There are no Playbills on offer at the Public's current production of The Good Person of Szechwan, a remount of the Foundry Theatre's beautiful, pitch-perfect queering/contemporizing of Brecht's great fable, which I'd say, based on limited authority (I haven't seen every show onstage in NYC), must be among the best things currently onstage in NYC (Fun Home, just across the lobby, ain't chopped liver, either). Instead, the program you're handed at the end of Good Person is a specially printed one. That must have been expensive, you may be thinking; and you can learn in the very same program that in fact "Programs & Front of House Displays" set the remount back $6,300.
You can learn that because, as they did for the original LaMaMa production in February, the Foundry has printed their budget, in the interests of transparency, and something to do with Brecht's characteristically opaque quote about the truth being "concrete." Above, at left, the LaMaMa budget ($203,815), and at right, the Public numbers ($476,861). That looks like a big markup for a show to move a few blocks over, but what's not immediately clear is that the original production ran for 25 performances, by my count, and the new one runs 57. That means that while you can duly note the big jump in, say, production/technical costs between LaMaMa and the Public, the new Good Person is a (relative) steal at these prices, given the show's large cast and band. It's true that lot of uncountable development costs were absorbed by the original production, of course, since the show didn't have to be recreated from scratch for the move; that surely saved the Public some dough (and maybe now they'll do more imports/coproductions with Off-Off shows that deserve a longer life).
Now, if we could just see the receipts...
You can learn that because, as they did for the original LaMaMa production in February, the Foundry has printed their budget, in the interests of transparency, and something to do with Brecht's characteristically opaque quote about the truth being "concrete." Above, at left, the LaMaMa budget ($203,815), and at right, the Public numbers ($476,861). That looks like a big markup for a show to move a few blocks over, but what's not immediately clear is that the original production ran for 25 performances, by my count, and the new one runs 57. That means that while you can duly note the big jump in, say, production/technical costs between LaMaMa and the Public, the new Good Person is a (relative) steal at these prices, given the show's large cast and band. It's true that lot of uncountable development costs were absorbed by the original production, of course, since the show didn't have to be recreated from scratch for the move; that surely saved the Public some dough (and maybe now they'll do more imports/coproductions with Off-Off shows that deserve a longer life).
Now, if we could just see the receipts...
fascinating stuff, thanks for posting this
ReplyDeleteThe only thing I'm wondering about is how they kept daycare for the rehearsal and production periods down to $650.00 for the LaMama run.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't call the initial budget cheaping out, but what really surprised me was the one area were costs jumped the most, way more: the off-stage personnel. Is that an IATSE thing or some other non-AEA union? It's the only place with more than a $100,000 increase. wow! Thanks for posting this.
ReplyDeleteRalph, it's definitely about union tech people. When Dixon Place commissioned "Well" to play at The Public several years ago, that was a huge unexpected cost for us, too.
ReplyDeletePublic tech crew is not union. You see that very small USA/IATSE health budget line, that's the designers. And they are generally paid at the bottom even of non-union scale.
ReplyDelete