|
I agree. Great
"testimonial". Thanks.
"Those poor
kids. So young. So nauseous."
--Krusty the Klown Telethon
for Motion Sickness
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
Visit The Independent
Eye's website
at <http://www.independenteye.org>.
|