Kevin at BlogHouston picks up the Houston Chronicle story about financial collapse of Infernal Bridegroom Productions.
I have some personal knowledge of what it takes financially to survive in the local stage world. A girl I know wrote a play several years back and entered it into a new playwright talent competition that was judged by a panel of professional theater folks. Her play won first prize and was later put on in an abridged form on a few occasions by several local theater troupes at some small theater houses here in town. She crafted a few others before stopping her work to concentrate on furthering her formal education.
To cut to the chase, there were problems with venues, the terms which theater house owners would put on allowing her play to be staged, and so on. Moreover this girl had some ambition. She wanted to do some rewrites to her play and then put on a full length run (3-4 weeks) at a larger theater house. It turned out that she located 2 venues that were interested at the time, but they wanted (if I remember correctly) a minimum of $500 per night to put on her play. That would have meant that a 4 day per week run for 3 weeks would have had a starting price tag of $6,000 to stage and that did not include such small things like props, lighting, advertising, and so forth. However those items would have been donated for free by sympathetic travelers and allies. As for the cast and crew receiving payment for their efforts, well I made it clear to these youthful idealistic souls that he who had the gold was the one who made the rules - right? They soon got the message that they were not the ones in the drivers' seat when it came down to talking about money.
I told this girl that I was willing to put up the money for staging her play on the terms that I would have gotten 100 percent of all ticket sales up to my initial investment and would have split anything beyond that 50 / 50 with her and her troupe. I would have also been given Executive Producer credit for my investment risk. It later turned out that there were scheduling issues and several troupe members who worked with her went off to do other things, ergo the enterprise eventually drifted apart.
Still, the experience gave me a new appreciation for what many entertainers do on the Houston theater and arts scene. Starving artists had their own self help groups back in Ancient Rome. Two millennia later I found that little had changed and their spiritual descendants here in H-Town still suffer for their art and willingly at that. As Kevin sort of alluded to, many times established theaters or troupes will put on well known plays just to pay the bills and upstarts have to fight tooth and nail just to get started. I would venture to guess that IBP's following might have been growing older and moving on with their lives. However, not having ever seen any of their work I would not be certain of the validity of my belief.
The exercise really does go to show how hard cultural types have to work in order to make it in the free market for entertainment where they compete for your discretionary spending dollars with television, movie theaters, home videos, hobby past times, music venues and nightclubs, and so on. Many talk the talk about Houston being a great place for culture, but little do they know how hard it is to put your money where your mouth is and walk the walk. Maybe I should revisit the idea of becoming an arts entrepreneur and make another run at bankrolling some hopeful artists. Stay tuned.
Wizard.
Posted by The Mighty Wizard at July 25, 2007 12:10 AM