RAT Re: Tix

["Erik Ehn" <shadowtackle@worldnet.att.net>]

     Box office can be a point of contact - can even be part of the artistry (Barnum, Beatles, Grand Opera) - and should be managed with artistic verve. In other cases,  anxieties associated with box office can put distance between artists and their work/audiences. In these latter cases there are options, including being the darlings of nobody at all.

     Examples of artists who lived off subsidy versus sales; Thoreau (wrote Walden on Emerson's property; Mrs.. Emerson used to bring him chocolate cakes), Kalidasa, Zeami, Barba,  just about any poet, amateur athletes... But sales still enter into the picture, and money still makes or breaks. Don't know how to make life happier in this regard; the no-money daydream sometimes takes me further. An extreme objective - give everything away.

     Are we ever not-for-profit structures bending ourselves out of shape to accommodate for-profit strategies?

e