Ominous words

We're in contact with the musical director for True Fiction Magazine, asking if he'd mind sitting in with us as well. The delicate issue of money comes up.

Now, anywhere we've ever gone, the tech and musical director always gets paid. As it should be. Frankly, in most respects they're more valueable than we improvisors are. Case in point, on any given night, you could find a dozen improvisors ready to leap into a show at the drop of a hat, and the concept of being paid for it (for many) is foreign.

But find someone to run the lighting board and score the scenes? Not so easy. It takes multiple emails and phone calls, and the few experts that exist generally book quickly. Supply and demand.

Back to San Francisco. The deal with this festival, unlike any other we've been to, is that there is a promise of payment. The performers actually get a cut of the door. I don't know how they're doing it, but it's brilliant, frankly. It's a lot easier to enjoy a festival knowing that at least your beer money's likely to be covered. These things are expensive to attend.
So we're happy that there is money to be had, and we work on the assumption that the festival producers are producing the shit out of the shows, and that crowds will be reflective of that.

So, when we read the musical director's response that he usually gets paid $75-$150/show (gulp - American!? Way to go, guy!) but that he had played for the Bay Area Theatresports Show at the festival the previous week and the performers out-numbered the audience, and that he would refuse any money out of our pockets, but we could figure things out once we knew what the take was...

Well.

Nice guy, first of all. I'll shake his hand and buy him a drink.

And I've been at a couple of festivals where the audience was outnumbered. And it stinks. You go all that way, at a huge expense, excited to play in front of fresh crowds, and when it doesn't happen, you don't know how to feel. Demoralized? Insulted? Mad? Nah, not mad. I don't even care about who is to "blame".
At this point, it's not even about the money. I just want a room that doesn't have an echo.

I know Shaun's working hard for us - we're in The San Francisco Guardian this week (http://www.sfbg.com/39/37/x_8days.html), with a photo (although it bills Sandy "Sandy Jo Bevins"), so hopefully that'll have an effect.



I have faith.