chrisgriswold:

nicolemarietherese:

joestanton:

chrisgriswold:

If you know UCB doesn’t pay, and you want to be paid, do a show somewhere else. UCB doesn’t need your “very successful” audience of 20 people if you’re going to whine about it online.

This smells a bit like UCB bunker mentality. We might be at the place where “UCB doesn’t pay, period” isn’t a good excuse right? I dunno. What about like, if you fill 75% of the house (w paid tickets or something), you get, say, 20% of the door, that you can distribute to the performers in your show as you see fit (the politics of that are on you). So if you sell out UCB East you $120. If you’re a standup show, you divide that by 6, maybe. That’s $20 for everybody. Did I do the math there right? That sounds fair. In the case of standup, very talented people have been running at a loss for like, their whole careers. It seems fair to pay them back, maybe. I dunno. I was raised in the very amateur-oriented improv world, where performing is the reward, but the older I get, the crazier that seems to me.

But then again, what would you do for improv? I’d wager that more than half of the Harold Night audience is going for free, but you don’t want to pay standups and not improvisers.

UCB is a prestigious stage, no doubt. And you get to say your show is at UCB if you’re performing there, and industry people know about it. But you can’t pay cab far with prestige. I dunno, let me say again that I will never be talented enough to deserve more than a little debbie snack and a slap in the balls for performing any art form, anywhere

I will die penniless and my children will hate me and become bankers and meth addicts

Here are some things you get when you perform in a show at UCB that you don’t get if you have to provide or run your own venue:

• Free publicity, based on the name recognition. People will show up to your show just because they know the theatre.
• A fucking first class house staff that will run it all for you.
• And that first class house staff will make sure you get access to the space when it’s your time so that you’re not hanging out downstairs in LIC forty-five minutes after your show was supposed to start.
• Oh, and then clean up after you.
• A tech.
• A bartender.
• Beer, wine, etc for your audience to buy.
• Insurance.
• Absolutely no consequences if you don’t bring an audience. No financial risk to you whatsoever. No paying them back or splitting the cost if you completely shit the bed and don’t bring anyone.

These things all cost money/time that you’re not spending.

Also, UCB paying performers based on either a “token” system or a complicated percentage would require an administrative infrastructure that they don’t have, probably couldn’t afford and definitely couldn’t offer desk space to if they ever got. 

I’m (obvs) all for respecting artists, being cool to each other, and knowing your worth and what you won’t do without pay. But I’m also all for maintaining some fucking perspective. (That f-word wasn’t for you, Joe. It’s the original posters.)

Reblogging because Nicole’s being way more thoughtful than me this morning.

I just want to call bs on the fact that the great debate cost 5 dollars and was never sold out.
Love,
Ucbeast Friday employee