Pull your vision out of your ass. (and by your ass I mean New York.)

When I began this entire thing, I pointed out that theater as we know it is dead, but theater itself will rise.

In the short term at least, Broadway may well be the clearest example of that. But that also necessitates a clear view of acknowledging Broadway as an anomaly rather than a pinnacle.

In part two I described the finances of regional theaters and their bastard blend of box office and patronage. This model can expand even as high as off-Broadway. It also shifts higher towards the patronage side when we talk about Opera, ballet, and Symphonies. Those institutions still exist because the rich elites of those cities wanted one there. Their existence will rise and fall at the will of their patrons.

But Broadway itself, particularly today's post-Webber musical saturated Broadway, is another animal. One that works more like film than regional theater. It's a high-stakes gambling game, where producers bet millions on the hope of making billions. The potential of profits in orders of magnitude allow for early closers to not be as much of a big deal as they could be.

A Broadway show financially works like a movie. Production itself is paid for up front. Then ticket sales determine how long the show stays in theaters. It differs in two big ways.

One, Broadway has a weekly nut in addition to outright production costs. A truly successful show not only makes its nut for the week, but works towards paying off initial production costs and eventually beyond, turning a profit for the producers. A film, once finished, costs little else to make beyond residuals.

Two, a film competes against each new week of releases. Remaining in theaters is a simple matter of selling more than other films when time comes to make room for next week's inbound releases. A Broadway show, on the other hand, competes against its own unsold tickets.

Broadway's worldwide exclusivity and strong tourist attraction means a steady stream of well-heeled audience members more than willing to pay several times what they'd pay for a ticket closer to home.

The high initial outlays and plans outright for high weekly nuts also allow Broadway to act as a support system for Equity, as Broadway contracts are some of the only livable-just-for-stage-acting ones in existence.

And that mutilates everything down the line. From college student expectations to regional theater budgets, it all reinforces the idea that somehow Broadway is just better than whatever other theater you may be doing. It takes a huge commercial outlier and holds it up as the gold standard for everyone else.

It's a cruel, stupid lie that formed from smoke and mirrors everyone sees but nobody will point out.

But Broadway's current form has mutated from theater into event. Broadway is less theater and more Disneyland with worse parking and less walking. Broadway is Vegas where you're more likely to be told to go fuck yourself than have your dinner comped. The difference is in Broadway making its nut directly and weekly as opposed to from supplemental activities.

Expanding that model beyond a theme park leads to outsized problems of regional theaters. Outdoor dramas who pay in both peanuts AND housing at least have charm and often longevity going for them, while newer attempts turn into shitshow deathtraps.

(Looking right at you, Serenbe. Sink a ship into a lake on cue every night? Whoopty fucking doo. Keep your people uninjured for an entire run and pay them enough to justify the gas to keep going to a site in Cousin Grope, Georgia if you want to impress me.)

Broadway's return will rely on two things

The willingness of audiences to pay for the privilege of not only gathering in the dark again, but traveling to a place of spectacle to do so. The Broadway model lives and dies not by the wealthy resident but by the wealthy tourist constantly rotating in and out among the country and the world.

and

What's left of the personnel infrastructure when that comes to pass.

How much of it will be left and what shape they will be in are the big questions.

There's about 18K members of Equity in and around NYC, not sure how many IATSE members.

They have all been out of work in their profession since mid-March.

The survival job gig economy (which again, we created) was devastated in the process.

A week after I post this, the final $600 kickers from PUA are being posted.

And nothing is currently set in stone to help any of those I mentioned survive until they can practice their old vocations.

The fortunate with savings or family connections will wait it out.

Some will do as New York artists always have: hustled, scraped, and gotten by as best they could.

Some will pull up stakes and leave for greener pastures.

Equity responded to the initial hit of Covid by raising health insurance premiums on their members and has been about as useless ever since.

Surviving companies, as mentioned earlier, are congratulating themselves about how diverse their initiatives are, for what good it does when there's no actual theater to do.

Government responses have been particularly hit or miss across the board.

The social networks (another thing cultivated by artists long before they were codified and monetized) are all suffering in their own way, but aiding each other as best they can.

I don't have any guiding words for any of them.

All I could say is what they've figured out for themselves.

That relying on some nebulous other to save them is folly.

That amazing amounts of power lie in the financial stability that's been kept from too many of them for too long, by design or accident.

Some may never return.

And maybe that's for the better. For theater to find itself smaller, spread wider, but paying better.

Because Broadway is just a wide road.

But theater is people in the dark, speaking in the light.

See you at the next fire that will have us.

J

Financial literacy. (If you're starving, you're doing it wrong.)

 
“What’d I ever have achieved in the cheese business, I’d like to know, if I’d said that money wasn’t important?”
Salzella smiled humorlessly. “There are people out on the stage right now, sir,” he said, “who’d say that you would probably have made better cheeses.” He sighed, and leaned over the desk. “You see,” he said, “cheese does make money. And opera doesn’t. Opera’s what you spend money on.”
- Terry Pratchett, Maskerade

 
Art has always sucked at economics to one degree or another. The false binary solution set of fulfilled passion vs comfortable lifestyle enablement has stymied hundreds of thousands over the years. But theater before 2020 was its own hive of scum and villainy. In this part, I'll be addressing both regional theaters (by which I mean outside NYC, averaging 200-400 seats) and individual artists. (Broadway will be addressed in part 3)

Before 2020, regional theaters survived on a hodgepodge of ticket sales, patronage, and good old fashioned bullshit. In reading an article about ten years ago, it seemed such theaters only earned about 50-60% of their annual revenue from selling their actual product: tickets, subscriptions, merch, what have you.

Half. Half of their revenue. This is why theater had so many whiners about capitalism infesting their ranks, they sucked at it. A business model that only earned half its operating income would have rated a D at best in Business 101.

What covered the other 40-50%, you ask? Grants and sponsorships, most of it. Local, State, and Federal arts funding, may the best grant application win. Local businesses and wealthy individuals and their foundations and endowments. In some cases, tax deductions made the difference. In others, the prestige of patronage.

Patronage itself is nothing new. The wealthy have always commissioned artists one way or another. Beowulf was first performed over a series of nights, entertaining some dark ages lord and his retinue who fed and housed the composer for the winter. Acting companies in Shakespeare's day were as sponsored as any NASCAR team. What American regional theaters were good at was hiding the extent of that from the hoi polloi. Including the actual performers.

Oh, if you were a regular audience member, you eventually wound up on one email list or another. Fundraising drives have been an American take on passing the hat since before the telethon. But all they ever mentioned was that year's goal, how close they were, and what perks your participation got you. Normally, a note in a program, on the wall of the lobby, or both.

What you weren't told was exactly how and of what the sausage was made. It's not impressive to point out that your cast and crew were paid peanuts if they didn't have a union pointing a gun to the producer's head. The typical line of bullshit was "economic impact." Ignoring how much individuals were actually paid and instead pointing out how much audience members spent in the surrounding community.

Why all this bullshit if the actors STILL weren't getting paid beans?

My best guess is to keep ticket prices low enough to attract a maximum audience. Sometimes this is done for altruistic reasons (wanting to bring art into lower-income communities). But more likely, because there are diminishing returns once your prices rise above a certain amount. Sometimes the difference between twenty dollar tickets and thirty dollar tickets was the ability to sell all of them instead of half, or three-quarters, or what have you.

However, doing this meant that the box office didn't make the company's nut.

(Nut. n. Circus term for earning enough in performances to cover the bills. Town sheriffs used to confiscate the nut securing the axle to the main circus wagon to prevent them from  leaving town in the middle of the night without paying their bills. Hence, making the nut means to pay off your expenses)

Thus, theaters needed to find alternate revenue streams of patronage. While this alternate revenue sucked at making its way to the cast, it did keep the theaters running, for whatever that was worth.

Why keep paying the actors peanuts if they were operational even only earning half of the income they needed?

Because they could. Plain and simple.

Because acting has always been oversupplied and under-demanded. And there are always actors willing to act for peanuts more than they are willing to not act for nothing. To a ridiculous level in some cases (looking at you, Los Angeles and your 99-seat bullshit.)

Strangely, a lot of actors would scream all day about McDonald's and Walmart paying this mythical thing called a living wage. Yet none of them would dream of demanding such a thing of their own producers. Funny, that.

But that's the past, and the past is dead. And so, I think, is patronage. And grants.

Federal, state, and local budgets have been HAMMERED by Covid. Their tax bases have shrank and their services have been overrun. And while the Fed's budget is bad enough, they're not as bad as state and local governments, which can and do go bankrupt.

Which means regional theaters that survive are going to have to go with their own box offices.

Quick math: 200 seats, twenty bucks a ticket, what's your maximum nightly haul at the box office? Don't look at your phone, do it in your head!

Five, four, three, two, aaaand one.

If you got something besides $4000, go work on your arithmetic. This post will still be here when you get back. (Quick hint, to multiply by 20, add a zero to the end, then double the result. It'll only get more complicated when we add .95's to everything).

From there, start thinking about the nut. What's it cost for rent on the building? Utilities? Insurance? Taxes? The company staff? I've never fed an artistic director, but I heard they like eating too.

Take half a month's max box office and subtract two months of nut. That accounts for you selling half size houses on average for the course of a run and rehearse for a month without earning a dime but still having to pay everything.

If you have a positive number, you might have a viable company and production on your hands.

If you don't, you need to change those numbers until you do.

Remember: we are all in survival mode here. Neither landlords nor greengrocers accept exposure. If you want to earn your living doing your art, you need to make money with it. Period fucking dot.

I realize this model can and will devastate the vast majority of regional theaters in this country.

I realize this is going to destroy the life’s work of a lot of people I respect and admire.

And it brings me no joy to say this.

It is also the only way I see any of those surviving.

Right now, theaters around the country are patting themselves on the back with how diverse their initiatives are. Funny how they only got around to all that now that they don't have any fucking theater to do. Years late and five figures short, but it keeps them in the woke hashtags, I suppose.

What they need to be doing is seeing exactly how far beyond "four boards, four trestles, two actors and a passion" they can get and still keep the lights on.

Maybe we're due for a vaudeville revival, as non-Broadway theater cozies up to burlesque and standup when audiences actually become a thing again.

I definitely think what comes will be smaller, more intimate, and with less spectacle.

That said, I think there are a very few things that may become a net positive.

Commercial real estate values are going to drop heavily. Teleworking means a lot of major companies aren't going to bother with claustrophobic and costly office space downtown anymore. Fewer clusters of white-collar workers means less services tailored to them, particularly restaurants, which are experiencing their own devastation.

This means that spaces easily convertible into 200-400 seat houses will become cheaper in at least the short run.

The smaller spaces allow for lighter technical expenses as well. A house that small can be serviced by a surround sound setup designed for some rich yahoo's living room easily enough, as opposed to a setup designed from the beginning for a commercial theater.

And I think the necessity of earning the nut entirely at the box office will solve a problem theater's been working at cross purposes for decades now.

I see far too many artists of all stripes favoring their message over their audience. They want the unenlightened wealthy to pack the house night after night, paying for the privilege of being told what pieces of shit they've been and how they need to fix themselves.

And when they can't find audiences or even producers, they piss and moan that their message is lost.

Oh honey, no.

If you want rich and unenlightened to pay you for the privilege of telling them what awful people they are, get out of theater and become a dominatrix. The pay's much better and more honest. But even then you have to pay attention, because they're paying you to tell them how THEY think what kind of awful people they are.

Or, get yourself a small enough space, maybe you can draw a crowd that learns and believes what you have to say. A simple room and a big idea can be done right, TED talks have proved that.

But survival comes first. Got to earn your nut. Figure out what it takes to keep you running weekly, monthly, annually. That's your nut, and you should know it.

That goes for individuals and it goes for companies.

Go earn your nut.

If you still need to ease your brain into this terrifyingly capitalistic frame of reference, I heavily recommend the book Make Art Make Money by Elizabeth Hyde Stevens. It's an examination of the career of Jim Henson through both artistic and business lenses, and I think it should be required reading for anyone even considering an arts career.
 
 J.

(Academic discipline or a vocational trade. Pick one and stick with it.)

“The money in the chorus isn’t very good, is it?!” she said. “No.” It was less than you’d get for scrubbing floors. The reason was that, when you advertised a dirty floor, hundreds of hopefuls didn’t turn up.”
- Terry Pratchett, Maskerade

A few months ago, I was privately asked what I think the future of theater is going to be.

At the time, I didn't have viciousness I thought I would need.

Then an interesting side effect of covid I don't think anyone anticipated came to pass. As the weeks have rolled on, it's becoming increasingly clear that an unplanned cleaning of house is happening in the American theater community.

Put simplistically, Theater effectively isn't happening for the rest of the year.

And what there is will be few and far between.

And I think, at a subconscious level, more and more people are realizing that.

Or, as a friend put it, Theater will always be with us. Because telling stories in a room with other people is a cornerstone of our civilization.

But theater AS WE KNOW IT is dead or dying.

And as people are realizing that, more and more people are bringing more and more ugly truths to light. Ugly truths about companies, decision makers, and the like.

Because for every artist out there, there's dozens willing to take their place. And nobody wanted to be the one who dropped the dead stinking fish in the pool of the their networks.

But one by one, lights are coming on, switches are flipping, and more and more people are saying, "fuck it, what are they gonna do, not cast me for the shows they can't do?"

Oh, ain't that a feeling I understand all too well.

A lot of it I felt when I left theater behind me two and a half years ago.

Daily I discovered more and more ways what I'd left behind was fucked up.

But I downplayed it.

Like a nasty breakup, I kept quiet about a lot of shit, because a lot of people I cared about hung out with my ex, even though she was an abusive bitch.

But right now, with the country, if not the world, in survival mode?

I think it's time to drag some shit out in the light.

For my friends struggling to provide for themselves in an industry collapsing around them.

And For the starry-eyed high school theater nerds convinced they're going to be the ones who make it.

Put in your mouth guards, because I'm not gonna pull my punches.

 
Part One: Theater is either an academic discipline or a vocational trade.

Pick one and stick with it. (Spoiler alert: better odds are on "trade.")

I've noticed a startling number of established but small companies (200-400 seat houses) with what they call apprentice programs. These programs hire young, newly graduated artists, offering both training and part-time work for a performance season or a year, whichever is shorter, usually with an accompanying stipend.

The sheer number of them tells me one of three things is going on:

One, Undergraduate B.A. and BFA theater programs are insufficiently training the incoming adult actors for the professional world.

Two, These companies have latched onto the trades apprenticeship model to gain the labor of incoming new graduates at a reduced rate while advertising the work of their own company and training said new artists to their standards.

Three, both.

My money is on three.

Education in general is having a massive upheaval right now. In March, 55 Million students were given a test-drive in homeschooling and online learning. A lot of parents are catching on to the fact that six months of curriculum can be learned in two. A lot of university students are figuring out that the same material gets learned whether it's attached to a fancy campus or not.

And remember: we are all in survival mode right now. Your primary job is to care for yourself and your dependents. If what you do doesn't achieve that, you need to do something else.

Face it, theater folks: we're the ones who infected the world with the whole "survival gig" bullshit, and everyone's sick of it. The cure should begin with us.

There is no fucking reason to spend a mid-five figures a semester for a degree that won't pay that out annually just for performing.

What's an average undergrad these days, $40-$60K/semester?

If you're earning that much a year JUST from acting in theater off of Broadway, you're a fucking liar. Maybe there's a national tour out there that hasn't been taken over by SETA contracts. But that's just another facet of the fact that no producer is paying actors anything worthy without a union holding a collective gun to their head.

(And don't think this is a screed about growing union strength either. The ONLY union in the business I haven't seen show their ass when covid struck was IATSE.)

So the BFA-industrial-complex keeps feeding legions of bright young things through their programs each year, putting a bigger and bigger percentage of them in indentured servitude of student loans, only for them to compete for the chance to... undergo an apprenticeship to learn everything that the fucking loansharks at university either didn't know or didn't bother to teach them?

And those who fail that initial round of competition keep struggling to apply their skill set into something that will make them an honest living, dropping out of the professional theater world one by one.

Some become middle-class arts patrons or the backbones of community theaters, and gods love them for that.

Some poor suckers go back to school in an educational arms race, becoming more and more knowledgeable but somehow never manage to articulate how that hasn't made them worth any more to those who cut the checks.

And some just go back to academia and never leave, carving out small fiefdoms that let them live somewhat comfortably and with their hands in their passions, even if it means feeding a new crop of wide-eyed theater kids to the beast every coming fall.

Fuck that.

And it's not just me saying fuck that anymore. Higher ed in general is about to reap the whirlwind.

The ever-growing canon is more accessible than ever. There is no viable reason theater needs to be more than an Associate's degree discipline at most, augmented by apprentice companies post graduation. Even technical theater can be taught as an offshoot of heavy equipment operation.

But the vast bulk of American university theater needs to be extracurricular. Then it can actually serve to "broaden the scope of human experience" (at least that's what I think the fucking human traffickers that flock to SETC every year to peddle their indentures are spouting lately) to undergraduates without deluding anyone into thinking such is a viable career path.

Besides, a lot of such programs have been griping about their worth relative to athletics, might as well sink to their level and see how they swim.

Higher Ed in the U.S. is about to take a hardcore shellacking. And it's about fucking time it has. Maybe when we've whittled down undergraduate level theater programming to the handful of prominent conservatory programs, then we can take a nice long look at exactly how their diversity initiatives are working.

J.

If you want people to do something, sooner or later you're going to have to use force in order to make it happen.

This fact boggles some people.

Especially if they're used to having their force done by proxies. Having other people do your forcing for you has a long and powerful history. Violence dynamics-wise, there's not a whole lot of separation between "Civis romanus sum" and "My boyfriend will fuck you up."

Some can spend their entire lives having their force made by proxies. Which really bites them in the ass when their proxies become unreliable or nonexistent. (Exhibit A there would be Mr. and Mrs. Ambulancechaser from St. Louis. Their lawn defense was tactically stupid, morally shaky, but legally sound. The charges against them are pure political theater, and St. Louis is going to be paying them big in the lawsuit if the DA's dumb enough to bring them to trial.)

Last week, the bulk of big box retailers around the country stepped up and said they were requiring customers to wear masks. Absolutely none of them are committing to any security procedures or escalations of any kind to enforce this. Given the total lack of government or insurance support for this, not to mention the fact that none of them pay even managers enough to go that route, I can't say I'm surprised. But nor will I be surprised at any subsequent shitshows.

Then there's Portland.

*sigh*

I've been watching Portland about as much as anyone lately. Though I have been watching the various commentary. The big question being "where are all the 2A folk when people are being snatched off the street by anonymous folks?"

Good question. Although it dovetails with another question surrounding these detainments, which is, "why hasn't one of these snatchings become a shootout yet?"

I have only a guess, but it's an educated one.

Legally, Portland is a "need a permit to possess" city in the middle of a "shall issue" state. Not quite oppression of the legally armed to the level of, say, Chicago to the rest of Illinois. But it does make for an uncomfortable place to be for a 2A supporter.

I've never been to Portland, and my knowledge of its politics is largely limited to the 2A movement. But what I've seen indicates that it's part of a coastal strip running loosely from Berkley to Seattle where the left is at its most militant and aggressive. To the point of claiming those areas as territory similar to gang affiliation.

(No, I'm not calling the left or any variant on it a gang. But if shoe fits...)

Keep going east from Portland and the more you go, the more you run into the rural and heavily armed. Some are simply "leave me and mine" alone types. But some are hardcore far-righters, even white supremacists, who act very much like gangs indeed.

And a fun pastime for gangs is to fuck with each other's territory.

So some of these far-right and white supremacist groups come West into town knowing that they're pissing off the hard-left just by being in their territory. Which over the last five years has led to protests and counter-protests turning into brawls. Rarely fatal and not doing much damage by the time the cops break it up, but not pleasant times at all.

So, presumably there's a population of good and righteous 2A supporters. Why would any of them be in Portland? Where the ctrl-left is as in your face as it gets in this country? Where the left screams about blood on the hands of every 2A supporter with every school shooting? With every mass shooting?

Where up until a few months ago, the "you don't need (insert firearm or accessory here), that's what cops are for!" was the party line?

Where the only remotely like minded individuals are savage-right white supremacists who came out of the mountains to stir shit for their own amusement?

Tell me, what exactly about Portland sounds welcoming to 2A supporters now?
Oh, I'm sure some found like minded individuals out among the "leave me alone" types. But I think the majority just quietly went about their lives, more in the suburbs than in Portland proper, and kept quiet about their politics as such things are.

And that's Portland normally. Portland lately?

The protests, riots, call them what you will, have been going on in Portland for 40 straight days. Over a month of unrest.

People who were 2A before covid? They had their weapons and ammo and they hunkered down back in March. They're staying home if they can, going to work if they must.

Every anti-riot article and essay I've read going back to the 70's emphasizes getting out if you can.
They've all had plenty of warning to go and stay gone.

There might be onesies and twosies who have their individual reasons to stay. But as a political movement?

Rioters have already proven they don't give a shit about locally owned businesses.

The west coast left has already proven they're more than willing to get violent.

Now they've picked a fight with the cops at the local, state, and federal levels; and they expect the 2A community, whose blood they were screaming for six months ago and for over a decade before that, to risk themselves and their families for the privilege of being the violent proxies of the ctrl-left?
What a fascinating premise.