From AWG: The Price We Pay0

The following is reposted from Don Hall’s “An Angry White Guy in Chicago” blog.

Looks like Aussie Augusta Supple has been thinking about independent theater.

Financial independence for an artist is for the very few- infact drama school is for the financially priviedged and supported… which implies that theatre is made, and perpetuated by and for the middle to upperclasses. If that IS the case- is our so-called independent theatre scene destined to be the playground of the priviledged (or perhaps the utterly ruthless)? What is the price of independence? What is the true cost of theatre? Who can afford it? What are you willing to sacrifice for your art(or career)? And who’s paying?

She makes a pretty solid case for the realities of independent art – that it is truly dependent on a host of support systems and I’d agree with her.

WNEP Theater doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The unpaid staff, the minimally paid actors, the barely paid technicians, the friends and family members who pony up a couple of bucks during our version of Pledge Drives (bowling and poker games) – all contribute to the cause.

Where companies like WNEP are, indeed, truly independent is in the artistic autonomy they enjoy. Far from privileged (no one that I work with regularly has a trust fund or comes from an upper middle class background), this is the one perk that anyone involved in true fringe theater receives – artistic independence.

What do we sacrifice to get that artistic autonomy? Money, awards, the inclusion of what many deem as professional status. I like to think of us as gypsies and outlaws in some ways – sort of like the Harry Tuttle’s of theater – in many ways as skilled as any “professional” but choosing to operate outside of the system as much as is possible. If theater were more solitary rather than collaborative, I’d suggest that many of us aspire to that Banksy sort of model – weaving in and out of the paradigm that insists one pursue money rather than artistic license and vandalizing the world with pointed statements. We are the heating and cooling repairmen that operate outside of the expectations of the masscult and run from Big Brother whenever we can.

CHICAGO AREA PRODUCER:
“So, how did Hopper do?”

ME:
“Great!  It was a fantastic show, awesome staff, fantastic cast and, for the most part, the audiences were definitely down for the ride.”

C.A.P.
“But how did it DO?”

ME:
“Oh.  We turned a decent little profit, everyone got paid something and we have cash in the bank for the next one.”

C.A.P.
“So Don Hall is a commercial producer now, huh?”

ME:
“Uh…no.  I guess the difference is that a commercial producer starts with the idea of turning a profit.  We were willing to dump the whole bank on a show we felt was worthy of our time.  The fact that it made money was pretty much accidental.”

C.A.P.
“But the DCA people really went to bat for you.  You brought in audiences because of that location and their hard work drumming up audiences.”

ME:
“True.  It is their gig that they drum up the business but if that was their sole intent, I guarantee you WNEP would never have been invited to perform there in the first place.  The first two shows we did there were DADA Soireés.  No financial expectations for those shows.”

I find on Twitter and in bars far too much energy spent on How to Develop Audience and How to Keep the Audience You Have and How to Market to Minority Audiences and effing on and on and on and on…Christ!  It’s enough to drive me batty!

The difference between a guy on the street hustling you for “…$0.65 for the El” and the guy in a business suit trying to convince you to buy stock is the suit. Both are trying to shill you out of a coupla bucks but the guy in the suit has overhead to pay.  He has to pay to clean the suit.  He has to pay for the office and for the business cards he prints up.  He has to pay the cleaning lady so he can keep his place of business presentable.

My decision to go the route I went was paved with a host of experiences.  I’ve been Equity and made good money in theater.  And quit.  I’ve starved as an artist – living on nothing and pursuing my artistic muse while eating a loaf of of Roman Meal bread for a week.  I didn’t like it much.  And then it occurred to me.  I don’t like selling my artistic muse for the highest bidder.  It becomes a Catch-22 – in order to sell it (a different skill set altogether from the creation and execution of theater) I had to put energy into the suit.  The business cards.  The office.  I had to create art that I thought would sell which suddenly put me in a mindset that made me feel like the art was less the point and the sale was the thing.

I remember the tipping point – Fall of 2003.  I had spent four years running a theater – a building – in order to have the autonomy I craved.  We had an annual budget that tipped over the $100K a year numbers and most of it went into the building, not the artists.  We had to put up shows that were stupid and fun but were artistically wanting.  Just to make rent.  I found myself pumping my own money into it all the time.  And I was tired.  Tired of spending my time battling the landlord to fumigate the place when the three restaurants next door fumigated and all the rats came our way.  Battling the ancient electrical system.  Battling the tenants as they left trash unsecured behind the building and then battling the city for the fine.  I smoked three packs a day and became a fat, bloated gray-skinned servant to the sale of other people’s art.  I spent hours a day working on our website, on our poster designs, on our postcard distributions.  Mailing lists were VERY important.  Board meetings were more so.  Meetings to determine which grants to chase after and meaningless affiliations with organizations that couldn’t care less about our artistic output.  I drank a LOT.

And I realized that I had stopped enjoying the art in the building.  I was hustling so much that the joy I associated with creating work was all but dead.  And I had to choose.  Continue on that track and fight for the very thing destroying what I loved or let that shit go and be an artist.

I know more people who have burned out on live theater and stopped being artists because there was no money in it.  The grind of trying to sell the art ate their artistic souls and they moved on.  I’m not one of them.  Divorce the notion that you are entitled to be paid money for your art and you will never grow weary of it.  If making a living as an artist is your goal, your art will reflect that.  It can’t help but do so.  If your primary intent when making art is the sale, your art will whither and exist as a zombified reflection of actual art, like a really artistic hair color commercial.

Like the busker who stands on the corner and blows his trumpet into the world and hopes folks passing by will enjoy it and throw a couple of bucks in his case, I am a gypsy.  I am my own version of Tuttle, my own interpretation of Banksy, my own private Tristan Tzara.  The price I pay for that privilege is that I have to have a job independent of the the sale of my art.  And the liberation from hustling to peddle the art makes the rewards of the art more juicy.  At the end of the day, with theater, all you really end up with is the memory of the experience – pictures, reviews, a website – but mostly a memory.  I like that when I look back at Hopper or the last two DADA shows, my memory is of the work not how much money was invested or made.

Independence has a price.  It’s worth the price I pay.