The Nine is a whole lotta things and even more ideas all rolled into one epic tapestry, but when I really boil it down, there are three big components that anchor both the sum and the parts, the means and the end, the forest and the trees:
A) It's experimental.
B) It's temporary.
C) It's free.
The order of importance is negotiable, so let's start with the one that has the most people concerned for my mental well-being: that whole free thing.
Simple answer: The Nine is free. Period. It's as easy as that.
Detailed answer: No really, The Nine is free. There's no catch to this. There is no suggested donation, I'm not asking you to pay what you can or what you want. We are sharing this work with you, and sharing is free.
Why would I do such a thing? Well, first of all, theatre pricing is not doing us (collectively) any favors. I'm not talking about ridiculous Broadway prices or even the big Equity houses here in Chicago. I'm talking all the way down the line. Let's work off the assumption that the average storefront ticket price in Chicago is $20. You can find cheaper, but $20 seems to be about normal. Transfer that to any other art form, and it goes from normal to somewhere between overpriced and exorbitant. You might find exceptions in opera, visual arts (if we're talking collecting, but for this example, I'd argue that museum fees are a better guideline), and perhaps dance. Notice that in addition to that, these are largely the temporary arts -- that we are charging more with no promise of replay value. And we're the little guys! We're the ones that are supposed to be trying to get new butts in the seats! And we charge people $10-15 an hour to come out and watch what we're doing? Sure, it's accepted, but it's also silly.
In an age where film and music and television are dealing with technological advances and production and distribution costs lowering to the point of negligibility, we're going about our merry way. Even if the Internet hasn't had made a major dent in our assumptions about distribution yet, we should be learning from the dents it has been making in other spheres. Art is becoming more and more omnipresent and thus cheaper and cheaper. Theatre is a form that has the dis/advantage of not being as widely affected by the 21st century D.I.Y. tsunami, but in order to use that to our benefit, we need to market the exclusivity of that fact (this will play into the temporary aspect of The Nine as well), not overcharge for it and become collectibles and eventually relics. Free theatre needs to exist in the world of the $20 average every bit as much as the $100 Broadway ticket does. When your bargain basement price for theatre ($10, I'd say; it's hard to find cheaper than that outside a very small handful of companies) is still average to high for a movie or CD, we're doing it wrong. And Non-Eq companies charging more than $20 for a ticket, you're pissing industry theatregoers off. For God's sake, stop it. Or at least start getting more generous with your industry offers (if I were king, every night would be industry night everywhere). If none of the above matters to you at all, at least start taking care of your own, ya jerks.
So that' s a big part of it, but the real bottom line even beyond the market approach is that I've got some, let's say... unique ideas about art. Namely, I think it should all be free. Always. It's lofty, it's idealistic, it might be a bit pretentious, but to me, art in all of its forms seems beyond, more important than cash value. Of course, it takes money to create art, but to my mind, money given to an artist should not be an exchange for goods and services received, it should be an investment to ensure the continued supply of those goods and services. And that sort of investment shouldn't be made until you know that a continued supply of those goods and services is something you actually want. There's no sense in paying for art you don't enjoy.
Don't give me money for something I've already made. If you really want to pitch in; help me make more.
Bries.
No comments:
Post a Comment