If you are like me, you often wondered how the Public Theatre could afford to do Shakespeare in Central Park for free for so many years. Well, it turns out it hasn’t been easy, nor has it been entirely free. An article appeared yesterday in the New York Times on this exact subject.

It turns out you can purchase tickets for reserved seating to the shows and this is not a new development. Founder Joe Papp started an audience sponsor program in 1960. The program was essentially a subscription plan where $7.50 got you reserved seats to 3 of the summer shows. According to the article, Papp felt this pricing scheme was essential for the theatre to survive.

Until recently, the theatre has downplayed the availability of the ticket program for fear of appearing too commerical. Executive Director Mara Manus has really made a push to promote the program this year. $100 gets you a reserved seat. Since the seating is free to all, the money is actually a tax deductible donation according to the website. The benefit you get is not having to stand on line and a preferred seating location.

The Public is capping the number of seats that can be reserved in this manner each night and the rest will be available for free. According to the article, “up to 19,950 of the total 79,800 seats to be occupied this summer will not be available.” The ticket program only covers 19% of the $1.9 million budget for the production this summer. “The remainder derives from foundations (24 percent), corporate donations (21 percent, which includes cash or in-kind giving by companies like J. P. Morgan and The New York Times) and the blocks of Delacorte tickets sold to businesses (16 percent). There is still a 20 percent shortfall.”

So obviously, it hasn’t been the easiest thing to do free Shakespeare all these years. Even the lofty goal of making theatre free to all has entailed selling tickets to those who will pay. I thought perhaps the Public’s other activities generated enough revenue to cover the loss of doing free Shakespeare. But it turns out it hasn’t been entirely free. Publicizing the availability of reserved tickets is a financial necessity. Ms. Mara projects that the Public will be in the black for the first time since 1998. (The Public has a $12 million budget so presumably other measures are being taken in addition to the sale of tickets at the Central Park event.)

This situation holds some interesting lessons for other theatres who try to financially support their free events. Not only will people pay for the privilege of a reserved seat at a free event, they will pay $100 for it. Essentially, people are paying as much as they would for some Broadway shows and they are doing so for a seat exposed to the elements.

I assume all the closest seating locations are taken by those who pay for their tickets no matter how long the first non-donating person has been standing on line. The theatre has 1,900 seats and up to 475 may be sold on any one night. Even though the first non-donating person will have a good seat, there could be some anger on their part if they can’t sit closer after standing on line for hours. The logic that they are getting it for free so they don’t have cause to complain about a donor getting better treatment is usually lost on people–and you have to remember, you are dealing with New Yorkers who can be a little less laid back than other folks. (Edit: Please read comment below where a reader corrects this impression.)

Even though they have been running the program for over 40 years, the fact they are heavily promoting it now means that the first non-donor in line will end up much further back than in the past. (Perhaps 400 people back vs. 100 people back in recent years.) As confounding as it may seem, the theatre could end up with a negative image for more strongly promoting a long time program so they can continue offering a show for free.

It will be interesting to see what happens.

While poking around the web today, I came across the Americans for the Arts’ Animating Democracy Initiative. It appears the project ended in March 2003, but the website still serves as a resource for research on “exemplary arts-based civic dialogue projects”

The initiative was a joint project of the Amercians for the Arts supported by the Ford Foundation based, in part, on the premise that:

“In the workings of democracy, civic dialogue plays an essential role, giving voice to multiple perspectives and enabling people to develop more multifaceted, humane, and realistic views of issues and each other. Yet there is growing concern that opportunities for civic dialogue in this country have diminished in recent years. In the renewal of civic dialogue, the arts can play a pivotal role in many ways.”

They worked with 32 organizations in their Animating Democracy Initiative Lab, giving them support to develop a number of projects. Those projects can be found listed here.

The website also provides links to case studies and profiles that Americans for the Arts weren’t necessarily involved in and reference materials in the resource section.

Andrew Taylor has a great entry today on The Artful Manager. He lists generalizations about non-profits vs. for profits that have annoyed me for ages. I am not as concerned about the negative light with which for profits are cast as I am with the pure motives and results attributed to non-profits.

From my own experience with organizations I have had contact (and a handful for which I have worked) I can easily attest that many non-profits have forgotten what their mission is, produce their share of the crass and pandering and have hardly cornered the market on community building. Non profits’ existence hinges so much on casting themselves as benevolent and beneficial in order to receive grant money that the positive image pervades.

To be clear, I am not just talking about arts and cultural non-profits, but health and human service sector organizations like Big Brother’s/Big Sisters, Boys and Girls Clubs, the United Way and a host of less recognizable social service agencies as well. Though certainly there are plenty of instances where arts and cultural organizations act poorly as well. (Witness Drew McManus’ frequently entries on how orchestra management bullox up the works here and here among others.)

The part of Mr. Taylor’s argument that really interested me was his thoughts about why one would seek non-profit status:

“The cause would be my choice of creative expression and the context of a consumer market’s willingness to buy it. When there wasn’t adequate volume or density of consumers to cover the cost of my work, the effect would be a drift toward nonprofit status. When there was a sufficient group of individuals that wanted to buy the work at a price that covered its costs, the effect would be a drift toward for-profit status.”

and a little later…

“Tax status is not a cause. It is not a source of nobility or honor or excellence or any other foundation-friendly word you care to utter. Tax status is a tool, a step, a way, an option. To boldly paraphrase a favorite quote of the gun lobby: ‘nonprofits don’t make art, people do.’ They just happen to choose that tax status sometimes along the way. But they can also choose another if it serves their vision, their purpose, or their art.”

In the course of all the interviewing I have done for jobs, I have spoken to boards of directors who are just starting an arts organization and are looking for a person to run it for them. Because they sincerely want to create an organization that benefits the community, and because they have found government and private entities that will give them the money to do it, they inevitably have formed a non-profit to reach this end.

Even as a person in the profession, I haven’t really questioned this because I don’t really know of any alternatives. If I was starting a for profit business I could go to a bank for loans or find investors but I can’t really think of any place outside of a city like NY or LA that a person could do either and be taken seriously. Unless you are all already wealthy, how can a group of people get together to build a performing arts center without going the non-profit route?

But I agree with Mr. Taylor’s idea–if you think there is enough interest in what you are doing that you could pack the house, why not try to make a profit first and then move to non-profit status if you discover that plenty of people have the interest to pack the house, but not the means to support the organization by themselves.

This is something I will be contemplating. I will be keeping my eyes open for articles that might show that such an idea is viable. If anyone sees one, please direct me to it!