".

Stellar Network has already managed to promote fruitful communication between directors and producers, and an online forum launches this month. Let's hope it works - we really need to talk. Whatever the job involves and whatever it's called - producing, creating, facilitating, enabling, realising - theatre can't happen without it.