There is a structure for profit sharing in professional theatre. It is called a Co-op. Where everyone is a member of the company and everyone gets paid the same because everyone is putting in the same amount of hours. Everyone has a job or two. One person will act and another will do the publicity. One person will do the sets and another will do box office. That sort of thing. The books are open to everyone and nothing is left to guessing. At the end of the run, all expenses and box office is added up and profits or losses are shared. In this structure there is always someone or two who does not carry their weight, but that will always happen in every structure. And when someone doesn’t carry their weight you just don’t use them again. In other jobs it’s called being fired. Simple.
The next step up is a professional theatre company where everyone is hired to do their job and that is that. Payment is guaranteed regardless of what the box office brings in. But there are other structures that are popping up. The one where a producer is in charge of everything and only pays their actors/artists based on what they personally sell to the public.
Last week I went to a production of Mart Crowley’s Boys In The Band at PAL Vancouver. This project had a compensation structure for the actors and artists of which I found myself wondering about. An actor gets a cut from each ticket they sell. That’s it. You must personally sell each and every ticket in order to get a cut of the $25/30 ticket price. At best, an actor is looking at making between $100 and $300 dollars if they are lucky. And while I support alternate ways of trying to fund the arts, this structure doesn’t work for me nor my union. So, productions such as this will have to do without my sparkling wondrous talent. And there was no sign this show was missing me.
Now, I know a lot of people involved with this show, so I’ll just say I enjoyed the performances and the set. While there seemed to be a little much ‘back acting’ from my seat, things moved along and it was a decent effort by all.
I found my mind to be filled rather with thoughts on funding the arts and the script. I’ll start with the script.
I like this script. In fact, the producer of this show and I had a coffee a few years back and discussed our mutual affection for Mart Crowley’s play about a group of self-hating homos in New York in the sixties. ( Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boys_in_the_Band ) And there is a lot in there for actors to have fun with, which I guess is why I like it. But the play has little to teach at this point in my life. The topics covered in this script, while once may have been unique, are now covered in many books, plays, movies, and tv shows. What a one time seemed to be a cathartic nature of the work, now seems less special and hum drum.
There is a part of me who applauds the alternative approach to funding the arts. Necessity is the mother of innovation and invention. And God knows the arts needs new ways of funding. As for payment of actors and artists in theatre, I still believe that actors need to be paid for the work they do and should not have to worry about selling tickets to that evening’s performance in order to feed themselves. I just think that making your actors sell tickets in order to get paid is a suspicious way of mounting an amateur production and selling it as a professional show. And if people are rehearsing and performing while having to wait for payment, then the books should be open to them. It just seems to make good business sense. With all due respect to the producers and artists involved with this ‘new’ way of doing things, this seems like another version of the ‘old’ way of doing things where the producer is in charge of everything and the actors in charge and control of nothing. But I hope everyone got what they wanted from the production and learn something along the way.
