Economic Report: The West

Hey! We're home!

This tour went pretty damn well. We ordered new shirts to start things off, then we went up to Toronto for the People's Summit, which was well worth going to, and performing there almost paid back our travel costs. Then we drove to Wisconsin, met up with Peter, got in his van, the USS Gerald Holiday, and hit the road for weeks, and THEN we drove to Buffalo to play the Infringement Festival. Then we came home and performed one last show as a benefit for the folks who got arrested up in Toronto at the G20. It was a pretty crazy month. We didn't make a lot of money, but all in all, it was well worth it.

Someday soon we'll get a car that runs on veggie oil and/or happy thoughts and then we'll worry about tour expenses no more!

What's up with these numbers?

We did things a little differently because we were on tour with Peter. We didn't pay for food, and we split the earnings with him (logged as a "misc travel expense"). We played a lot more concerts, which led to more door charging than hat passing, but the hat passing we did do worked pretty damn well. Also, the door charge was very voluntary most places.

See the breakdown below:

What about the Future?

Now that we're back home in Columbus, it's time for some serious local focus. Our first priority is getting the intentional community strongly on it's feet. We're in the process of buying a HUGE building that needs a bundle of repairs. At any rate, Kate and I gotta get some income going on so as to be able to contribute our share to the community. It'll probably be at least 6 months before we tour again (unless some sweet opportunities fall into our laps).

Our second priority is getting some new work together. Ulysses' Crewmen has served us well, I still strongly believe it's the best piece of theatre I've produced, but we've grown over the course of producing it, and have new ideas and new things to say that this piece cannot. But! Have no fear the next touring script is in the works. It's three short acts, for three actors playing five or more roles, and may involve some crazy shadow-puppet type visuals. It kind of grew out of the idea of producing an updated re-write of Heiner Mueller's Mauser, but has gone some very different places.

At this moment it's called "The First Image of the New is Terror..." and it's in many ways the opposite of Ulysses' Crewmen. UC seems to be about our powerlessness in the face of global empire. Terror will be about how we can be powerful, what that takes. UC is very ambiguous and open, leaves audiences with lots of questions. Terror will present a specific and direct statement (which we will then discuss and debate openly with the audience). UC presented a few pointed moments for audience interaction, Terror will involve the audience throughout and will sometimes dissolve into direct dialog with or among the audience. UC is really intense and violent, and... well, I guess that's one thing they'll have in common.

Our third priority is finding a place for radical theatre in Columbus. We definitely don't want to repeat mistakes we made in Milwaukee. Right now this means producing variety shows like the Solidarity Showcase to get a sense of what and who is interested in theatre among the radical community, and maybe even who's interested in radicalism among the theatre community. After that, who knows what'll happen. I've got some ideas, but which one occurs will depend entirely on who else wants to get involved. Who knows, we might end up just doing children's plays for the neighborhood residents around the big fucking building mentioned above. That'd be pretty fucking sweet if you ask me.

Economic Report: Florida Tour

Holy shit, that was quick. We've gotten used to being on the road for months at a time, two weeks was short!

It was also a pretty economically shaky tour. Before we left town we did another hundreds of dollars worth of work on the car. CV boots and tie rods were in bad shape. If we drove em til they failed we'd likely be stranded, or that shit would seize up the steering while moving 70 MPH.

We split those repair costs between us personally and the theatre company and got a promise from the new shop (who come highly recommended as honest people who don't tell you that only $500 worth of work is needed when they know full well that another $2000 is, like those other fuckers who screwed us over in the past). If they're wrong, we're scraping this heap and investing in something more reliable and a manual on how to fix cars ourselves. Maybe even something that runs on veggie oil.

Ignoring those car costs, here's how the tour went economically:

The best shows were in Florida, which is why we booked the tour in the first place. Unfortunately, we had a handful of prospective shows on our way down fall apart and one show on our way back (Atlanta) fail to gather any audience. That was a sketchy show, a non-profit with three people on staff to work a show they clearly didn't promote at all. There's something fishy about that.

Also, we started almost $100 negative with our totally insane trip to NYC for the Ides of March show (but that was also fun!). Better planning (psychic powers) woulda had us go there, then south to Florida along the coast and back up through Knoxville. But then we woulda missed Springsgiving, which was definitely worth driving home for.

Anyway, focusing on the positive: we visited two more great cities in Tennessee, met new people and helped fight the overzealous cops of Gainesville, got to hang out with Saara and Eric again, played with great hardcore bands in Sarasota and folk singers in Miami, saw lots of weird dangerous Florida nature, met great folks in Lake Worth, visited pals in St Augustine (though we couldn't get a show there) played in ocean waves, got to perform for our friends at the Patchwork house in Louisville and stayed up late talking politics there and at 64 King.

NEXT! We're currently booking a nice long July Tour with Peter J Woods (and taking his van, the USS Gerald Holiday). Going west with the show, playing mostly noise concerts, before we retire Ulysses' and move on to something new (but we'll keep it around for special occasions). We might also get a couple performances at The People's Summit or the US Social Forum in June.

Economic Report: Six Months Summary!

These economic reports exist for two reasons. First, to provide full transparency and disclosure of our financial matters. Second, to summarize and document the progress of our experiment in alternative economics. We've now been conducting this experiment for 6 months, performed the show 72 times and traveled some 42,000 miles.

To be clear: we do not think touring theatre is going to bring the rev. What we think is that if the rev we want is coming, it will come riding in on a radical post-capitalist economy. We hope touring with theatre will allow us to demonstrate and test for the existence of the social norms and informal relationships constituting this radical economy. We hope to participate in this economy's discovery and development and hope our successful participation, publicly shared, will encourage others to participate as well. In short, the hypothesis of our experiment is: How far from possible is what we are doing?

Note 1, on participation: touring theatre is not the full extent of our participation in radical alternative economies, it may soon be the least of our participation. We're currently (literally as i type this in the car) moving to join efforts to form an egalitarian intentional community in Arawak City.

RESULTS: Our account balance after 6 months of touring is $2229.68.

Don't jump out of your chair and shout eureka just yet. We're not scientists, this experiment is inextricable from our actual daily lives, and as a result, our methods are far from pure, compromises were made and that number is actually pretty complicated.

Note 2, on compromise: We recognize that compromise is unavoidable, the new economy does not spring whole from the old, but develops peicemeal over time. We're identifying these compromises for a specific purpose here, and that purpose is not some kind of shame or moral purity. Morality is stupid.

Our experiment tests the viability of a post-capitalist form of relations in both production and distribution, but our procedure involved and depended on other forms of relations.

Production Compromises. Our production form is modeled on DIY methods. We're hands-on, low cost, learning-as-you-go producers without hierarchy, arbitrary division of labor, or exploitation. All assets, projects and income are shared fairly by the producers. This is easy, because there are only two of us involved and we communicate and cooperate easily. The issue is unpaid labor. The $2229 balance does not reflect any payment for our time or labor. The project prevented Kate and I from doing any other income earning work for these six months and only provided for part of our expenses (less than $300 in purchased food and some immeasurable quantity of donated food and lodging from our generous hosts and audiences). We had to spend about $7,500 from our savings to live for those six months ($3731 for ben, $3700 for Kate). This money was earned by wageslavery, which makes our participation in the project dependent on us having earned and saved up under the capitalist system. Pursuit of a truly viable alternative form of production would require some portion of this be deducted from the balance.

Distribution Compromises. There are a number of ways theatre producers can fund their projects. The true measure of our experiment is whether or not we can sustainably fund our project on post-capitalist methods. The $2229 balance above includes incomes from other funding methods. Some funding came from patronage (around $1200 from friends and family, $760 from institutions of higher education, most of which we haven't actually received yet). Some from commodification ($241 in our cut of door cover charges).

Note 3, on funding models: patronage is when people who don't necessarily value the specific show fund it for arbitrary reasons like social status, corporate image, or some disgustingly romantic notion like "the inherent value of art". I'm quite certain our family members would not have been so generous if they stumbled upon anyone else performing this show. The sponsorship from universities is somewhat less arbitrary, as it does come from tuition that student groups are choosing to allocate to us, but we still find the indirectness of such funding as inconsistent for the purpose of our experiment. The commodity form (when it comes to something like theatre) is when the producer sells tickets and then blockades the door to prevent anyone from seeing a show without paying.

Modified Balance. If we removed the patronage and commoditification income, the balance would become $28. If we paid ourselves- whether based on actual living expenses, or a poverty level income (it's about $1,200 a month either way) the balance would become almost $5000 negative. If we modified for both, we'd be over $7000 in the hole, that's before even considering the expense of purchasing a shitbox car and fixing it up for the tour. In short, our project is fatally dependent on compromises. But we knew that when we started out. This project was designed to only really succeed in a post-capitalist economy.

Note 4, on success: this all assumes of course that our problem is not artistic. It could very well be that our project is doomed because our show sucks and we're simply no good at theatre. There's not much we can do about this. We're doing the show we want to do the best we can, and as much as compromising on the finances sucks, compromising the show itself seems far worse. Indeed, precisely identified and financially transparent compromises seem far more resistant to capitalist recuperation than ambiguous and unclear compromises made in the content, message or presentation of the show itself. I suppose that's debatable, but it seems like there are plenty of other folks already experimenting with ambiguous ironic gestures that slip a little revolution into their otherwise slickly designed anti-capitalist spectacles. We shall see which proves more useful in the long term.

What have we learned from our failure? When we try, in our unscientific and disorganized way to crunch the numbers we do find some hopeful trends in our experiment's results. First off, we managed to perform 64 of our 72 shows with no required payment. These shows earned over $3700 of our income. Which is more than the patronage and commodification incomes combined. The average income from these shows was about $62, while the average income from the shows with a required payment was $48. Bad news is sponsored shows averaged $288. Also, the payment per person was higher at shows charging a cover. Even worse, those shows were more likely to involve a split, so what we're tracking is only our fraction of the income. In other words, if you take into account the venues and other artists we performed with, capitalist forms may have generated more income for the lot.

Secondly, on a good note, we discovered first-hand how vast and diverse the communities of resistance and anti-capitalist practice are in this part of the world. The shows with completely voluntary payment (passing a hat afterwards, rather than suggested donation at the door) also tended (according to the calculations) to have better discussions, and more often introduced us to collective houses, shared dinners and positive experiences with people living contrary to capitalist expectations. The fact that the value produced and shared in these communities cannot be reflected in an economic report or balance sheet (no matter how hard I try) is evidence of it's resilience and radical potential.

Third, we discovered interesting geographic trends. We did better on average by all standards in mid size and small cities than large ones. Regionally, our categories are kind of weird. We've split the midwest in two. The OH/MI area seems very different from the IL/WI/MN part of the midwest. OH/MI and surrounding areas housed our most reliably good shows (excluding our two shows in Canada, cuz that's too small a sample size). The East Coast was a mixed bag, and the south and rest of midwest (with a few stunning exceptions) tended to be our biggest struggles. Make what you'd like of that. We made a decision to move to the middle of Ohio.

Forth, we learned a lot about politics. Diverse responses from the many audiences helped us better understand the play and our position within capitalism. There is much we're taking away and incorporating into our lived experiences, and future work (theatrical and otherwise). Things we look forward to: 1. Greater incorporation of creativity into approaching daily life rather than separating it into art or "culture production". 2. Advancing methods of radical discourse and praxis through personal interaction and lived experience. 3. Recognizing, exposing and undermining the dualism between resistance and creation, whether it's being reinforced by institutional power or angry anarchists.

Economic Report: Feb 13

That's the chart of how we did from Jan 1st until today. It's been an exciting ride. The first big drop around Jan 11th, was an oil change, radiator flush and drive from NC to Savannah, GA. The big incline afterward was kick ass shows in Florida. The huge drop off on Feb 3rd was when we realized that we'd worn our tires down so far that there's no way we could safely drive in the snow and replaced all four (then skidded into a ditch a few nights later anyway). Full details on the rest of this account are of course available here. Some description of what we're doing is here.

Now we've got about a week off in Philly, then we're back on the road til the end of the month. Right now we're booking a little tour back to Florida from April and a West Coast tour with Peter J Woods (and his more reliable vehicle) in July. We're still (barely) positive on this tour, which means the theatre is paying for itself, and we're still living on mostly peanut butter, oatmeal and generosity (much appreciated all of you!) so our savings are holding out well enough that we shouldn't go broke personally before July (after, it looks like we'll have to wrangle some kind of income).

This chart is the balance of all the tours and donations and everything combined (if the right side is cut off, it's cuz blogspot doesn't cooperate with googledocs inspite both being owned by the same corporation, fucked up, right?) This is looking better, but still doesn't give us much of a buffer (especially if the car fucks up again).

Here's another graph, which shows where the money is coming from and going to, roughly. We're also tracking some other data, but that's too complicated for googledocs, so we'll crunch those numbers and post about it sometime mid March. Thanks!

If you like this show, or like the fact that a couple crazy people are touring the country with DIY theatre, please help keep us on the road, and help us develop new projects by donating. Give me a call at 414 305 9832 if you wanna mail a check (and get a tax break) otherwise just use the little chip-in gadget on the right hand side of this page.

Economic Report: Jan 26

Economic report! At the last reporting we had just finished a successful set of shows in Florida. Since then we've ventured into Texas and back. We're glad to still be in the black. For detailed numbers on this stuff go here.

Our gas milage has improved 26.47 mpg at last recording, and of course remains the highest expense. Longer drives in the last week, and some low attendance shows combined to make this last week or so harder on us economically as well as physically than the previous part of the tour was. For about a week we were driving 5 hours a night, sleeping in the car and "showering" in gas stations. We brought those shenanigans to an end in Memphis, where the folks at the DeCylre Cooperative offered a comfy bed, a good shower, and even laundry.

The car is about due for another oil change. We should have enough time to find somewhere cheaper this time. We're still largely living off peanut butter sammiches and oatmeal. We've been experimenting with heating up angelhair pasta with gas station hot water and making the cheapest possible sauce out of tomato paste and garlic powder, with some TVP thrown in for protein.

We're planning to get back down to Florida come April, but that will depend on how broke we are (not the company, but Kate and I) when we're done with this. We've been tracking our personal expenses as well. We're draining our bank accounts at a rate of about $15 a day (Ben $15.82, Kate $14.60). This includes a few large expenses (last month's utilities, 1/3 of the car maintenance, one night in a hotel room, etc) living on less than $400 each ($379.70 for Ben, $350 for Kate) plus the roughly $50 in groceries the company has paid for is pretty damn frugal for life on the road.

Anyway, thus far we've proved that radically political DIY theatre touring is sustainable as long as the laborers involved can afford to lose money doing it. Which is to say, it's a terrible replacement for capitalist wage-slavery. hurns.

But that's only thus far. Maybe we get better at it! Maybe audiences' appreciation/interest/valuation grows. If not, we need to revise the experiment, and in the meantime, compromise.

We've got a list of compromises (artistic and economic) arrayed before us. Maybe at the end of the tour we'll discuss them. Until then, ta-ta!

Hey everybody! We've created a new chip in thing to make online contributions easy. If you're down with what we're up to, please support:

Economic Report: Winter Tour

The Ulysses' Crewmen tour (and all such tours) is not just an artistic endeavor or a conversation starter, it's also an economic activity. We try to make our economic activities transparent, and consider what we're doing a sort of survey of alternative economics around the country. For more on this see this post. For still more see these posts.

INFORMATION ON THIS TOUR:

That's a chart of our balance on this tour. The big rise on Jan 10th is our shows in Chapel Hill. The big dip immediately afterward is an oil change and transmission flush. The big rise at the end is last night in Gainesville. For details, see this chart.

Transportation related expenses continue to be the most expensive cost. For the long and tragic tale of our vehicle, see these posts. The start of this tour the Volvo had 1237537 miles on the odometer. As of last fill up, we've put on 1546 miles, at 24.55 miles per gallon of gas. This is below average, but since the expensive oil change and transmission flush it's been doing somewhat better. I hate thinking about the car.

For food, we've been doing very well. Lots of very generous hosts who're happy to feed us. Groceries are generally peanut butter, bread, pasta, all acquired the cheapest way possible. When we eat anything other than this cheap food, or donated food, we pay for it ourselves, with one exception. In Charlottesville we were feeling perhaps a little overconfident and let the company buy us a meal at the Tea Bazaar. This was awesome largely locally grown vegan food.

We're glad to finally be in the black, but we've got a few long drives ahead of us, so unless things go really well, we're gonna have trouble staying afloat.

Also, our personal savings accounts are slowly but steadily draining, which will soon put an end to this touring stuff and put us back in employment land unless it becomes more economically sustainable. So, when we come to your town, please don't be stingy and if you saw the show but forgot or didn't have cash to pay for it, please donate through the ChipIn machine to the right. Tax deductable donations are also possible. Email me: insurgent.ben@gmail.com or call 414 305 9832.

Ulysses' Crewmen Rides Again!

So, if what you do on New Year's Eve defines what you'll be doing for the whole year, we've got a busy year ahead, cuz we've spent New Years Eve preparing to leave for a two month tour. Actually, we spent the last three days doing little other than rehearsing, cleaning our room (we're subletting for two months, so we'll be living rent-free again) printing, doing some last ditch booking efforts, promotion work and assembling merch. My resolution: be on the road for 50% of 2010.

As always: this tour journal will feature full economic transparency and show reports. We are also going to make a point of having nature days. Spending our days off communing with what remains of the great american landscape. Last tour we started $495 ahead, after some rough times, long drives and car troubles (the tour pays 1/3 of car repairs and maintenance).

We'll track this tour separately and then roll up a total at the end. We've started a new spreadsheet with our initial costs (postage and printing supplies) here.

We're really excited about this tour, it's a pretty even mix of revisiting awesome shows from last tour, going back to places we haven't been since Paint the Town, and performing in completely new places. The general route is south, then west, then back up to Wisconsin for family and friends time (I miss everybody greatly) then back home to Philly. Then we turn around and head back to the midwest (couldn't turn down the invitation to the C.A.N. conference) which will include a trip to the north to play a couple shows in Ontario (thanks to Thor and Kelly!)

The calendar to the right is up to date with the details of all our shows. Most of the shows are free or donation based. None of them are more than $8, and if we have anything to say about it, no one will be turned away for lack of funds.

This weekend we're playing two very different shows in New York City, one at an awesome infoshop (Bluestockings) and one with a slew of kick ass noise bands (at 13 Thames).

Next week we head south, playing with friends in Baltimore (Red Emma's 2640), Charlottesville (This Little Bird), and Johnson City (Projexxx Studio), and meeting new people in Chapel Hill (The Nightlight). In Chapel Hill in addition to performing, we'll be leading a discussion of radical politics and theatre at the local infoshop (Internationalist Books). Our Nature Days will be spent checking out a nature reserve here in Philly, and touring the Twin Oaks Intentional Community outside Charlottesville (we're looking to maybe live in something like this).

There are some holes in the tour where we're still trying to confirm a show. Especially troubling is the week in February after we return to Philly but before we depart for the C.A.N. conference in Urbana, IL. We're looking for shows on the east coast, and since we're subletting the apartment, we'll need places to crash for some of those cold nights. Any suggestions or help will be greatly appreciated.

Wish us luck, see you soon, hope you're also entering the new year as aggressively as possible.

Economic Report: End of 1st tour. (includes car update)

Tomorrow we begin our second tour (7 shows in 13 days, from philly to milwaukee via birmingham and points south). We've already begun booking our next month-long tour (going south in January) find dates and plans in the calendar to the right side of this page.

These events make the final economic report quite overdue.

THE CAR! We paid over $5500 for the car, got $394 in donations put toward covering car costs. I will pay the remainder of car cost out of pocket. I don't know the odometer numbers off the top of my head. We've gotten two oil changes. One during tour (paid for by company) one during our search for a new home (paid for by kate and I) a transmission flush (which we also paid for) and the "service" and "check engine" lights are off. There's one tire with a slow leak (not a hole, a malfunctioning cap) and i guess the car just runs loud, cuz everyone says the exhaust looks fine and it passed an emissions test. So, Mary is now happy!

TOTAL BALANCE: If we include initial donations and costs, we spent $1622 we earned $3019, which means we've got $1397. If we look at just the on-the-road balance we made $519, which means touring can be sustainable. Here's a graph detailing this balance.

And a link to the raw data.

ALSO, most excitingly, we've created a set of variables to compare and evaluate shows for things like city size, type of show, region, venue types, audience age, and payment type. Then we've compared these variables for money earned, merch sold, turnout, quality of discussion, the friendliness of people, and payment per person.

The raw data can be pretty deceptive, though, so i'm going to kind of explain each variable here and point out which correlations seem to mean the most. Also, we left some shows out of this mix. The Milwaukee shows are left out because our history there, and playing multiple shows there makes them different. The G20 is out, cuz that show was just weird. The Minneapolis and last Chicago show are left out, cuz we started doing this stuff before we did those shows.

on to the variables:

CITY SIZE:

Averages for large cities were lowest in every catagory. Midsize cities were best or tied for best in every catagory but merch sales. Storrs, CT and Urbana, IL boosted small town scores. The best large city shows were in Boston and at Mess Hall. Things that made these shows successful, Mess Hall was on a Tuesday and Free. Boston was with some GREAT noise bands and was set up by a great guy who'd hosted Paint the Town in the past.

REPETITION:

Shows set up by people we've either played with or hosted in the past averaged best in every category. First time in a city shows averaged better than times we'd been in a city at a different venue or through a different contact. I think this might largely be because if we're returning somewhere with different contacts, it's probably a bigger city where things didn't go too well the first time we played there. These might just be tough places to break into. Playing multiple low attendance shows in Chicago on this tour, after having played good shows there in the past, we realized how big and impenetrable big cities can be.

TYPE OF SHOW:

Shows mainly about us generally went better than shows where we're just one part of a concert. This is a somewhat inaccurate measure cuz some of our concerts were under really ill-advised circumstances. The concerts with well-chosen bands (local, experimental) went quite well.

ART V POLITICS:

I'm too lazy to make a graph, so imagine a venn diagram (y'know the overlapping circles). Art is one circle, politics is the other, we exist in the intersection, but sometimes venture into one sphere or the other, playing shows that are marketed to only artists or to only activists (or whatever). You can think of these ventures as a kind of a measurement of intolerance. Do artists generally hate politics more than radicals hate art? Seems like it, with some exciting exceptions.

REGION:

I don't know who draws regional lines, where the border between the midwest and the east coast lies, but I feel like MI and OH are a very different place than MN, IL and WI. So we broke things into 3 regions. We generally felt most welcome, appreciated and supported in the middle parts, but had a few good shows east and west.

VENUE:

This is complicated and mostly unreliable data, cuz we played a lot of different kinds of places, only a few shows in each. Hopefully once we include future shows we can build enough of a sample set to come to reliable conclusions.

AGE:

Recent grads and older earned us most money and best discussions, but college age shows had best turn out.

MONEY TYPE:

This is the most disappointing catagory for me. The shows where we passed a hat had great discussions and high turnouts, but lowest average payment per person. Looks like the experiment in alternative economies isn't entirely successful, and the tour was bolstered by playing more traditionally funded shows. Or maybe we need to promote things differently. If we advertise a show as being "FREE!" and then pass a hat afterwards saying "if you don't support us we'll die!" is that a bait and switch?

It seems like many theatre people won't deign to look at anything that advertises costing less than $15 and makes itself look like fancy-ass artistry, which is really lame in my opinion. Equally lame are some 'anarchists' who talk about smashing capitalism but then can't throw down some scratch for anything but cheap (ie corporate) beer. I think both these things are changing, and I'm excited to be someone who is trying to document (and in my small way encourage) those changes.

Economic Report: Week 4

I made a graph to make it easier to see how things are generally going. The first peak is Boston and Storrs, lost on the drive back west. The second big peak is Michigan, lost it going to Pittsburgh and in Chicago. The results still aren't fully in, but what we're doing is working, and seem to be working best in the area east of Chicago and west of Baltimore. Generally working better among older political audiences. But there have been some remarkable exceptions (Storrs and Boston).
Here's another graph, based on what we're spending money on and where we're earning it.

It looks like we're generally making more money doing donation-based shows than door-based shows. This is tricky though, because door based shows are more likely to be split with other performers, so they are often better shows in terms of turn out, and our enjoyment (cuz we like seeing other people perform). Merch sales seem to benefit the concert type shows too. Discussions tend to be best when we're performing alone for donations though. It's sort of apples and oranges.
I think our ideal situation will be approaching the different types of shows differently and then keeping a good mix going.
On expenses: the car costs continue to weigh heavily on us, and we've counteracted by spending very little of the show profits on food. Fortunately, many wonderful people have fed us, but we've also eaten at restaurants out of our own pocket more than we should. This makes touring less economically (and nutritionally) sustainable for us as individuals. Discipline and adapting personal habits to touring life will be high priority next month. Getting exercise (outside of performing) stocking the cooler with ice so we can keep perishables longer, and spending more time writing and working on other projects while on the road are all areas I need to improve on if this is going to be something I want to do lots more of.
The data behind both those graphs, and breaking everything down in detail is online here.

Economic Report: Week 3

I'm starting to think that my metrics are kinda screwy, that p/P numbers aren't terribly valid, reliable or meaningful, given the extensive extenuating circumstances surrounding any given show. Sometimes we're splitting the door with other acts or with the venue, sometimes the money is collected at the door, sometimes after the show, sometimes the turn out is low, different shows are promoted in different ways. We'll never have a big enough sample size or sophisticated enough statistical analysis to isolate, control for, and find correlations between these variables. In the meantime we'll have to rely on gut feelings, guestimates, and instinct.

Also, attempting to do anything with this data is time consuming and eminently not-fun. I realize I promised a more thorough last time, and now I'm failing to keep that promise. As recompense I offer this picture of Kate victorizing some public art in Ann Arbor, where we spent our day off today.

Of course, we're still keeping track of things, and you can still check out the data for yourself. If anyone is really missing my vague attempts to make this data mean anything other than, the car has put us in a serious hole, which we are slowly but steadily digging our way out of, thanks to many shovels small and large offered by many wonderful people across the country to whom we are very grateful, then please complain and i'll strive to do better.

Economic Report: Week 2

We've survived a second week on the road. I've been online working on booking October shows and taking care of other shit for a couple hours now, so I'm gonna keep this breif. This is what economic reports are about and the raw data is here.

Payment Per Person (p/P) See this post for explaination of this.

Between 9/8 and 9/13 we performed the show 5 times for about 78 more people, and earned $217 in donations. That's an average of $2.78 p/P. The Cambridge show was donation-based and we split the money with others, so for the purposes here, we should add in that $40, which makes the p/P $3.29.

Last week our p/P was $5.89, and the cumulative is $3.73, so this week shows a decline.

There are many possible explainations. First, we might not be performing as well, or making the case for supporting us as well. Things started feeling a little routine midweek, which is a bad sign. Could be geographic, with East Coast people giving less. Could be weird specific circumstances, read the show reports, some were a little unusual.

I promise next week's economic report will be more thorough. So far we're just happy to be making money, and that the car hasn't gotten any worse.

Economic Report: Week 1

This is the second economic report for Ulysses' Crewmen. The previous report dealt with our initial costs and our intentions. There is also an online spreadsheet with detailed and updated numbers here.

This report (and others following) will deal with the success or failure of our experiment in post-capitalist modes of exchange, our expense report, and lessons we've learned.

Post-capitalist exchange. This is a preliminary explaination, if you're familiar with our economic intentions and methods, skip ahead to "Payment per Person". If not, check this out: Insurgent Theatre has always been an avenue for practice of post-capitalist economics. We started this practice with replacements for the most basic relationship of capitalism: the labor relationship. We went into business with the goal of returning the full product of labor to the laborers. This is kind of like trying to fit a round peg (comunist labor relation) into a square hole (capitalist economy). The idea was not to succeed, but to learn from the attempt. Rather than tossing around economic theories in some kind of classroom, we decided to focus on economic practice in the real world.

This focus remains today, but on this tour we're applying the method to not just the labor relation, but also the exchange relation. We haven't coined a term for our exchange relation yet, but it's based on direct consumer empowerment, voluntary payment, and personal connection. How it works is simple: anyone can see our shows for free, but those who value them and want to see us succeed, come back, or create more shows will pay for them. This post on Insurgent Theory (my other blog) describes this situation and mode of exchange in more detail.

As that post states, one of the goals of the Ulysses' Crewmen tour is to demonstrate whether or not the post-capitalist mindset is present in American society enough to sustain our endeavors. Our goal is not to change the political economy by changing people's minds, but to provide evidence suggesting the degree that people's minds are already ready for a new political economy, thus encouraging more to practice this economy, developing it and spreading it further through real-world practice rather than political application of academically derived theories.

Payment per Person. One key measure of our experiment's success is 'payment per person' (or p/P) this is the average donation per audience member. Comparing this number to typical ticket prices is misleading, because mandatory ticket prices might reduce audience attendance. For example, if our approach brings in 100 people paying an average of $5, it is more sustainable than requiring $10 and only getting 40 people willing to pay. This of course gets all kinds of muddled up when you think about consumer mentalities and the fact that (in the worst example) bourgie theatre people tend to think that if a show isn't demanding $40 it's probably not worth their time. Again, we're a round peg, and they are the squarest of holes.

In addition, our audience numbers include people who A. set up the show for us, B. feed us (and we've had some great meals from very generous people) C. let us crash on their couch. I'm assuming these bartered exchanges often replace money in the hat, which makes sense, because they are more valuable.

This week! We've performed the show 6 times since leaving Milwaukee for a total of roughly 100-120 people. These shows earned $420.50 total. Which is an average of around $3.80 p/P. This number is not an accurate representation of the average voluntary payment per audience member, because not all the shows functioned under our experimental economic system. Mess Hall was free and Rhino's was admission-based, so taking out those audiences (50 people) and that money ($67) will give us the average p/P for shows based on voluntary requested payments for our first week: Roughly $5.89 p/P.

TOTAL: If we add in the numbers from our shows in Milwaukee it looks like this: People: about 140. Payment: $556.50. p/P: $3.98 This means the shows in our "home town" did worse than on the road, which is initially curious. If direct-connection and desire to succeed is what encourages payment, then you'd think the community we've been working in for 6 years would be the most supportive. In actuality, the community norms (in Milwaukee and elsewhere) is to support touring acts. Local bands often pass on 100% of the door to touring acts, so being local gives the impression that you don't need money the way touring groups do, and discourages payment. Also, we're in the process of moving out of Milwaukee, which means our relationship to that community is sort of strained right now.

Looking more closely at these contributions, as we unravel the cash at the end of the night, we often find $10 and $20 bills, and sets of fives and ones folded together, which seems to indicate that our audiences are often composed of a few people who contribute significantly, and many who give little or nothing. If payment correlates to presence of post-capitalist mindset, it seems like there are a few people in each place who've got it, and many who don't. Either that or some people who've got it, just don't much like the particular thing we're doing (which is entirely possible. We are doing weirdly intense oppressive confrontational theatre here).

Expense Report: This week! Discounting the initial investment, costs and donations, our "operating expenses" have been $140 and normal earnings have been about $550. Our stock of merch, and materials hasn't been depleted much. Our initial $134 of bulk foods from the Coop is mostly still intact. We've been eating restaurant food out of pocket more than we should be, and we've also been fed really well by some of our hosts, which is GREAT! So it's pretty accurate to say that we earned $410 doing our first 9 shows. That's an average rate of $45 a show.

Once we put the initial costs and donations back in, we're up $800 ($1100 in donations helps). Once we put the costs of the car in, we're $4200 in the hole. At $45 a show we're going to have to do the play 94 more times before we'll have a positive balance sheet. That's a lot of shows.

Summary: I'm glad we're not losing money on the road. We're obviously not doing this for money, but if what we're doing isn't sustaining itself economically, then there's no way we'll be able to keep doing it for long. The goal of our experiment is not to prove what we're doing is lucrative, only to demonstrate if it's at all possible without quickly going broke.

The main hurns here is the car. We're hoping to get the check engine light off permanantly at a mechanic in Charlottesville tomorrow, and hoping to not pay too much for it. We've got to either improve our earnings or get serious about soliciting donations to cover some of these costs.

Lessons! The main economic lesson we've learned so far is to plan ahead much more regarding the vehicle. By letting the car arrangements wait until the last minute, we committed to a vehicle that may end up costing much much more than we'd planned for. The multitude of uncertainties surrounding repairs and costs is also very stressful and frustrating.

Economic Report: Initial Outlay

This is the first economic report for Ulysses' Crewmen. The idea is to be as financially transparent as possible. We've created an online spreadsheet for people who want to look really close at the data. Below, you will find a description of our initial economic state. For a current update (and a history of such updates) see the economic reports.

We started production of Ulysses' Crewmen with about $350 in the Insurgent account. My personal savings account is the start-up fund and back-up if we end up losing money. Working fulltime and saving almost half my paychecks for a year or so helped me build up quite a bit of savings to bankroll this experiment.

The way we run things, there's a fine line between touring expense and personal expense. If we're successful, funds earned by the show, donations and merch sales will pay for production, promotion, merch, gas, car maintenance, lodging and food. Profits if there are any will go to the standard insurgent formula. 1/2 into company fund for future productions and 1/2 cash to the artists involved (myself and Kate).

The first major expense of touring is of course our touring vehicle. We've purchased a used 1998 V70 volvo station wagon for cheap. Then spent almost as much on repairing it (and need to replace the catalytic converter before the tour ends). This was more than we hoped we'd be spending and it's set us back quite a bit (will be at least $4200). We have little chance of breaking even if we count this as touring expense, so it's being accounted for seperately. If you'd like to help us recover some of these costs, we're taking donations through this thing:

If you'd like to make your donation tax deductable, do not use this thing. Email me at insurgent.ben@gmail.com and we'll put your money through our fiscal sponsor.

[UPDATE: car continues to need repairs we can't afford. Above chip in widget has expired, see smaller one on top right of this page.]

Second, is the materials involved in the show. Ulysses' Crewmen is an incredibly cheap show to produce. Props and costumes cost a grand total of $36.49. That's a used suit from value villiage, a shoulder-holster from army surplus, paper for programs and some rope from Bliffert hardware. Everything else is handmade (the hood), borrowed (the gun, from aaron at the alchemist), found in the trash (the radio found in a dumpster behind Matt Richardson's house, the chair from Borg Ward) or things we owned anyway (the rest of our costumes).

Third, is promotion. This got more expensive, because we decided to silk screen our own posters, we needed to spend a bunch of money on ink, screens, and paper. Ink and screens were from Utrecht, paper from cheapest online wholesaler we could find.

Forth is merch. We bought wholesale shirts from American Apparel (I have a wholesale account from years ago before they got so hip and sketchy) which we've silk screened ourselves. We're also selling scripts and essays, so more paper. We're hoping to earn this money back by selling this stuff on the road. It's really beautiful handmade stuff made by ourselves and some wonderful volunteers at last month's craft nights.

Fifth is gas. Which we haven't had to buy any of yet. The volvo is supposed to get 28 mpg highway. We'll be keeping track.

Sixth is food and lodging. Insurgent will not be buying expensive dinners or hotel rooms. For lodging, if we can't crash on someone's couch, we'll be sleeping in the car. For food, we're going to be eating as cheaply as possible while on the road. We've got a cooler, a coffee-machine (for hot water on the road), plans to build a dashboard oven and a solar generator. We started with a large bulk order of oatmeal, dried fruit, canned soup, and salsa from our good friends at the Riverwest Co-op. Once we start making sustainable money, insurgent will pay for some restaurant meals, until then, those will be paid for with personal expenses. Insurgent does not and will not buy booze.