It is so much money: ethics and professional theatre

I open this post with an excerpt from the graduation celebration of the 2003 Open Doors Program of Theatre Development Fund. In this clip TDF Executive Director Victoria Bailey introduces the late Wendy Wasserstein. As a founder of this program Wasserstein's vision has made the theatergoing experience a reality for what will soon be generations of New York City high school students. I had the privilege of hearing Wasserstein speak about this program at the 2003 Crossing Paths conference held in Charlotte, NC. Her enthusiasm inspired me to develop a similar program for at-risk youth in New Hampshire. The idea behind these programs is to provide area youth with access to, and ownership of, arts events.

I come back to this years later in the midst of the excitement that surrounds “Hamilton” the musical. It’s a problematic piece this “Hamilton”. Why?

It is so much money.

In the run-up to the 2016 Tony Awards™ for Broadway, much was made about the premium price increases of “Hamilton” tickets and the profits that many “Hamilton” stakeholders stand to make with the show’s current popularity. Prior to the recent price increase, Melinda Lopez offered a narrative of the seesaw she rode on whether or not to purchase tickets for her and her daughter’s girls’ weekend later in the summer. The funds to afford the nearly $2,000 to purchase the tickets were available from a small inheritance borne out of a dying mother’s allotment for home care that was no longer needed. In the end, Lopez presses “enter” on the buy option of the ticket website.

Lopez’s Howlround blog post elicited mostly supportive comments especially in regards to the connection between a dying mother and her daughter and granddaughter’s living-life-to-its-fullest choice of attending “Hamilton.” But the comments also included a plea to refrain from succumbing to such high prices as it only encourages prices to climb even higher, pushing experiences like attending “Hamilton” out of the realm for most.

I have been tossing around the idea of a connection, if any, between art and commerce with ethics. Does the bonding of art with commerce, in this case commercial theatre, render the enterprise less responsible to ethical considerations of access, as demonstrated by ticket prices? One can surmise that as ticket prices increase less access is made available to the particular arts experience. While the recent price increase for “Hamilton” tickets was, according to its producers, offset by an increased number of tickets made available for $10, there are barriers to access of this opportunity. Many working people are unable to invest the time to engage in the $10-lottery and a foundation-supported program for high school students is restricted to a particular catchment area.

We might think of these $10-tickets as a latter-day equivalent to the reduced admission afforded the groundlings in Elizabethan England. Andrew Gurr (1996) notes that the groundling price at theatres at this time was a penny versus a fee of sixpence for the lusher accommodations of a lord’s room. However, Gurr estimates that more than 800 groundlings were likely admitted into a theatre space with a total capacity for 3,000 viewers. This would amount to 27 percent of the Elizabethan audience as comprised of the penny-stinker class. In contrast, it is doubtful that the “Hamilton” producers of 2016 are offering 27 percent of their seats to lottery winners and foundation-supported patrons.

What’s more, the differential between the groundling and lord’s admission prices is much smaller than that between a New York City high school student and a premium viewer: the groundling would pay six times more in admission to afford the lord’s room while today’s student needs to pay 85 times more to secure a premium seat.

An underlying premise within my question suggests that art that is not linked to commerce is inherently accountable to an ethical agenda. I am reminded of Joan Jeffri’s (1983) discussion of the mid-1970s controversy that surrounded the Museum of Modern Art’s sale of air rights to a commercial developer. Critics of the project distinguished the non-profit museum’s status as a “repository of values” against the real estate developer’s “siren call of commercialism.” This was, according to Lee Rosenbaum, a clash of values and ethics.

However, is it appropriate to assume that arts organizations that are not-for-profit are inherently ethical? Diane Ragsdale’s “In the Intersection: Partnerships in the New Play Sector” (2012) discusses the relationship between the for- and not-for-profit theatre sectors. The book recounts a convening in 2012 of 26 theatre professionals to discuss the intersection that occurs in the development of co-productions between these two sectors. Throughout the book, the professionals refer to a need for clear and transparent ethical codes by which decision-making can be accomplished by the non-profits regarding productions, research, and development: none of the discussion places the burden of ethics on the for-profit arm. This group would likely have us assume that the for-profit arm of theatre is not obligated to consider ethics in their business decisions. As Polly Carl of Emerson College stated, “Wall Street is Wall Street because they don’t have an ethics statement.”

I come away from this processing of art, commerce and ethics as somewhat disillusioned. While I don’t consider myself to be naïve—I did spend my young adulthood dealing with the ravages of ticket scalpers on Broadway--I entered the field of the arts with a love for many if not all of its forms and a growing respect for the values that the forms can impart on its public. Fighting fire with fire in the case of third-party ticket prices might be effective for the bottom line but I don’t view it as contributing to the art form.