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.

Future Productions!

Here's a little list of 5 potential future shows (well, 4 shows and one comic) to whet your appetite. Financial support (see previous post) will enable us to focus more energy on making these things happen. Otherwise, they'll be competing at a financial disadvantage with earning enough money to live and fund the projects ourselves, reading a lot of Antonio Negri and participating in this intentional community.

1. Mauser- an updating re-write of Heiner Mueller's updating re-write of Bertolt Brecht's best Lehrstucke (Lehrstucke = learning play, intended to be "didactic for the performers" The Measures Taken= Brecht's best, in my opinion) Our version will feature power electronics karaoke, with the audience playing the part of the chorus. It'll be didactic for EVERYONE! Cuz we know how much America loves didactic!

2. YURT! an absurd insurrectionary comedy about Mongolian invaders taking over america one city at a time (to punnish you all for hating didactic theatre). Performed in a traveling yurt (yurt= mongolian hut, like a teepee but less pointy) and featuring sniveling caricatures of local politicians from every town we visit.

3. The Demon Bargain. A series of related scenes written by anyone (and made available for anyone to produce) that confront our choice to sacrifice the entire future for our mild comforts through a demonical analogy. Jeff Grygny is responsible for this initial idea, and Damned Theatre (allies in Milwaukee) might be mounting it's initial production.

4. The Trial- A one man show about Maoist paraphernalia, the erosion of public commons, and the absurdity of the American judicial system. Based on a true story!

5. Ceasar's Ruin- A fantasy adventure comic book idea i outlined a while back (not a play, but still awesome).

Sounds fucking awesome, right? Please help out. Seriously, we're incredibly efficient and your small contribution will go a long way. If you wanna know more about any of these things, each has been at least outlined and initiated in some form. Just drop me a line at insurgent.ben@gmail.com and I'll share!

The Banks Got Theirs. When Do You Get Yours?

Here's a link to the zine I mentioned below.

Looking forward to comments feedback.

11 Tales of Touring.

We're about halfway done with tour (as far as number of booked shows go) and so we're presenting this collection of stories and humorous anecdotes for you to get curious about. If you'd like to hear the full story behind any of these teasers, ask us! We can be reached via cafe, bar, sidewalk or public park nearby any venues we're playing, or via cellular telephone at 414 305 9832 (but we don't have enough minutes or tolerance for cell phone talk to really get into these stories).

1. Non-Capitalist Time. The story of a dead car battery and the epiphanic temporal displacement it caused.

2. Brawlin in Nawlins. The story of a black lexus SUV with nicely written ghetto slang on the windows. Who dat?

3. Beaumont Hurns. Is the niche market we're tapping so small that we've already saturated it?

4. Adventures in Commodity Indulgence. The story of pursuing the perfect tourist experience while deeply regretting any monetary expenditure.

5. Of Dive Bars and Exotic Birds. Good times in St Augustine.

6. Boredom is the Mother of Invention. The night we came up with a stand up comedy routine and a social studies curriculum. Both are genius.

7. Black Block Fruit. Our encounter with "The Bonobo Gang".

8. The Theatre of Contraception. How one night the Waco Girls re-wrote the end of our play (they totally outdid the bonobos).

9. Pussy Bar. What confused republicans think about punk rock, gentrification, and Dave Mathews.

10. New York City Oops. How Ben only forgets things when in the worst city to do so, but never suffers the consequences.

11. Disaster Brunch. What happened when we went out of our way for a vegan fish sandwich.

Philosophical Musing #3: No Good Choices

Influences on my thoughts the last couple days: prospecting neighborhoods where we might like to move, reading Douglas Rushkoff's Life Inc. and this zine from Non Fides and seeing Mike Daisey's "The Last Cargo Cult" on Thursday night. These influences come together to create a kind of crisis of decision where it seems like any option I choose will be the wrong one, in some way or another.

Looking to move makes gentrification hard to ignore. "How soon before the rents are going to be more than I can afford?" is an unavoidable question. Being an artist who's looking to move makes "culture first development" or Richard Florida's "Creative Class" inspired city planning even harder to ignore. At this point, Florida (and Jane Jacobs, etc) have explained gentrification in a way that politicians and power elites can understand, which is accelerating the process and turning artists into a resource to be exploited for the eventual benefit of corporations. Chapter 3 of "Life Inc" follows this process to it's logical and dismally shitty end.

Choosing a neighborhood to live and work in is like choosing which stage of this process we'd like to insert ourselves into. For example, our first impression of West Philly is that its already lost, South Philly is on it's way and there must be other places a few artist pioneers are begining to explore (i hear rumors). We didn't look closely at neighborhoods in Baltimore yet, but did talk to artists and do some research and that whole city seems to be going through hyper-gentrification so I'm almost certain we'll have these same sorts of choices there.

What these choices mean as far as our future actions are concerned, is we will be trying to: 1. help reverse gentrification in someplace like West Philly. 2. help contain it in someplace like South Philly, or 3. help not start it somewhere else. This is all assuming we can overcome our role as midwesterners experimenting with east coast city life, which is no small part of the problem itself.

Each option invovles joining a fight, often a fight allied primarily with other artists, defending our interest and places as artists. The Non Fides zine makes these alliegences look both enormously unattractive and tactically fucked.

I don't agree entirely with all the claims Non Fides is making, I think they overlook people like us who are artists only as a means to a political end. The zine's design, word choices, etc are creative decisions no less than our script and acting. I could argue that our play proliferates revolutionary ideas and discussions as much as Non Fides, and enacts revolutionary practices in a more direct and personal (but less widespread) manner than their downloadable pdf's do.

On the other hand, their statements are an accurate description of the vast majority of artists in our present society. Any of the above described positions relative to gentrification require us to ally with these artists, which makes me not want to move to any of these neighborhoods, because we'll join a class of artists who, to paraphrase the zine, "do our creativity for us". The delineation of some activities as "art" helps break people up into little isolated peices that interact primarily through monetary exchange, allowing capitalist mediators to get in there and skim off the top.

Which brings us to Mike Daisey's peice, which is really wonderful, even better than his peice on the patriot act we saw before. It's basically all about money. One part of the show is he gives 100% of his cut of the ticket sales to the audience as they enter the space, then, at the end of the show, after talking about money for almost two hours, he asks us to give it back. It was very exciting and surprising to see him basically conducting our same experiment on a much larger scale with much more wide array of audiences, and somewhat more dramatically as well. I really wanna see the results!

The thing about this experiment (both ours and his) is it's not really that experimental. There are tons of punk shows going on every night accross this country and around the world that are based on trust and voluntary donations. The only thing we're doing differently is focusing on it and publically tracking it. Daisey focuses on it even more.

Which rasies two questions: 1. by publically focusing on this are we (like Jane Jacobs and gentrification) making it easier for capitalists to understand and thus recouperate? Or, does allowing the consumer to decide the value of our work themselves escape any possibility of recouperation?

If the value of a dollar is determined by consumers and tied to trust, fairness and a human connection to the producer, rather than tied to gold or floating on the supply and demand of the market, that seems to radically change the nature of money. This new nature might not be so incompatible with "custom" of communal societies. In fact, it might acheive the best of both worlds, or it might destroy money entirely.

The second question is: Where does that leave me in my search for a new home? If I'm going to chase after some place where gentrification/colonialization isn't happening, I'll end up in Tanna. It's really a trap, and of course, compromise is the only answer, but "which compromise?" only makes the choice more nuanced and harder to make.

Philosophical Musing #2: Identity Politics

Yesterday we encountered some contrasting examples that have got me thinking about Monika and my ongoing identity politics debate. To sum this debate up: I think identity politics are problematic for a variety of reasons, including: 1. on an individual level, structuring ones identity along the lines of gender, sex, orientation and/or race buys into these catagorizations, which are imposed by nature or society (or some of both). I'd prefer to see people structuring their identity around personal agency, the things they control and choose. 2. on a community level, identity politics' focus on advancing one group undermines unified struggle against the institutions that oppress us all (in various different ways). This advancement can develop to such a level that, for example, some consider gang warfare, ghettoization and purchase of flashy baubles and luxury cars "keeping it real" for black culture.

Monika retorts that her people need to be protected and garaunteed a place in the coming revolutionary war, and that my ability to structure my identity around personal agency is an example of cisgendered white male priviledge. This debate sits in a sort of stalemate (a fairly healthy one, in my opinion) we maintain our basic positions, but have each surrendered some ground, and remain wary of the others' concerns, predictions and warnings.

Yesterday, in Bloomington, I found fodder for both sides while spending part of the afternoon at a place called Rachel's Cafe. This cafe is one of those places you'll only find in a vibrant community. It's big. It's open. There's lots of stuff in it, a piano, unlocked cabinets in the bathroom, couches, all kinds of loose valuables. The owners must be very trusting, and the community must be very friendly and respectful to not steal, vandalize, neglect or otherwise abuse this space. This makes me like Bloomington. How this relates to identity politics is that the owner of this place is a 6 foot tall transwoman. Remember, this is Bloomington Indiana, the middle of America's bible belt. Fundamentalist Christian propaganda litters the highways around here. If enclaves exist to house places like Rachel's Cafe in this region, that seems to indicate that the defense and acceptance of Monika's people has already been quite successful.

Unfortunately, while at Rachels, Kate and I read a short zine we picked up at Boxcar Books called Why She Doesn't Give a Fuck About Your Insurrection which pretty clearly indicates that the ultra-radical left is in some places still a white male dominated hellhole. The zine was written in New York about the radical scene's recent adoration of insurrectionary anarchism as expressed by The Invisible Committee in The Call and The Coming Insurrection. These texts seem highly influential with many of the most radical folks I've met, and have been central in Monika and my debates. I don't agree with everything insurrectionaries have to say, but I find many of their critiques compelling, and the community where I've encountered these ideas strikes me as being positive and decent. (I realize the CCC has a reputation for being elitist, but I've attended a number of their umbrella meetings and think they mostly don't deserve this reputation.)

Thing is, this zine contains a pretty scathing critique of the NYC radical scene. There (unless the zine is all lies) women are routinely sexualized and men use the tactics of "invisibility" and "anonymity" to escape responsibility for committing sexual assault. This is obviously fucked. But, when the author of the zine calls them out on it, other men fault her feminism for failing to "focus on the totality". This is even more fucked. This kind of bullshit made 60's radicalism into another avenue for priviledged stright white males to have adventures, get laid, and otherwise dominate others. It's completely fucked. I don't mean to paint all insurrectionary communists with this brush (i haven't seen in among them myself) but I hear that New York often sets trends which eventually spread to the rest of the country. If this is happening, the radical left hasn't learned this basic lesson yet, and Monika is absolutely right: her people need to be defended.

Philosophical Musing #1: Modern Life is a Total Hurns.

This tour is many things at once, an art project, an experiment in alternative economics, a political action, and a major life transition. We're moving from a life in Milwaukee's greatest neighborhood, to a life on the road. We are homless until November, and after that, we plan on touring as much as possible. Going from a stable job and home with cheap rent and roomates in a beautiful disaster area of half-finished art projects and dirty dishes, to transient adventures and focus on the development and execution of just one project. Kate and I welcome this transition, we long for it, we accepted the risks and prepared as much as possible. What we didn't realize was how much of this transition would involve jumping through the hoop of fire that is mainstream life, or just how unpleasant that hoop of fire is. In the last few days I've had a bigger dose of "normal american life" than I have in a long time, and I honestly don't know how we as a nation can handle it. I offer three examples.

First, the car. This is the first car I've really purchased in my life. I've owned cars before, but they've always been hand-me-down beaters from family members expected to burn out within a year or two. This car, after purchase, repairs, and DMV fees will suck up about $5000. This makes the years I spent living frugally and saving my meager paychecks to build a nest egg for artistic adventures like these seem absolutely trivial. Half that nest egg is gone on a modern contraption that most people consider an absolute necessity. I now think about traffic in terms of hours of invested labor power and driving through Chicago yesterday was like watching a staggering tradgedy. How can so many people value these smelly, loud, dangerous chunks of metal more than their life's work?

Second, the DMV. After spending Monday night moving out of the house and Tuesday morning working on remaining booking and accounting issues, we headed down to the DMV service center in Bayview to officially transfer the car title on our way to our first show. I'm not going to give the typical complaints about waiting, I didn't mind the crowded waiting room (witnessed some interesting case studies in parenting, which make me glad that I'm a new owner of a car and not of a child) the workers were patient, efficient and friendly. No, my problem at the DMV is completely my fault. I'm bad at bureaucracy. First, I got my number, sat down, read, waited, mentally transformed "I171" into "I177" in my memory, sat through my number being called, waited for 6 numbers after me to be called, then got to the counter and realized that I'm an idiot. Rather than doing the rational thing and asking the attendant if she could take me after the real I177, since I'd been already been waiting for about 2 hours, i got flustered and went back to the beginning of the entire process. I got a new number, waited another hour, and thought about how I am trying to do way too many things at one time.

Third, the suburbs. We had a great show at messhall, crashed with our friend Ryan (which invovled parking at around midnight in bridgeport, a 40 minute ordeal) and then headed down to show #2. Before we left we made plans to stop somewhere once we got out of the city to take care of a few things. We needed a fabric store (busted fly on costume pants), an auto-parts store (manual for the car), and a small electronics store (rechargable batteries for the camera and components of a solar generator). We used google maps to find all three in close proximity in the suburban strip malls of South Holland. Once we got off the interstate, we soon realized that 2 of the three stores (Jo-Anne Fabrics and Auto Zone) had closed. We did find a Radio Shack surrounded by empty buildings that used to hold other chain stores. I remember in high school everyone complaining about empty storefronts in downtown areas with a sense nostalgia for lost community. Now the chain stores and stripmalls that forced those small family operations out of business are closing, but we don't feel nostalgia, instead we regret the green spaces and wilderness paved to make way for these cookie cutter boxes surrounding our cities. In the past, corporate types and businessmen disregarded our complaints with aphorisms like "you can't stop progress" and "adapt or die". We should be mashing these motherfuckers' faces into the asphalt and fake brick facades of the stripmalls the way dog owners scold their puppy when it shits on the floor. Instead, we're devising bail outs and stimulus packages to turn the economy around for them. What is wrong with us?

ARTISTIC TRANSPARENCY

If you've seen us perform Ulysses' Crewmen and were confused or upset in any way, we hope you spoke with us afterward. If you didn't feel comfortable or weren't able to speak with us, we owe you an apology.

We hope to create an intense and powerful experience for our audiences, but we do not intend to shock, upset or bewilder them. We withdraw from the quasi-mystical sublime in art. We know some artists are really into this kind of thing; fetishizing the ineffable, the emotionally deep, the ambiguously ironic, or the 'true expression of their artistic soul'. We're not. We do find such approaches occasionally intriguing, but too often they result in work that is either trite and sentimental or manipulative and self-indulgent. We try instead to be clear, approachable and honest. This doesn't always work. Sometimes the stress, exhaustion and excitement of performing (not to mention limits of time and space) make it hard for us to always be as open and available as we'd like at our performances.

Any work of art more involved than a shallow representation can be thought of as a sort of puzzle. We would like our play's puzzle to be challenging, but workable. We want Ulysses' Crewmen to ask compelling questions, and suggest interesting potential answers, without force feeding or coddling the audience.

If this didn't work for some in the audience we consider it mostly our fault. A good play should contain and communicate its intentions fully within itself. We're offering a poor substitute in cases where such communication has failed. If you have questions, please contact us via email and we will gladly answer your questions and send you a thorough statement of our intentions (which we don't want to publish here, cuz it's kind of long and might spoil the play for those who haven't seen it). Send requests to this email: insurgent.ben@gmail.com.

This statement of intentions does not cancel or abolish any other interpretation of the play. Art's meaning comes from audience reaction as much as from artist's intention. We are only sharing our thoughts to avoid confusion, dismiss mystification, answer questions, make suggestions and add to the crowd of valid but divergent responses we’re hoping the play creates.

This Blog

This blog is an open archive providing in depth documentation of Insurgent Theatre's Ulysses' Crewmen project.

Here we will:

1. transparently present the results of this experiment in radical economy.

Each performance begins with a brief discussion of our economic practices. We've made these practices a component of the show. Ulysses' Crewmen does not make sense as a play outside of this context. One of these practices is, whenever possible, doing the show for free and accepting voluntary donations. If we are going to successfully solicit such donations from people, we feel it's important to be honest and transparent about where our money is coming from and how it is being spent.

2. offer audiences an opportunity to discuss, feedback, and communicate with us and each other about the show.

We create art with the intention of communicating with our audience. We love when the audience communicates back. We prefer to hear criticism and reviews as a crowd of voices rather than a filtered viewpoint of a supposed expert.

3. Document and communicate our experiences on the road.

We do not want D I Y theatre touring to be this really cool thing that only people with connections are able to do. We want to empower anyone who wants to make theatre and present it outside of the restrictive channels of established practices. We hope to share advice, lessons learned, and contacts. If you have any questions, or need help with a tour or a show you are attempting to bring together yourself, please, do not hesitate to ask. Ben can be reached at 414 305 9832 or insurgent.ben@gmail.com.