What’s (still) wrong with crowdfunding for indie theatre?

by Phil RickabyArts, Crowdfunding, TheatrePosted on No Comments

Years ago I wrote a blog post a pet peeve I had where crowdfunding campaigns for theatre projects are concerned, and how a lot of theatre crowdfunding campaigns entirely miss the mark when it comes to creating successful campaigns. Sadly very little has changed.

The issue is this: most crowdfunding campaigns for theatre do a terrible job at generating excitement. A crowdfunding campaign is a way to generate buzz for your project, but one of the most important tools a successful campaign had in actually raising funds are clever and well planned perks for backers. Perks are incentives for people to back the project, and as such should be attractive to a potential backer. When I have backed campaigns in the past, it has been primarily because I wanted one of the perks on offer. It was the perk, that drew me to the project, and encouraged me to back it. And I am not alone.

And yet, most theatre crowdfunding campaigns have a perk structure that goes something like this:

$10: Social Media shout out
$40: Thanks on our website
$75: Thanks in our program
$100: A letter of thanks, signed by the cast.
$125: A ticket to the show.

I see this pretty frequently. Even after eight years. So why is this ineffective?

Well, looking at the perks above, which of these do you feel you really want? My answer, is none. None of these makes me want them, there’s nothing here to want. And the problem with this is that without perks that someone would want, is that the only people who are going to back your campaign are people in your network. With these perks you will never be able to get your campaign to people outside of your personal network. You are essentially just asking your friends for money. And if you are doing this, why are you even bothering to run a crowdfunding campaign?

A successful crowdfunding campaign needs perks that are smart and relate to the show in some way. Offering thanks for any perks isn’t much of a perk, but if you need to do it, then put all the “thanks” into one perk. Don’t spread them over several perks, because none of those is a draw. A better way to go would be to thank all of your backers anyway. Better perks would be some custom merch, perhaps something exclusive to the campaigns. Stickers, buttons, t-shirts. Maybe there’s a prop that is iconic in the show? Have a replica available for higher levels. There are so many things that could be done that are better than the ones above. It just takes a bit of imagination.

So why do so many theatre crowdfunding campaigns do this? I think it happens because not enough consideration is given to these campaigns, and don’t seem to see that to have a successful campaign takes at least as much planning as their show itself. This leads to half assed campaign perks, and while it may be possible to meet your goal with this, since you are essentially getting funding from your friends and family, you will be limited in any future attempts at crowdfunding.

Theatre artists are creative people. It should be possible to have campaigns that are better than the usual. And we should not be seeing these same lazy campaigns after all this time.

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Where is the “popcorn” theatre?

by Phil RickabyArts, TheatrePosted on One Comment

There are a basically two kinds of movies: there’s serious film, and there’s the popcorn movie. Serious films get critical acclaim, film festival attention, award nominations, and are beloved by film buffs. People who aren’t film buffs tend to think that they should see those movies, but don’t as often as they think they should. Popcorn movies don’t get the same kind of attention; the don’t become critical darlings, they are rarely featured at film festivals, and when awards season rolls around, they might be a special effects nomination, but they are seldom up for consideration in any of the “serious categories.” And while they are often disdained by film buffs, the general public is more likely to see these types of movies, and happily pay the ticket price to see the movie, sometimes more than once.

In Canadian theatre we have something similar: we have serious plays; important plays that are produced by most of the mid to large theatre companies (Theatre Passe Muraille, Factory Theatre, Tarragon Theatre, etc). These are plays that have important things to say, and people who go to see those plays are people who describe themselves as theatre goers. These are plays that people who aren’t regular theatre goers might feel like they should go to see, but they don’t for a lot of reasons: maybe they are afraid they are going to be preached at, or its too heavy, or just too expensive to risk going to something they aren’t even sure that they will like. So they just don’t.

What we don’t have at that level is popcorn theatre. Something fun, something in a particular genre, that doesn’t wear its message on its sleeve and doesn’t scream this is important theatre. The kind of thing that draws in those audiences that aren’t regular theatre goers, and gives them a good night out. It might make them think, but it won’t hit them over the head. They came to the theatre to be entertained, and they were.

In Toronto, Mirvish Productions fills that role, presenting musicals and plays that appeal to the masses. But those are expensive tickets, and a lot of people can only afford to go to the one show that really appeals to them, and even then maybe only once every couple of years (perhaps the fact that those are the plays that the mass audience is most likely to see gives rise to the opinion that theatre is an expensive prospect, but that’s a thought for another time).

There are some smaller theatre companies that do this kind of work: present shows that appeal to a mass audience, but they don’t have the budget that those mid to large theatre’s do to be able to advertise and get noticed by a larger audience. 

Once could also argue that there’s plenty of popcorn theatre available at fringe festivals, where the lottery system allows voices that might not be heard at one of the established theatres to be seen.

But outside of Mirvish (and perhaps you could say that the Stratford Festival offers some popcorn theatre in its season as well), there aren’t a lot of opportunities for an audience to see these kinds of plays. 

In the UK and the US, there’s more variety in the types of theatre that’s on offer. The Broadway and the West End scenes offer the kind of popcorn theatre I’m talking about, as well as more serious fare. There’s high art, and low art, and everything in between.

I think there are a few reasons why the more “frivolous” popcorn plays are rare in the Canadian theatre scene:

  • The number of stages. In the US and the UK there are more stages, allowing for more types of plays on those stages. In Canada, there are a comparatively limited number of stages on which to present plays.
  • Grant centric funding. In the UK and the US there is a combination of not-for-profit, grant funded theatres, as well as for-profit theatres. In Canada, there are very few theatres that surivive without grants, and a grant funded theatre tends to produce theatre to fit within what the granting bodies (or at least the adjudicators) want to see. 
  • There may also be a certain amount of preciousness in the theatre. Oh sure, that’s fine for movies, but the theatre is above all that.

I’m not saying that we need to get rid of theatre that says something in favour of empty tripe. Just that we should have more of a balance. We can’t keep complaining that our audiences are disappearing, and yet keep producing plays that the masses don’t want to see. There should be room for serious plays, and raucous comedies, and weird genre plays in a season.

So how do we get there? We can’t magically increase the number of stages that we have. Unless some new form of funding magically opens up that allows more theatre companies to open theatre spaces, the number of stages isn’t going to greatly increase any time soon. Which means that a change needs to happen some place else. It means that companies would need to seek out plays that might seem more frivolous. If granting bodies discourage popcorn theatre, then IMO that needs to change.

Ultimately, for a healthy theatrical future we need theatre that appeals to different audiences: the frivolous and the serious.

I started thinking about this in the midst of the SAG-AFTRA/WGA strikes, when my girlfriend Melanie asked me if I thought that if AI started being used to crank out empty scripts, and doing so caused a dwindling of the attention movies and TV receive, would theatre see a resurgence? And I have been thinking of that since. I think the answer is yes, but not in its current form. Not until theatre gives audiences both the popcorn and the serious. Both, just like the movies.

I struggled to call myself an artist for a long time, and even now I still have to work at it

by Phil RickabyArts, TheatrePosted on One Comment

Identity is a strange thing. For many years in my life, although I was a writer in my spare time and a performer whenever I could find a project, whenever someone would ask what I did, I would describe my day job. Because I felt that since I didn’t wrote or perform full time, that I could not use those titles to describe myself. That I wasn’t enough of an artist to describe myself as one. I no longer feel that way, but getting here was a long journey.

I still feel like an imposter, though. While I write and perform as much as I can, I don’t perform as often as I would like. I have been at the mercy of Fringe lotteries for a long time, which does limit how often I can perform, since those lotteries have seldom been in my favour. So while I have plays that have been written, it’s rare that they get performed. There are grants that I can apply for, but there are certain grants that I feel guilty applying for because I feel like those grants should go to people who need them for subsistence. Writing grants especially. But I do feel like grants are necessary to be taken seriously. But I come back to feeling guilty about taking a grant.

So I wonder if it is possible to be taken seriously as a theatre artist in Canada while working a day job. Is it possible to be taken seriously as a theatre artist without grants?

I guess the real issue is that I am coming to a point when I want to be creating more. It’s an unreliable way to perform, and I am getting too old to wait for the opportunity to put my work out. As the saying goes, I don’t want to leave my music unsung, my stories untold.

I need to find ways to make it happen, to put my work on stage. And I need to find ways to make that happen as much as often as I can. And I need to find ways to do that. I need to figure out if my assumptions about grants have been wrong. Or are there other ways to fund the art?

And I need to figure it out. I have so much to share.

When Media Turns on the Arts

by Phil RickabyArts, TheatrePosted on 2 Comments

Links in this article have been updated using the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

This past summer, The Toronto Sun published a series of articles damning the SummerWorks festival for producing a play that “glorified terrorists.” They published three articles on the subject (1, 2, 3) without ever having seen the play. The crux of their anger was that the SummerWorks festival received funding from the federal government, and how dare this festival accept funds to produce a play celebrating people who want to destroy our way of life. After the play opened, it was revealed that the play was not what they said it was. The Toronto Star reviewed the play and had to acknowledge the furor in its review, said that the play was “definitely not a play that supports or romanticizes terrorism,” but did say that it wasn’t a very good play.

The Sun had apparently been so successful in stirring up outrage about the play that the Star’s review spent half of its article space debunking the Sun’s claims. In the end, as the Star’s Richard Ouzounian points out, since the funding for SummerWorks isn’t earmarked for specific plays and really only goes towards the rental of the theatre, the Sun was making a big deal out of what amounted to $850. 

Then SummerWorks ends, the play is revealed to be not very good, and the Sun is revealed to have some pretty shoddy fact-checking and ethics. Story over, right?

Apparently not. Out of nowhere, the Sun has revived its attack on the SummerWorks festival, so far with two articles in the last two days (1, 2). Once again, they are going after SummerWorks about their federal funding, and continue to do so based on their having produced Homegrown last year.

I ask myself a couple of questions:

Why now? Why the renewed attack on this festival of new plays?
 The Sun is not a paper that speaks to me. Their opinions hold little interest. So why does this enrage me so?

The answer to the first question is likely that funding deadlines have passed, and the festival’s funding has been renewed. The fact that SummerWorks applied after the deadline and yet still received funding seems to be the thing they are attacking. So, their renewed attack is merely one of opportunity.

The second question is perhaps more complex. It is true that I do not read the Sun regularly. And when I do, it is more with the attitude of “Let’s see what the other side thinks,” and more often than not, I am repulsed by what passes for journalism. So the paper does not speak to me. But what makes me angry is the people to whom this paper does speak. Because they don’t remember that the Sun was wrong about the play — they only recall the stories from before the play opened. And worse, the people more likely to read the Sun are actually the people that our current federal government most wants to placate. So when the Sun calls up a Minister and starts asking uncomfortable questions about funding for an arts organization, that Minister doesn’t speak about the importance of the Canada Council for the Arts being an arm’s-length funding agency. No, they talk about how SummerWorks’ grant will be reviewed. Which is exactly what the Sun wants. The Sun, if they support government arts funding at all, want all the dollars allocated to the arts to be accountable to the whims of the Canadian people. Which, on a certain level, is admirable. We are a democracy (a Parliamentary Democracy at that), so the will of the people should count for something, right? But the Arts Council’s job is to fund the arts — to allow exploration and excitement, to fund projects that are new and push boundaries. Of course, artists understand this concept. But the Sun’s base doesn’t. They probably don’t think about arts funding at all, and when they do, they picture (as Stephen Harper put it) “a bunch of people at, you know, a rich gala all subsidized by taxpayers claiming their subsidies aren’t high enough.”

The Sun, as an organization, doesn’t believe in funding for the arts, so they take every chance they can to bash it. But I can’t help but wonder: what do we lose if they are successful? If the Sun is successful in its campaign against SummerWorks, and the funding for the festival is revoked, then there’s no SummerWorks this year, and Toronto loses a vibrant part of its arts schedule and a number of new plays will never see the light of day. But worse, if the Sun is successful now, what happens to the next festival they turn their attention to? Once they’ve seen that they can shame the government into intervening, will any funding for any arts organization be safe? Likely not.

And what will happen then?