{"id":390,"date":"2012-01-30T08:15:38","date_gmt":"2012-01-30T13:15:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/theatricalimperative\/?p=390"},"modified":"2012-01-30T12:56:23","modified_gmt":"2012-01-30T17:56:23","slug":"time-to-say-no-to-the-scarcity-principle-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/theatricalimperative\/2012\/01\/time-to-say-no-to-the-scarcity-principle-2.html","title":{"rendered":"Time to say NO to the “Scarcity Principle”"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Theatre-makers in America undeniably work in an embattled field.\u00a0 Artists face low salaries, inconsistent opportunities, and the difficulties any freelance American worker must manage apropos of health insurance, retirement, and child-rearing.\u00a0 The organizations that employ them face cuts, conundrums (e.g. as government funding levels decrease annually, their compliance and reporting requirements for not-for-profits increase, requiring us to spend a higher percentage of declining dollars on administration), and competition for audiences\u2019 time and attention from forms that are increasingly more convenient, accessible, and affordable.<\/p>\n

Almost every non-commercial production \u201closes\u201d money in commercial parlance \u2013 very seldom does anyone make more at the box office that they spent on artistic, marketing, and administrative costs components \u2013 so artistic leaders are, de facto, looking for what to cut.\u00a0 More often than not, artists\u2019 salaries and benefits CAN be cut: we all know by now that most theatre artists\u2019 will work for minimum wage and that their union will consent.\u00a0 So that\u2019s the first place cuts are made, often to the point that artists are more or less subsidizing the work of the organization by accepting less than a living wage.\u00a0 And I don\u2019t know anyone in our field who\u2019s really happy with that.<\/p>\n

But when we discuss the reasons we\u2019re in this position solely in terms of money \u2013 which generally leads to an argument about whose fault it is that none of us have enough – we often miss the bigger contextual picture, and a much more complex set of challenges, regarding artists\u2019 value <\/em><\/strong>in our society.<\/p>\n

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The low salary problem is just one bullet point of a much bigger problem of low perceived value: too many Americans don\u2019t see theatre artists as vital to improving their quality of life.\u00a0 This blog series will explore why that\u2019s happening and what we can all do to change it.\u00a0 But we\u2019ll have to start with a pretty elementary mental shift (and by we I mean everyone in our field, from artists to producers to funders): we\u2019ll have to stop believing in, and working in accordance with, a \u201cscarcity principle\u201d regarding opportunities, audiences, and money.<\/p>\n

In economics, the scarcity principle<\/strong> focuses on how an insufficiency of goods that have high demand can drive up prices for these goods beyond the natural equilibrium, such that only the wealthiest can afford them.\u00a0 The scarcity principle we suffer under is sort of the reverse.\u00a0 Because we don\u2019t sufficiently cultivate demand for our goods, we\u2019ve gotten focused on competing for scarce opportunities and constituencies; this culture of competition has slowly led us to believe that it\u2019s our only possible \u201cbusiness model\u201d (and this applies equally to artists, leaders, and funders).<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a great exchange in J. B. Priestley\u2019s Time and the Conways <\/em>(the first play Epic produced Off-Broadway!), in which the conservative Ernest and the socialist Madge argue about labor strikes in England in 1919:<\/p>\n

Ernest<\/em><\/strong>: \u00a0The working class is out for itself.\u00a0 Then why shouldn\u2019t the\u00a0middle class be out for itself?<\/p>\n

Madge<\/em><\/strong>:\u00a0 The middle class must have already been successfully out\u00a0for itself or it wouldn\u2019t be a comfortable middle class. \u00a0 \u00a0Then\u00a0why turn against the working class when at last it tries to\u00a0look after itself?<\/p>\n

Ernest<\/em><\/strong>: That\u2019s easy.\u00a0 There\u2019s only so much to go \u2018round, and if you\u00a0take more, then I get less.<\/p>\n

Madge<\/em><\/strong>: I\u2019m sorry, but that\u2019s bad economics as well as bad ethics.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Who among us in our field hasn\u2019t felt what Ernest articulates?\u00a0 That there\u2019s a lack of artistic opportunities, or funding sources, or potential audiences, and that we have to put our resources towards competing for those that already exist, rather than toward trying to build new ones?\u00a0 But as Madge points out, it\u2019s just bad business.\u00a0 A business that fails to actively create demand for its\u2019 product, and just relies on historical demand \u2013 unless it sells something like milk \u2013 will swiftly lose significance.\u00a0 So the economic side of this thing is just common sense, self-protection, even, and there\u2019s lots of easy solutions that can be employed to shift this paradigm toward the development of new audiences, opportunities, and funds, which this blog will explore in later Chapters.<\/p>\n

The ethical side of things is a lot more controversial, I think. \u00a0I\u2019ll be developing an argument for the ethical importance of increasing artist value over my next few blogs.\u00a0 But let me start with a question.\u00a0 Most of us cringe when an American corporation moves operations to a country where much lower salaries can be paid for the same quality of work, right? \u00a0Most of us know that this kind of practice is bad for both the country the corporation has left and ultimately the one it has entered, even if those workers have freely consented.\u00a0 We know how crippling this lack of investment in local resources has been to the quality of life of middle- and working-class American families.\u00a0 Sure, these corporations do it for profit, but here\u2019s my question: really, how is it any \u201cless bad\u201d to underpay our workers for artistic and educational profit than for financial profit?\u00a0 We can\u2019t expect these for-profit corporations to take any kind of moral or ethical stand on this issue, obviously; but have we gotten to the point where we no longer expect it from ourselves?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Theatre-makers in America undeniably work in an embattled field.\u00a0 Artists face low salaries, inconsistent opportunities, and the difficulties any freelance American worker must manage apropos of health insurance, retirement, and child-rearing.\u00a0 The organizations that employ them face cuts, conundrums (e.g. as government funding levels decrease annually, their compliance and reporting requirements for not-for-profits increase, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-390","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-a-strategic-approach-to-raising-artist-value","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/theatricalimperative\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/theatricalimperative\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/theatricalimperative\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/theatricalimperative\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/theatricalimperative\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/theatricalimperative\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/theatricalimperative\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/theatricalimperative\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/theatricalimperative\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}