I’ve been working with the guys at 76Design for the past few months to help get a site up for the Ottawa Fringe Festival – a not-for-profit festival of which I am a board member.  The festival is 11 years old this year, and this is the first time it’s ever had a solid website.  I’m blown away with what the guys at 76 were able to do, and I suggest you check out the site.  Go ahead.  I’ll wait.

As I’ve mentioned several times on this blog, I’ve been involved in theatre at various levels and in various capacities since I was in high school.  It’s an odd business, and this is something that becomes painfully clear the second you try to understand it.  There are no economies of scale, no syndication, and in most cases, not even a delusion that a play will make money, unless it happens to be a huge blockbuster – and these probably account for about one-tenth of one percent of all of the productions out there. 

From an economic perspective, there is a hard cap on how much money an audience member is willing to pay, and how much time they are willing to invest.  Given the cost of actors, directors, costumes, set, theatre time, techs, lighting, designers, publicity, advertising and so on, the cost to produce a show that’s not a Broadway smash hit is exorbitant.  I’ve been in operas with budgets over $800,000 for a four-day run. If theatre companies were to charge a rate that aimed at profit, they would in most cases need to charge hundreds of dollars per ticket – a price that the market certainly would not bear.

So, how do theatre companies make money?  Well, the short answer is – they don’t.  Most operate as charities, and most are run by passionate people taking a fairly severe pay cut.  The most telling statistic in the industry I’ve ever read came from a Canada-wide government survey of the performing arts that found that the largest financial supporters of the arts were artists themselves – skilled and educated people working for low wages out of sheer passion.

Because of these economics, practically every government in the world subsidizes these costs through grants (Canada is one of the worst at this, but that’s another story).  As a result, professional artists are able to work and produce quality theatre within the economic boundaries that is dealt.

This is fine for established artists, but how does new and cutting edge work get created if the cost is so high?  Even if they are working for free, an unproven artist putting on a new work must pay for sets and lighting and publicity and theatre time and so on.  Not quite six figures, but still a substantial cost for someone self financing.

Fringe Festivals, in many way, represent the long tail of theatre.  The Fringe started in Edinburgh in 1947 as a way for artists who weren’t able to get into the much larger Edinburgh Festival to self-organize another festival “on the fringe” and debut new and innovative works that didn’t fit the larger festival’s mandate.

The Fringe came to Canada in 1982 when the Edmonton Fringe Festival started.  Since then, the Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals has expanded to 25 festivals (some in the U.S.), all based on the idea of encouraging new works and new artists. 

To get in, a group pays a nominal fee (usually between $500 – $800) and in return is provided with publicity within the festival, a box office, ticket sales, a theatre tech, lighting, sound and a stage to act on, and then receives 100% of their box office.  In addition to that, performances are unjuried, so artists do not need to adapt their performances to the tastes of a festival and new works can grow.

In this way, the festivals act as aggregators of theatre – most with shows under 60 minutes – allowing audiences to find new works, new artists and new tastes without having to gamble on a high ticket price and a long show. 

The interesting thing about these festivals – and I’ve been to many – is the natural social network that evolves.  It’s not hard to find out what’s good and what’s not from anyone at the festival who’s hanging out at the beer tent.  Shows succeed and fail by their own talent.  It’s not about who has the most advertising – it’s about who has the best product and the most evangelists.

Of course, the nature of theatre still doesn’t allow these artists to reach the whole world, but it does allow them to tour the network of Fringes fairly inexpensively, billeting along the way, and exposing their art to thousands of people across the continent instead of a few hundred in one small market.  Like an indie band on iTunes, the Fringe allows artists to make a name where they couldn’t have before, and audiences to discover new kinds of art that they might never have taken the chance on before.

This is the reason that I’ve been involved in the Festival as long as I have, and the reason I encourage anyone who has a Fringe in their town to see what the festival has to offer.  For $10 and an hour of your time, you can’t go too far wrong.