The Field provides strategic and creative services to thousands of performing and media artists and companies in New York City and beyond. Founded by artists for artists, we also respond proactively to sector-wide challenges through special programs such as Field Leadership Fund: a fellowship that offers real opportunities, remuneration and access to ambitious artists, arts organizations and arts managers.
1) More Americans identify as artists than as lawyers, doctors, or police officers... There are at least 2 million of us! (source: Bureau of Labor Statistics)
2) Since 2009, 80% of arts organizations in NY are reducing their budgets and more than 50% are reducing staff and canceling programs. (source: Alliance for the Arts 2009)
3) Meanwhile, sharing is on the rise. As The Economist put it, "What do you do when you are green, broke and connected? You share."
4) OurGoods exists because more work gets done in networks of mutual respect and shared resources than in competitive isolation. By working together, members of OurGoods build lasting ties in communities of enormous potential.
How is OurGoods funded?
Three years ago, I applied for the first round of ERPA funding for the idea that became OurGoods.org. With three years of mentorship and financial support from The Field backing OurGoods up, I'm teaching a class at The New School called Barter: The Social Practice of Non-Monetary Exchange. If you're interested in reading more about barter and following the class from the blog, go to http://barterclass.tumblr.com/. Also, we just received $100,000 from The Rockefeller Foundation and will be running an analog version of OurGoods as part of Creative Time's Living as Form show. For a schedule of events there, and appointments for barter advice, check out: http://ourgoods.org/events/ourgoods_living_as_form
Once I began to approach business in the same way I approach my art, everything became, well, poetic. For several years I studied the business of art: money management, time management, grant writing, networking, and marketing. Though my skills improved in all of these areas, it all clicked when I began to study, The Art of Business. Here are some insights I found applying my art as a performance poet to handling what my momma would call, “my bizness.”
First, I asked myself a question: “What do I need to do to conduct successful business?” The answer: communication, communication, communication. I began using my approach to poetry to my emails. My poems are often meant to honor people and share my visions, so I started to include a sentence acknowledging people’s hard work, insights, or commitment, and a sentence articulating my vision in emails with partners and collaborators. I also started a tradition, “Thank You Fridays,” to put in random calls thanking one or two people a week, just because. This poetic approach transformed my relationship with key partners. They instantly had more leniency for my sometimes inconsistent communication, and more importantly, were increasingly staked in my artistic vision. Score 1 for Poetry!!
Second, I thought about applying similar rituals to my business as I do to my art. For years, I’ve used a special Black & White composition notebook to scribble down words that eventually evolved into poems. Now, I have a dedicated notebook to write down my business ideas, and a green pen to write with. Two of my favorite poets, Langston Hughes and Pablo Neruda wrote with green pens, so it is an homage to them as well. My other ritual was to light a candle when I started handling business in my office. The lighting of the candle helped transition me to my work day. The blowing out of the candle helped me close out my work day.
These are two simple ways I’ve incorporated my approach to poetry to business. More important than these two examples is the overall transformation to my relationship to conducting business. No longer am I a novice in an unfamiliar world. I am an experienced poet exploring my artistic practice in real time with people.
As fellow ERPA recipients, Connie Hall, Artistic Director of Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant and I chose to collaborate to create a visceral, hands-on experience that would convey the core values that lie at the foundation of the work that we make and how we make it. This task proved to be an enlightening challenge.
Last week Connie posted a blog that tracked the similarities between our work and how we folded that into our presentation plan. This blog offers a meta-view of our creative process in making that plan. In retrospect I realized that our planning followed a trajectory that exactly mirrors my choreographic process.
Start with a large idea. Make the First Draft Plan. Revise. Look deeper. Revise. Edit. Revise. End up with a small story.
To give a context for all of this, I quote Connie’s terrific synopsis of our respective companies: My company, The Equus Projects, makes site specific performance works for dancers and horses. Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant, makes five course meals for our audiences. We both engage with a specific community that has a secondary interest other than theater or dance (food and horses). In comparing our work and our creative process Connie and I realized that we both need a certain level of participation or “buy in” from the audience or community in order for the performance to exist. (I use local horses in each venue so I need equestrians to lend me their horses. Connie needs her audience to eat her food).
In our first meeting Connie and I scanned the full range of our ideas and efficiently drafted a plan for our presentation.
Revisiting that plan weeks later we realized that we were biting off far to large a chunk of information, that we were casting ourselves as talking heads, that the experiential part of our presentation had become framed as information and actually we were missing the essence of what we do.
The next phase of our process felt lots messier. We shredded the original presentation and asked ourselves hard questions: What motivates the desire to feed an audience food, or spend intense time with peoples’ horses. This was the Are-We-Ever-Going-To-Have-An Actual Finished Piece-Phase of the creative process. We realized we both loved taking our work OUT of a conventional theatre setting. We spent time talking about our creative process and what impact we wanted the performance to have on our audiences. We realized that we wanted the audience to linger with us inside the process.
Eventually we distilled our core objective down to bringing an audience a real time experience. With horses there is always the element of unpredictability. Equus Projects dancers must be able to perform in real time as opposed to memory time.I want the audience to witnesses the dancers inside this process of in-the-moment decision-making.Connie feeds her audience a full meal that is in itself a completely visceral experience. Along with the food she serves, Connie crafts a theatrical experience that is suspenseful. She leads her audiences to feel that anything can happen.
Once the messy, “Ask yourself all the nitty-gritty questions phase” of the process was done, the extra, unnecessary events we in the original plan fell away. We were left with the most essential elements. The remaining task was to create transitions that took the audience on a cohesive journey.
Looking back, I clearly recognize how similar this experience was to creating a new work. Tell the small story. Keep it really visceral. Take the audience on a journey.
Connie, thanks for the creative brainstorming and for writing such a great Blog!
We spend so little time really making a study of the way another group of performers works. As part of the ERPA program, Joanna Mendl Shaw, artistic director of The Equus Projects and I were tasked with finding out what we lessons we might share with The Field from the lives of our performing ensembles.
Joanna’s company dances with horses. My company, Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant, makes five course meals for our audiences. We both engage with a specific community that has a secondary interest other than theater or dance (food and horses). We both need a certain level of participation or “buy in” from the audience or community in order for the performance to exist. (Joanna needs people to lend her their horses. I need them to eat my food.) Joanna’s company has been working for decades. Mine will celebrate its fourth birthday this Wednesday. Her company has gone through several stages of turnover with the dancers. Mine is still founder-driven, but we have significantly padded ourselves with new people this year.
Naturally, we thought we might compare our experiences with the lifecycle of an ensemble and explore the question of “keeping the spark alive” when working with the same group of people over time. But this begged the question of what that spark is exactly that we are trying to keep alive. For both of our companies, we boiled it down to something Joanna calls real time. I call it suspense or the feeling that anything can happen in the room.
In the work of both companies, events unfold in front of an audience in real time as part of an intricately orchestrated, but unset, performance. Joanna talks about physical listening. The need for it is obvious. Her dancers are doing something that seems to me akin to a kind of intuitive, subtle, speedy, gorgeous, concentrated, wildly reactive computer programming. (If I do A the horse does B. If the horse does C, I must do D or I will get trampled.) In my company, we balance all the logistics and timing of meal preparation and service with our performance, thus our characters have occupations that empower us to able to troubleshoot and make speedy adjustments from within the world. For both of our companies, the performance involves crucial unpredictable components not completely within the performers’ control.
The experiment of it is so compelling that, for both of us, doing the work has a kind of self-propagating curiosity, and it draws people in—ensemble members and audience alike. Thanks, Joanna, for your commitment to your work and for sharing it with me!
The Equus Projects will be in Prospect Park on October 30. www.dancingwithhorses.org.
Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant will be at Cleveland Public Theatre December 2-19. www.avantgarderestaurant.com
I am including here an email I was cc'ed on from big thinker Karl Cronin to big heart-er Kahlil Almustafa. (Karl and Kahlil met as part of The Field's ERPA Planning grants!) THANK YOU so much Karl and Kahlil for inspiring me and The Field.....xoxo Jennifer Wright Cook, Executive Director
*************
Hi Kahlil,
I just wanted you to know that after months of brewing I'm putting pen to paper and planning a series of house concerts inspired by the model you developed with your ERPA project.
the format is solid - offer art as a catalyst for folks to get folks together in informal settings and start talking.
I believe the intimacy, directness, and informality of house concerts can create some of the most powerful moments of social transformation.
I have witnessed this first hand, and am so pleased you chose to unearth and polish off this time tested social practice and offer it to your fellow creatives.
Did you produce a "House Recital 101" article? If so, I'd love to read it.
Cheers,
Karl
Karl Cronin karlcronin.com
********************* And Kahlil's reply! ************************* Karl,
Thanks so much for this message.
A poet named Sekou Sundiata did a project: "finding the 51st (dream) state: Sekou Sundiata's America Project," that included "citizenship dinners." Take a look. There is a whole curriculum. http://mappinternational.org/blocks/view/295
I do not know about Tumblr. How does it work? What is it? I will check it out.
Oh my god, the New America Tour website is amazing, super-inspiring. Yea, yea, yea!!! Keep me updated. So, when you say "House Concerts" you mean via Ustream. I have been thinking about something similar. How did that work out.
So many thoughts, keep me posted,
kahlil
*********************** I am so glad to know both of these me. They make the world a better place.
This is the FULL footage folks. Glean advice and inspiration from our entrepreneurial whiz kids, the ERPA four, and catch Jennifer Wright Cook's "F*ck Sustainability" moment*. It all happened live.
Want more? We've got a couple of options for you! Check out the e-version of We Are No Longer Strangers, the ERPA project up-to-date report here and if you're craving an alternative ERPA perspective, email jennifer@thefield.org to request a pdf link to our Strangers Addendum with straight talk from deft ERPA outsiders like NYC Venture Philanthropy Fund's Heather Rees.
Last but not least, don’t forget to tell us what you think! This is a blog after all…
Take a quick Sneak Peek into The Field's swanky ERPA Book Launch event at OpenPlan's Penthouse from earlier this week. Whet your appetite? Check back for the complete footage of Arlene Goldbard's compelling keynote and the ERPA artists' insightful Panel Discussion next week!
In 2009, I started using the Tupperware Party Model to hold Living Room Readings. Don’t laugh! Tupperware parties have sold billions of dollars of merchandise over the decades. To hold a Living Room Reading, I ask a person in my network to host their friends and family in their home or community space for an intimate gathering. During the event, we have discussions, play games, have a poetry reading, and sell books. This model can be easily replicated by writers, musicians, visual artists, dancers, and artists of all disciplines.
When inventor Earl Tupper developed those small plastic bowls in 1946, later known as Tupperware, those who witnessed it considered it a miracle. This new product was much lighter and less likely to break than traditional food containers made of glass. The problem was, Tupperware was not selling in retail stores. No one knew how they worked. It was out of this need to find a non-traditional method of reaching customers that the first Tupperware Home Party was born.
Artists are faced with a similar problem today. Our potential customers do not understand how “art works.” The same way Tupperware was not able to sell in retail stores, the traditional method of selling art through large institutions isn’t working. Both individual artists and arts organizations can learn from the Tupperware Party Economic Model to engage communities with their art while creating an additional revenue stream.
Here are two principles from the Tupperware Party Economic Model which artists can learn from:
People Need Demonstrations to Understand How the Product Works – Even though artistic expression is as ancient as human breath, for many people it is as revolutionary technology as those small plastic containers were in the 1950’s. In my career as a performance poet I have found that people need to see a demonstration of the product. Often times, after attending one of my workshops or performances, people will email me to tell me they used a poem in the book to start a conversation or they wrote a poem of their own. People realized they considered poetry irrelevant to their everyday lives. My demonstration reminded them of the usefulness of poetry in the world.
My guess is that this need for people to see “art work,” exists across artistic disciplines. How can a dancer remind someone to connect to their body? How many shower-singers are waiting to be reminded of the power of sharing their voice? When you transform someone’s relationship to the way art can be expressed in their lives, they are likely to become loyal supporters.
People are Empowered Through Participation – Everyone knows, if you go to a Tupperware Party, be ready to play games. Participation, from the host to the guests, are a key principle in the Tupperware Party Model. Games are an opportunity to engage the guests with the product. During these games, guests compete for play money which can be used to buy giveaways. This takes advantage of a universal human phenomenon: reciprocity. When people receive something free, they are inclined to give back. For you, this can mean ticket sales, donor support, or product purchases.
Let other People Promote - The Tupperware Party Economic Model takes advantage of one universal human characteristic: “people buy things from people they trust.” By using social networking, partnering with one host can lead to twenty to thirty new supporters, which in turn can lead to two or three more events. For artists, this is an excellent way to get around large cultural institutions, with their bloated budgets, and bring their art directly to people. This is an excellent way to develop your audience as an artist.
For my Living Room Readings, I arm hosts with promotional materials: a description of the event, a description of my book, a short bio, a photo, and a YouTube clip. Everyone wants to throw a good party, so the hosts are sure to promote. As they promote the event, they also promote me.
Using the Tupperware Party Economic Model gives artists access to performance space and the highly-coveted new audience. It also forces artists to get close up and personal with people, sharing their artistic process and breaking that fourth wall between performer and audience. Over the course of nine months, I held ten Living Room Readings, leading up to the publication of my book. At the release party, more than fifty percent of the audience had participated in a Living Room Reading. They came because they knew that poetry worked.
As an artist living and working in New York City, I often suffer from the all-to-well-known phenomenon known as “artist burnout.” My art takes place in performance spaces, in community spaces, and in schools. I often run around from space to space chasing whoever has the best contract at the time. I call this the Artist Mercenary Model.
Like many artists, living contract-to-contract has a tendency to distort my art practice. For example, my work as a Teaching Artist includes hour-long commutes to schools in New York City’s outer boroughs where I am often given as little as 45 minutes to teach as many as 35 young people how to write poetry. As a Performance Poet, I am often asked to perform for fifteen to as little as three minutes. While these are opportunities to engage people with poetry, they do not go to the depths I believe needs to be explored.
For years, I have experienced my art and me as an artist relegated to the margins of conversations. It is always the mission and the mandate of the organizations, institutions or schools that take precedence over my artistic vision. At the end of many weeks, I often find myself asking what am I doing this for.
During the last three years, I have taken a stand for my artistic vision. To develop this vision, I enrolled in the MFA Program in Interdisciplinary Arts at Goddard College. This provided a rigorous academic structure and community to develop my ideas. My participation in The Field's ERPA (Economic Revitalization for Performing Artists) grant program boosted my capacity to mobilize my vision. During the last three years, I have transitioned from the “Artist Mercenary Model” to what my artistic collaborator, Director Megan Sandberg-Zakian, calls the “Generative Artist Model.” As a Generative Artist, I am the initiator of the project, the holder of the vision, the expert in the room. As a Generative Artist, I am in the heart of community, the hub to keep the wheels turning.
In June, I held an event that is an excellent example of my growth as a visionary artist, “Growing Up Queens.” The event was part of Queens Council on the Arts’ Queens Arts Express four-day festival celebrating art along the 7 train line in Queens. Growing Up Queens combined my work as a performer and as an educator. Young people from five different schools I worked with during the year came together to share the stage with each other and with me. I also performed excerpts from my multimedia show, “Growing Up Hip-Hop: Plugged-In.” The event was an opportunity to celebrate expression.
"Growing Up Queens" was an example of being a Generative Artist. To produce this event, I engaged classroom teachers and schools, a performing arts center, and an arts organization with my vision. My years of experience producing student culminating performances within schools made me the expert at LaGuardia Performing Arts Center. I had a more in-depth experience with select students. The aesthetic and flow of the event followed my vision as opposed to the mandate of the schools.
Another example of my transitioning to the Generative Artist Model is my Poetry & Dialogue series “The People’s Inauguration.” On January 20, 2010, the one-year anniversary of Barack Obama’s Inauguration, I held a panel discussion at the Jerome L. Greene Performance Space at WNYC to celebrate the release of my collection of poems and discuss the first year since this historic moment. The panel format, “Poetry & Dialogue,” began with poetry readings from each chapter of my book, followed by responses by each of the four panelists. The event concluded with a personal letter I wrote to President Obama.
In contrast to the dozens of panel discussions that I participated in previously, I designed this one with poetry in the center of the conversation. As anyone who has ever attended a panel discussion knows, panelists tend to spew pre-formulated sound bites. During "The People’s Inauguration Event" the poetry engaged the panelists and the audience in dynamic ways, infusing sentiment and insight into the dialogue.
During the event, we created several opportunities for audience members to participate through the “Dear Barack” campaign. Before the event, they wrote letters to the President. After people wrote their letters, they had the opportunity to read them on camera. Audience member in attendance as well as those watching online could also participate by Twittering their comments and questions with the HashTag #dearbarack which was aggregated on a live feed on our website (www.dearbarack.mvmt.com). This was also in contrast to traditional panel discussions which only give audience members the limited Q&A session to contribute their voices to the conversation.
The People’s Inauguration event is a second example of the Generative Artist model. During the first year of Obama’s presidency, as U.S. citizens engaged in coarse debates at Town Hall Meetings, I offered an artist's approach to dialogue. By engaging the panelists and audience members through poetry and letters, I offered a method of expression where people felt comfortable expressing anger, disappointment, hope and joy and asking long-standing questions. Poetry and personal letters gave people permission to speak from the heart, to leave questions unanswered, and to embrace the contradictions.
These two events were examples of my transition from the Artist Mercenary Model to the Generative Artist Model. Producing these events did not earn me a lot of money. I probably made $800 from both events while putting in more than 80 hours for each event. That’s not even minimum wage. Still, I took a stand for myself as an artist, and made sure my mission and my vision was at the center of the conversation.
As many artists know, those weeks between submitting your grant application and receiving that letter in the mail with the funder's return address, are full of anticipation. I know the phases of the waiting game well: estimating the approximate time of arrival, letting yourself forget all about it, lingering longer than usual just in case you run into the mail carrier. I have those low-budget-sitcom-college-acceptance superstitions: thin envelope will have a one-page rejection, while a thicker envelope will include some additional forms to fill out along with your award letter.
In the past two years, I have received five grants - that’s an extra$10,000. Whoa! Recently, I received one of those rejections, though not in one of those “thin envelopes.” After being turned down I was left with the question artists inevitably end up asking: What’s wrong with me? I realize I should have been asking is: What was wrong with my grant application?
Recently, I had the opportunity to be one of seven judges sitting on a grant panel. I was sitting on the other side of the table. The grant panel was a $2,500 grant for performing artists given out by a local arts council. Here are some insights I discovered while participating in the adjudication process.
1) Control the Lens
It is imperative that you control the lens through which the grant panel will view you. On this grant panel, there was an applicant who introduced himself as a dancer. In his artist statement, he wrote passionately about a performance combining poetry with traditional dances from his two heritages. Shortly after viewing his work sample, the two dancers on the grant panel began to comment: “Oh, his dancing is not as strong as the other applicants.” “Yes, I must agree, put him in the ‘NO’ pile.”
As a performance poet who has attended countless one-person shows, I did not see mediocre dancing, I saw a performer incorporating elements of dance into his performance. I tried to advocate on his behalf, “Wait, I think we should take a closer look.” After re-reading his project vision, I attempted to translate to the group. “As a performance poet, I see a brave artist who is attempting to use the traditional dances of his two ancestral lines in one performance. It is his attempt to bring two communities together and therefore have his whole self exist in one space.” My passionate plea only received a dismissive response “Fusion dance is nothing new, and this is a poor attempt at it.”
This artist had practically doomed himself, simply by checking the wrong box. He may identify as a dancer in his heart. He may wake up every morning and feel as if his body was put on earth for the sole purpose of dancing, but for this particular application, he would have had a much greater chance if he had allowed the grant panel to view him through the lens of a performance artist. When he checked the “dance” box, he gave permission to people from the dance world to speak as experts. So, no matter how much I advocated, I was the performance poet, speaking as an outsider.
The point here is that the grant application is not necessarily your opportunity to define yourself as an artist. It is your chance to convince of group of people to give you money to fulfill your dreams. Consider how this specific grant panel (or foundation) will view your work and check the right box. Control the lens.
2) Show Momentum
The more money you get, the more money people want to give you. This often seems counterintuitive, wrong even, but as Billy Holiday sings, “God bless the child who got his (or her or non-gendered their) own.” People want to get on while the ship is already moving. I understand Money attracts Money. I know the “Laws Of Attraction.” I saw The Secret.
This realization came to me a month after receiving an ERPA Grant from The Field. It was at an open dialogue given in partnership with a granting organization and a local arts council. Upon meeting the Assistant Director, I told her about my project recently receiving funding. She was vaguely familiar with the ERPA Program. Her immediate response was, “Why aren’t you getting money from us?” We set up a meeting which has led to continuous support from this organization.
There is nothing a granting organization loves more than to feel as if they are funding a project just as it is gaining momentum. At the grant panel, the whole room gets excited, as each person takes turns pointing out evidence toward a qualified applicant: “Well, she already has funding from another grant and has raised $500 in donations from family and friends.” “And look, last year she did a sold-out run in this 150-seat theater.” “Wow, her work sample looks good.” “Her promotion strategy looks good.” “Budget’s all good.” - - “Put her in the YES pile.” The first time this happened I was amazed. We had not even looked at the Artist Statement or the Project Vision. If we got to the point later when we were deciding between her and another grantee we might, but for now, she was not only in the “Yes” pile, but in the “Definite Yes” pile, all because of evidence of support for her project. You want to get things moving. Show people how you are already a movement and they will be ready to get on board.
Depending on the specific criteria of the funder, the grant application is not the time to demonstrate your ability to ‘think big,’ it is your opportunity to reaffirm your project vision by showing who you are and how you intend to engage with potential audiences. If you need help, send your application to several people beforehand and have them send you back any questions which may come up. Or, my favorite, invite some people over whom you respect and have them by your mock grant panel. (Make sure to set aside some time in the schedule for dessert served with a praise session to boost your ego back up.)
Hello! Here are some things I've learned while working on OurGoods.
1) This project is my life. I asked The Field to support the idea that became OurGoods.org in December 2008. A year and a half later, with OurGoods nearly open to the public, the OurGoods team (Louise Ma, Rich Watts, Jen Abrams, Carl Tashian, and myself) still can't decide how to divide our ERPA grant money. Why is that? Because we are all creative directors for the project, not contracted wage laborers who don't gain anything larger from its success or failure. We will probably divide the remaining $10,000 up based on a percentage of hours contributed, because we've all put in far more time than the money can cover. I prefer taking a general honorarium to clocking hours because everything I do relates to OurGoods. I will live my entire life answering the question: What is creative work worth and who should support it? In this country, the government certainly isn't going to. Should the value of creative work be measured in dollars, hours, materials, smiles from strangers, peer respect, personal satisfaction, or something else? A more direct question is: What is our work worth to each other? I believe that independent creative workers MUST engage with one another for satisfaction. We can benefit enormously from conversations about value. Bartering creative work for creative work allows us to value each other without measuring everything in dollars and hours. Suddenly, technical skill, research, generosity, and peer respect drive interactions more than market or institutional success.
2) Web designers know what the website should be. If you wonder why our website(s) are so effective, it's because Louise, Rich, and Carl are all authors of the project, not contracted designers. 3 of the 5 co-founders are web designers who understand the material potential of the web. What does this mean? They can shape the system with deep technical and conceptual skills.
3) What's easy/fun for you is worth a lot to someone out there. The ideal barter match on OurGoods is known as an "elegant negotiable" to the business world. This is when you do something simple in exchange for something you really like, and the person you're bartering with feels exactly the same way. For example, I am a foodie and spend A LOT of time cooking. It's easy for me to make extra summer rolls, sourdough english muffins, or fresh salsa while I'm making some for myself. So, I bartered fresh food with Louise in exchange for my new website, which she did in no time. We are going to host workshops this November to help you recognize your elegant negotiables (the things you do happily that other people need desperately).
4. I want to audit economics classes. I've done a lot of research on alternative currencies, and Trade School exposed me to a range of techniques and tactics, but I am still yearning for more information about economics in general and the political economy of art.
We are now at the end of the 18-month period that Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant spent in the ERPA program. The timely award came at the beginning of 2009, when we were a little over two years old, and allowed us to fully experiment with building an artist-driven ensemble theatre company using the financial model of a food service business.So, how did we do?
The implementation grant provided us funds to invest in one-time costs, such as kitchen equipment and service items, so that we could operate our kitchen with greater efficiency and capacity, host longer runs, and spread out the overhead costs of our temporary restaurant.More profoundly, though, the grant has furthered our process of self-determination by giving us the means to try out different ways of existing – self-producing, participating in theater festivals, hosting private events, and partnering with club venues.First, we were able to test our ticket pricing model and to expand the length of self-produced runs in our developmental home, the Bushwick Starr, a theater space where we have access to a residential kitchen. Second, we were able to increase visibility by mounting our logistically challenging at Joe’s Pub, Soho Think Tank’s Ice Factory Festival, and the American Repertory Theater’s club theater space in Cambridge, OBERON.
Ticket Income: B+
We price our theater tickets according to the model set by the food service industry: at four times the food and beverage costs.The payment for the theater is in the margin, and it is more than we are used to getting from ticket sales in the not-for-profit theater.Our goal is to cover all production costs with ticket sales, and we usually sell out our self-produced runs by carefully managing the frequency of our performances and cultivating a loyal return audience base that has grown slowly from word of mouth.
Restaurant 101 teaches you to keep the ratio of fixed or overhead costs (rent, insurance, etc.) low relative to the costs of doing business.Because, as a traveling ensemble, we incur a new set of fixed costs for each event, the longer we run, the better we are able to spread out these costs over multiple performances. In the two self-produced runs we held during this period at the Bushwick Starr, where the fixed costs of a run were well-known, we raised ticket prices and increased the run from 2 nights to 3.By doing so, we were able to cover the event costs completely with ticket sales.
When you take the show on the road, this is nearly impossible.At Joe’s Pub we did not make food and the ticket split for our huge cast meant that we did not pay artists.With the added costs of transportation, housing, and a new, unknown audience, we were unsuccessful in selling or meeting our costs with ticket income at OBERON.
Cost-Control: C-
Restaurant 101 also teaches you that, because it is a business with limited distribution (you can’t do better than sell out), profitability is all about cutting costs. We translated this lesson by budgeting backwards as much as possible from 85% capacity.Since the restaurant industry goal of controlling the cost of labor directly conflicted with my personal goal of paying artists, our remaining course was to keep food and production costs down.
After articulating this goal, we promptly and intentionally broke it. As opportunities lined up for us to gain visibility, garner press, and reach a larger audience, we knowingly spent more money than we could make in ticket sales because we felt it was a necessary leap to make in our growth.We added designers and a design, brought in more performers, and incurred significant new costs such as travel and housing.
My instructions to cut food costs also came at a time when I was being indoctrinated into the Slow Food movement.As we became more sophisticated, principled, and experienced in food service, we sourced premium, locally grown, more expensive ingredients.We did not decrease food costs but we did keep them steady (at approximately $10/head), while at the same time improving quality, by managing quantities better and planning menus more carefully.
Artist Fees: B
A nice fee for a cater-waiter clocking in at five hours including setup and strike would be $120 per event. We have not yet achieved this. For our last self-produced run in Bushwick, all participants—actors, designers, stage manager—continued to be paid at $50 per performance. At OBERON, the actors were paid $100 per performance.
The ensemble never pushed for fees, but I wanted to acknowledge the costs of doing this work. I began paying actors fifty bucks a show when we did our second performance on New Year’s Eve Eve of 2007. Although “paying” is the wrong term … more like: “the least that I could ethically offer to any actor in recognition of the hidden costs of participating in any rehearsal and performance process, such as on-the-go meals and the occasional cab fare.” I vowed that I would not raise fees until I was confident that we would be able to sustain them. I hoped that that would come at the next show. It came exactly three years later. Most of the artists in our ensemble have already solved the problem of supporting themselves in some way. They are here because they have creative ownership of the project. More important than fees were better costumes, strong sound, lights, and set elements, spending more time in rented rehearsal spaces, improving our food service, spending on test meals, site visits, marketing, hiring a production manager to help us manage time, bringing in a design team to further our vision, and finally bringing in an outside director to streamline our process. My wage-earners are also the artistic decision-makers, so, following their interest, I paid them less and added production costs in the only available area we had to cut.Keeping the staff happy actually meant paying them less and providing a more satisfying artistic vehicle for them.
I have purposefully separated the writer from the performer in this compensation equation. Performer fees are tied to event income with us. We do not compensate for writers’ meetings, which are voluntary, but which are the heartbeat of our company.We are in the process of putting together a collaborative writing agreement and figuring out a licensing agreement so that if any compensation were available for our multiply-authored work in the future, there will be a channel already established for delivering such compensation. In our company, the actors perform the functions of writers and cater-waiters (granted, cater-waiters who deliver food with a certain signature charismatic flourish).My goal is to compensate each function appropriately, according to its income source.Writing is a product with unlimited distribution that cannot be paid on the clock. Performing and delivering food within a given period of time can be charged for by the hour.
Basically it boils down to some choices we have made. We chose visibility over compensation this year.We chose growth over sustainability, and as a result our show has been picked up for another out of town run, where artists will be paid competitive fees.
Sustained Inspiration: A-
Since starting this project, the individuals in our ensemble have had four weddings, several major surgeries, a new tenure-track teaching job, a Broadway debut, an acceptance into graduate school, and we now have a baby on the way! This December 2-18, we are taking the show to the Cleveland Public Theatre, with a group consisting of our full production staff and half of the acting company. As in the past, generosity and flexibility are what afford us sustainability.
We will use our knowledge and experience from the past three and a half years to write new content, explore new characters and new relationships between characters. I am very excited about it personally and feel that it is completing the gesture we have worked towards in terms of growth, visibility, and bringing the show to a wider audience.It will combine the two greatest tests of endurance we have had to date: the one-night a week, month-long marathon at OBERON and the four-night, week-long sprint at the Ice Factory Festival last summer.I will, out of necessity, explore new ways of partnering with local vendors and restaurants and integrate them into the piece. I am particularly excited about contributing our energy to the burgeoning Slow Food movement in Ohio.
After Cleveland, I look forward to settling into a more lucrative structure for Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant, focusing on sustainability rather than growth, with a rhythm of 2 shows a year in December and May. It is still my goal to do longer self-produced runs that will pay actors cater-waiter equivalents in the years to come, and I do think it’s possible even with higher production values.I think we are narrowing down the optimum frequency and format for the show that allows for freedom within it.Several individual company members have projects brewing that will involve the group, and I think we are ready to codify the way we run Conni’s, and explore fresh material separately, with fresh financial models that are fitted to their own forms.
Lately I have been asking myself the question “who does a play (or an idea) belong to?”This project has been contagious. It belongs to whomever is most passionate about it, and as founders we are now in the position of choosing to let go, to share, or to hold on tight to what we have already made.At Conni’s, we base our economy on the idea of abundance, not scarcity.And somehow, unbelievably, there is always enough for seconds.
In the past week, I've spent way more time talking about OurGoods than developing the website or bartering with people. I was asked to talk about OurGoods.org at The Walker Arts Center, The Renegade Craft Fair, and The Feast on Good Salon for Internet Week. I used laser pointers for a collective drawing and talked about the power of becoming available at The Walker, bartered with people for a Work Dress at Renegade Craft Fair, and told a story about my path from public art projects to OurGoods at Feast Salon. Thursday: (Minneapolis) The Walker is running a summer long program about The Commons, so I talked about OurGoods as a tool to enrich our cultural commons. I had people make a drawing together with laser pointers to simulate coordinated action. I focused on the potential for diverse connection across disciplines on OurGoods, where barter partners see themselves in relationship to a larger ecology of creative production. They have a video of the whole night online, and you can see me at the 54 minute mark.
Saturday and Sunday: (McCarren Park, Brooklyn) At Renegade Craft Fair, we shared a booth with Burdastyle, a website that offers downloadable sewing patterns. Every other booth at the fair was selling objects, so most people were surprised that we offered sewing tutorials and Work Dresses for barter. It was hard to get people in shopping mode to slow down and sew! I think Trade School is a nice real-time engagement because everyone who shows up wants to be there, but it was nice to meet some DIYcrafters at Renegade.
Monday: (SoHo) The Feast on Good conference is all about social innovation, but The Feast Salon I spoke at focused on internet start-ups like FourSquare and Catchafire. I decided to trace my interest in OurGoods back to public projects I did like making public seating and subway swings, engaging the tech world in projects that act as excuses for interaction and conversation in public space. I think this approach was the most moving because it's a personal story with physical objects- it's not too abstract.
Tuesday: (South Brooklyn) We had a 4 hour brunch meeting/eating about re-opening Trade School! Rich, Louise, and I are really lucky because Saul Melman is joining us to help organize Trade School for the fall. If we don't get enough Kickstarter money, we're thinking of looking for sponsors so we can pay for insurance, some materials, and 10-30% of our labor. We'd love to get small sums from local businesses, but we're also going to approach Home Depot and Whole Foods. I'll let you know what works!
We just premiered the first of our large hub site projects: A forty-minute work for eight dancers, six horses and riders created for a panoramic hillside on the XO Ranch in Aubrey, Texas. Spectacular. Challenging.
Some things worked brilliantly.
Our cast for the project included our company of dancers plus three Texas dancers (who had never worked with horses before) and six local riders and their horses. Rather than plunge right into rehearsal mode, we began our creative process with a 2-day clinic for riders and dancers. Inside a fun, learning environment we were able to introduce the basic principles of what we do and begin experimenting with ideas for the piece. The 2nd day of the clinic was actually taught right on site at the XO Ranch.
In an effort to save on food costs we arranged for hosted dinners every night. These were not only great money savers but a great networking opportunity: time to hang out with our Texas cast of dancers, time to talk about the work with local supporters, time for the community to support us in a way that they could afford and enjoy at the same time.
To promote the performance we arranged open rehearsals. The local schools were in their last week and not able to arrange for trips to the ranch. However we hooked into a home schooling network that brought groups of children and parents to two of our morning rehearsals.
We took our own Site Coordinator with us. She made sure we had driving directions, bought groceries for lunches, set up the box office, monitored our online sales, orchestrated our local volunteers day of performance, secured donated water that we sold at the performance, ordered chairs for audience seating and the porta potty (yes, when you perform with horses in outdoor venues, the audience bio needs must be taken into account). She was our production manager, company manager and site organizer all rolled into one person. Having our own in-house Site Coordinator killed numerous birds with one stone.
In addition to triumphs there were some important lessons learned.
Our ERPA Plan was to secure local presenters in each hub site. For this project our presenter was an equestrian who was very excited about our work but decidedly not a producer. She had no concept of the complexity and magnitude of such a project. Motto: Enthusiasm, commitment to your work is not enough to produce a project.
We invested heavily in this year’s project but will be hefty leverage for a return visit. A wonderful, responsive audience and a host of volunteers are determined to have us do another project next year. My motto for next year: Not without a guaranteed performance fee, some institutional support and a seasoned local producer.
Lesson Learned: Enthusiasm alone does not a producer make!
ERPA team OurGoods is out there in the big, wide world talking their talk and walking their walk. Although OurGoods is primarily an online tool, these big-hearted folks know that you gotta break bread to truly move any needles. So after their hugely successful Trade School in January (help them out on Kickstarter to get another Trade School to pop up!) this ambitious team is putting their feet on the ground at The Feast Salon. It's sold out but get on the waiting list just in case...Monday, June 7th.
"The Feast is a cross-disciplinary series of programs addressing social innovation and new ways to make the world a better place. Our secret sauce lies in a healthy combination of passion, creativity, and entrepreneurship to shift the way things are done – thereby changing individuals, industries, and ultimately the world."
Let's see what they have to offer.....and I'll stop mixing metaphors.
I clearly remember standing in a muddy field with a farmer who shall remain nameless as he vented about the CSA members who abuse his “Suggestions” box. Grow more of this. Grow less of that. Why didn't you publish my recipe in the newsletter? “The feedback will drive you insane if you take it to heart,” he told me.
When I asked him why he didn't just ditch the box, he made it clear that, without the box, his members just seized him at each pick-up date. The box allowed him to manage his members' constructive impulses without putting the pressure to placate directly on him.
As performing artists, we are probably even more vulnerable to such pressure. We must please our audience (or please through selective displeasure, depending on aesthetic and mission), please our funders, please our critics, and more. From which of these sources do we actually want feedback? Do we care about the audience's feedback if they continue to fill our houses? The reviewer's feedback if she continues to drive our work to new audiences? The funder's feedback if those checks keep getting written? Is feedback itself an intrinsic good?
Throughout the process of this CST experiment, from our earliest research stages up until our most recent members' meetup, this question of feedback has pushed itself into our collective headspace time and time again. Though most people feel quite at ease in the critic's chair when out dining, far fewer feel comfortable extemporizing about the relative virtues and vices of produce in the raw. Our first year's experiment with the CST reveals that there may not yet exist such a distinction between the nature of feedback audiences might give to a finished work and that which they'd offer a work-in-progress. Before each invitation to discuss our very raw work-in-progress, our company has discussed what type of feedback was most helpful for us to hear from our CST members and how best to solicit it. Invariably, however, we'd botch our communication of conversational constraints. Without clear "rules of engagement," we'd find ourselves defending artistic choices...and, worse, acting defensively towards our most committed supporters! We could tighten the conversational reigns so much that no ambiguity remains, narrowing the slot on our metaphorical feedback box, but that seems unlikely to lead to the type of discourse we want.
How might we siphon the brilliance of our members' perspectives without placing ourselves in an adversarial critic-artist dialectic? The noun "feedback" has a very specific meaning in the worlds of electronics: "the process of returning part of the output of a circuit, system, or device to the input, either to oppose the input or to aid the input." Our concern with the CST isn't that our members' comments "oppose the input," but rather that we have not yet found a technique whereby they can return "part of the output."
When one encounters a work of art hanging in a museum, the impulse (for me at least) has always been to interpret the work's meaning and the artist's choices given what ever frame of reference the curator provides. I certainly don't evaluate the work's quality; whether I am familiar with the artist or not, I assume its worth is a given. (Yes, sometimes we look at the work and say "My three year-old can paint that!" But, generally, we are encouraged by the curation to interpret and respond instead of just sharing our likes and dislikes a la a Facebook post or Yelp review) If the artist herself could hear the excited interpretations her work summons from me, that would be feedback in the truest (electronic) sense of the word. I would take her input into my imagination and return it to her, offering a deeply personal perspective that might help her view her work differently. Feedback is not evaluative; it's not constructive criticism, and by linking the words as freely as we do, we risk the means of artist-audience engagement that so many of us covet.
We only have three member meetups left of our pilot season, but I am certain that in those remaining encounters, we'll be working to ensure our audience has opportunities to feed us back the imaginative reverberation that works of art can inspire.
