If you've ever wondered how much it costs to produce a show in NYC, this will be of interest to you.
Isaac Butler wrote a great post on Parabasis yesterday in response to what's going on with the Equity Showcase Code and the proposed 99 Code. Jump to his page to get commentary and a bunch of links to explain what I'm referring to.
For the moment, though, we're really interested in the production expenses breakdown he does at the end of the post.
As they say on Marketplace... let's do the numbers. You're producing a show with a $60K budget. Assuming we've embraced the above model, that means that you're paying $9,000 split up amongst your cast of 5. You're a fair minded person, so you've decided to pay everyone the same. So your director and design team of four (lights, sound, set, costumes) and stage manager and playwright all get $1,800 a person. So that's another $12,600 out the door. So now, of your $60K show, you have remaining $38,400.
Now you want to do your show in a niceish venue and so you're paying $3,500 a week to rent the space for five weeks (that's four weeks of performance plus one week of tech/previews). That $17,500 gone, leaving you with $20,900 in your budget.You really should read the whole post, these figures mean more in context.So now you rent rehearsal space. You're renting it at $15/HR, and you're rehearsing an average of 24 hours a week (6 days a week, four hours a day because actors have day jobs) for three weeks plus tech. That's $1,080 gone to rehearsal space.
That leaves you with $19,820 (I think, I'm doing this at work on the back of a napkin) to spend on marketing your show, building the set, lights and costumes, paying any kind of run, box office or set crew you might need, hiring a press agent, hosting your opening night party, printing your program etc. etc. and so forth. And that's not a huge amount of money. But it's still larger than the budgets of most (but not all) of the shows I've directed in New York.
And if you enjoyed this post, you should check out this discussion about money matters over at Scott Walters' site.
