Monkey Business Practices0

I know you love anthropology. And economic discussions. Or maybe you just love monkeys. But even if you only loved qualitative and quantitative analysis, this video would still be worth watching. Because it’s got the first example of Monkey Economics. Check it out, then follow me after the break.

Those monkeys really are cute, even when she talks about the looting and scamming they do to each other to get more tokens. What I really find adorable is the conclusion that we humans aren’t just risk-averse, but loss-averse. That we always judge in relative rather than absolute metrics, by which I mean we continue to fight the most recent war and that these factors lead us to make really stupid mistakes again and again.

What does this have to do with theater?

Our inherent loss-averse nature puts us in a mindset where we shudder in fear of losing—audience, money, donations, talent—and make poor decisions because of it. (It’s why some theaters would rather take a gamble on no or free resources for their show (stage management, lighting/set/graphic design) in the hope that it’ll still pay off.) And our over-reliance on recent past events means we focus on the last mistake or triumph to the detriment of the task at hand.

Your last show was a huge success, and audiences were never a problem. Obviously this show will be the same, no need to approach anything differently this time around, you’ll of course have a full-house for the whole run. Sure, your last show was titled “Free Beer”, the cast contained the most popular guy in Old Town, and this is your post-apocalyptic take on Hedda Gabler, but you’ve built a loyal audience, right? And since it was so easy last time, lets just post a Facebook event instead of worrying about promotion.

Your new play is great. So great there’s no need to workshop it. Or to get any other opinion. Because you already wrote the ending, and to have to make edits now means a defined loss. Isn’t it totally worth it to take the risk that you’re just awesome, and get it up on stage? If people don’t like it, they can tell you after the show—you’d be happy to do rewrites and then remount it next year. There’s no way you’ll grow more attached and afraid of changing it once you’ve seen it performed.

It’s been 2 months, it’s fundraising time again, better hit those email lists to invite people out to your 15th tetra-annual fundraising event. You weren’t lucky enough to get the Chase money, even though you spammed your email list, unsubscribes be damned. And you’ve already spent it in your head, so it’s time to triple down on the silent auction to recoup some of those perceived losses. And yet no one is clicking “Will Attend” on your Facebook invite – what gives?

What gives is that your audience is made up of monkeys too. And they quickly found out who provided the best tasting grapes for their tokens. They have a relative experience bias too, but they also have something even scarier: a lack of personal investment. Because they see a whole monkey marketplace of theater, and if they didn’t have a personal connection to you guys, then you’re left selling yourself on the merits when their friend is also in a show for another theater company.

Or even worse, we forgot to wear our different colored shirts, and they can’t tell us apart.  That would be really scary. Because then those audiences just approach this like any transaction, and the bad decisions that one company make affects us all.