Listening to the NPR story about the House Theatre of Chicago, a few things were especially surprising for me.

1. The first theatre in Chicago occurred in 1837 for 75 cents a ticket. Wow.

2. A bunch of kids from Texas chose to move en masse to Chicago to start a company? I guess the theatre scenes in Dallas, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio must really suck.

3. Harry Houdini, Peter Pan, the Wizard of Oz, the Nutcracker... HTC shows would seem to capitalize on name-recognition of stories in the public domain.

4. The actors earn $1000 a show? Damn, that's pretty good.

5. The most successful young theatre company in Chicago and everybody still needs to work a day job? Interesting. Just how successful do you need to be before you can afford to quit your day job?

6. They've had 20,000 people in attendance for a production of a drama? Damn, that's really good.

7. With a budget of almost $500,000, everybody has to work a day job and the company is still listed in the "fringe and storefront" section of Time Out. Maybe if they reach an operating budget $3 million they can quit and work in the theatre full time. That seems absolutely crazy to me. Granted, NPR does not go into great detail about the HTC business plan, but that strikes me as an extraordinarily high figure for being able to pay out a living wage.

Again, how successful do you need to be before you can afford to quit your day job?