R: RAT. Money

[The Independent Eye <bards@independenteye.org>]

Dear friends-

This thread is at the heart of it.  Thanks to Brad for bringing it up, and
to Laura and others for writing eloquently.  It's about oxygen.

For what it's worth, I'll outline one couple's experience with money.  This
is probably long, so if you like, skip to the end and get the moral
lessons, whatever they turn out to be.

Our first company, Theatre X, began in 1969 as an ungainly mob of about 18
members, and our first show was financed by the gaggle of students, faculty
members, and hangers-on contributing, more or less, $5 each to pay for
printing.  Free space from a church.  No one got paid.

Within about 18 months, we were making money from touring gigs.  We'd
assemble whoever could make a show, re-rehearse roles, and pile into
whatever transportation we had.  No one got paid, but we rented and
renovated a building.  Elizabeth and I were still college faculty, but our
contracts had been non-renewed because of our work in Theatre X.  So we
faced an unpredictable future.

We started paying salaries in 1972, $50/wk, and the people who got the
first salaries were those to whom it would make a difference in the amount
of work they could do for the company.  We were living on savings,
Elizabeth was pregnant, we doing just about all the writing and
administrative work.  I think we about the fourth or fifth to be salaried.

Eventually we had 8 people on salary, up to $75/wk (it was worth more in
1972), and this caused many problems, because money means very different
things to different people.  But it did allow us to do some spectacular
work.

Problem was, the money came almost entirely from touring, and the paid
ensemble was getting sick of touring the same old stuff; and the old stuff,
once great, was getting bad.  Seeing no alternatives and again pregnant, we
left the company to solve their own problems (which they did, with great
courage!), and moved to Chicago to form The Independent Eye.

The first year, 1974, was grotesque.  Very little money, all savings gone.
One 2-year-old, one newborn, and I had a rare disease that required major
surgery. Wrote and produced three shows in Chicago, with free space from
the Body Politic, but tiny audiences and mostly negative press.  Few
touring gigs, though thankfully one major residency in Delaware.  Living in
a basement apartment, very very close to the bone.

The subsequent years gradually established us as a touring duo, and the
next years were very taxing, sometimes 150 to 200 shows a year
cross-country, but we made a basically lower-middle-class income, almost
entirely from touring fees, with a few grants, NEA and some state support,
as well.

We moved east and developed a local presence in Lancaster, PA.  After some
years, we began to find financial support locally, for the first time
developing a local board, significant private donations, and some business
support.  Box office revenue became important for the first time.  During
this time, from 1984 to 1992 roughly, we made, jointly, about $40,000 a
year from the Eye, as administrators, writers, actors, director, composer,
designer, etc., and we paid actors somewhat above Equity SPT minimum,
though it was non-Equity.  It got our kids grown up and out of high school
and into college.

But it became clear that community support had its price.  There was an
expectation.  That we'd grow up.  That we'd become Lancaster's
Off-Broadway.  That we'd maintain a kind of image of "alternative" but make
sure we provided four predictably uplifting shows per year.  This didn't
come from the Enemy; in fact we had some strong financial support from
conservatives who took a really hard gulp at some of our shows, but who
remained very loyal to our dedication to our vision.  Rather, it was the
nominally liberal people who discouraged us the most (with exceptions,
certainly).  Ultimately, they wanted the NPR tonality:  safe entertainment
with a gently elitist tone.  It was really clear that we'd peaked, and we
had to get out if we didn't want the company's spine to dissolve.

So we told the Board that we needed to sell the theatre building, rent a
studio, and return to the core mission of creating original work on a
project-to-project basis.  Half the board left, the other half stayed.  We
fostered the creation of a new group to take over the building so it
wouldn't be lost to the community.  The business money vanished, but most
of our private donations remained, as did our state and NEA support.

During our 7 years in Philadelphia, operating our own 49-seat theatre, we
were almost entirely supported by foundation grants, government support,
and private donations.  It worked fine, except for the anxiety of
year-by-year funding, never knowing when $25,000 (on a $140,000 budget)
would vanish in an eyeblink because someone's guidelines changed, or
whatever.  Our own income was pretty stable during these years.

The cost was that we played for a very small audience.  Our work has always
been radically diverse, so there's no brand image, and we looked at the
prospects of spending the rest of our life playing in a space where 49
people were a BIG house.  Yet the needs of supporting a resident season
made it impossible to tour or to continue work in evolutionary repertory.
So we began a limted local touring, and as soon as we did, we realized what
a radical change we needed to make.

Moving to California (for reasons beside the point of this post) and
returning to full-time touring has been a radical economic challenge.
About $85,000 in grant support vanished at the Philadelphia city limits,
and the theatre touring market is at low ebb.  With a legacy from my mother
(a bookkeeper with a maniacal desire, bless her, to accumulate an
"estate"), we bought a beautiful house in Sebastopol, which also gives us
workspace, and the mortgage is less than what we were paying for rent in
Philadelphia.  But all our work is back East; California right now is a
closed door, professionally.  So we're hanging onto our little $5,000 from
the NEA and making lots of 3,000 mile commutes.

No desire to build a local presence, really, because if we wanted that,
we'd have stayed in Philly.  And it's clear that in future years, we need
to supplement our own income from the Eye with much more focus on our
publishing work and other freelance writing, our scripts and now our
novels.

Which has implications.  To my mind, the Eye's work is the best it's ever
been, and I think we have a lot of potential with college residencies,
co-productions, etc.  But when one's budget shrinks, so does one's sexiness
and fundability:  both foundations and govt. agencies have a very acute
barometer for who's 'emerging" and who's "over the hill," and in many
people's minds, 27 years of credits means only that this outfit has been
around 27 years without ever having MADE IT.  All our future work that's
larger than duo shows will have to be as co-productions.

We feel very challenged, and yet very excited, because we're playing much
more "nakedly" to audiences.  There's an edge and a magic that's never been
there before.  I welcome that.

So in a nutshell:  With a few glitches, we've mostly lived our professional
lives with middle-class incomes.  Sometimes we've had money to spend on
shows, sometimes it's been very shoestring.  When we've had money, I think
we've spent it well.  We've raised two kids, and we've created a lot of
work.  At ages 58 and 60, we have no security whatever, either personally
or professionally.  Would we like to?  You betcha.  I spent early childhood
in poverty and still remember the rat bounding across the bed, my mother
serving nothing but bread with gravy for supper, and her tears.  I don't
think there's anything to recommend poverty, voluntary or otherwise.
Simple living, simple tastes, sure: not poverty.  Best thing that can be
said for it, as Laura said, is that it's educational.

So what conclusions?  I dunno.  I haven't concluded yet.

* I don't feel any money is tainted; or I feel all money is tainted.
Unless a lot of people are watching, symbolic purity is meaningless
- unless, of course, it's meaningful to you.  I'll take anybody's money.
Most money doesn't ask its price up front.  It waits till you've become
addicted to it, then it lays its claim.  If you've proven to yourself that
you can kick it cold turkey, then you can probably take the risk.

* Most artists who "sell out," whatever that means to you, don't do it from
personal greed.  They do it because they feel responsible:  to their
families, to fellow artists who depend on them for livelihood, to their
donors, to their audiences, to their larger community.  It's extremely
difficult to nurture a selective irresponsibility that allows one freedom
to create without being a shitty sonofabitch.

* The greatest seductiveness is our need to be valued.  To last over the
long haul, you have to have, from some source, a sense of being valued and
honored.  The mainstream has its money and its titles and its awards and
its media, and sometimes it even has better parties.  On the margins, we
have very little of that, and only rarely do we make up for that all by
treating one another with grace and love - being excellent to one another.
It gets harder as you get older.

* I've always done my best work when I had time and money to do it.  What
fiscal anxiety does spur is innovation, both for better and worse:  what
can I do to make this stuff saleable?  That can be a very good spur, or it
can be deadly.

* I don't know if there's any common definition of RAT theatres, but the
one I'd propose is that, whatever their finances, they're those theatres
willing to take the most extreme risks for the sake of the work's soul.

* It's quite possible to make a full-time middle-class livelihood
performing/producing *only* what you want to do, if you're willing to learn
how to do all the crap that you'd otherwise have to pay someone to do, and
work very long hours.

* It helps if you can also get truly inspired by someone else's needs and
desires, and find your way into commissions, co-productions, and work that
springs from the community.  That can supplement other stuff, or it can be
a central focus.  But it's dangerous:  you can also find yourself chasing
off into directions that may have some redeeming social purpose, but are
not at your center.  It's worked both ways for us.

*  You're marginal.  Make the most of it.

* And since we're talking economics, you could buy our books.  Rash Acts is
$14.95, and it's eighteen of our best short pieces from 20 years of
ensemble touring.  You can produce'em, or steal the ideas.  Seismic Stages
is $18.95, a lot of short pieces plus three one-acts, rather didactic
pieces created for high schools, but good models, I think, for your own
work.  Or you can bring us into your theatre and split the gate.  After
all, it's really hard to talk about money without trying to sell something.

More to be said, but I need to get back to the rewrites of Part Two of
TAP-DANCER, the bestselling comic novel of 2002.

Hope this is useful to someone.

Peace & joy-
Conrad








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