Patrons and Purveyors of experimental theater. Theorists and practitioners of the same. We passionately believe that theater can be different, better, new.
Welcome to the conversation!!
Operating as usual
The team who hosted our last production would like to host yours as well!
12,000+ sqft of prime DTLA production/event/creative space beaming with character. Complete with cyc wall, bar w/ chandeliers, kitchen area, basement, freight elevator, exposed brick, wifi and large loading doors. Can be rented in sections or whole!
Just say "no" to the aftermarket. Almost every one of the following tickets have aftermarket prices that are ten to a hundred times more than face-value. There is no guarantee that _any_ of this money goes back to the athletes, the staff, the league or sponsoring organization, or the funders. Its the same with theater. Sports teams or theaters charge what they think tickets _should_ cost. Consumers pay what tickets _do_ cost, and the difference ends up in the pockets of people who have nothing to do with the game or the play.
If you saw the recent Mayweather, Jr title fight from ringside, you paid a cool $31,000 for the view. See it on this list of the Top 15 Most Expensive Sports Tickets.
Value is a function of scarcity. If YOU runs for three years, at four shows per week, only 624 human beings _on earth_ will have seen it. For context, the Pantages seats more than 2600 people _every show_ to see Hamilton. Yes, we're proud of the theatrical art and our audiences love the experience, but we also love creating something so fine and rare. It genuinely makes us feel like we are sharing something precious. Seven actors. One member of the audience. Full production values. Unique.
Freed from all constraint, what would you become? Would your sins and fears rise up and consume you, leaving nothing but a husk of good intentions? Or would your light shine through, for once, free and perfect? We have created a play in which you can explore and answer that question. YOU.
How tame a human soul becomes, when robbed of even the hope that tomorrow can be better. The world makes you cynical so you're easier to control. So you'll fall into any line and meekly take your assigned chair, never believing in yourself. Never believing in each other. It can be different. You can be different. YOU.
What is "once in a lifetime" worth? How about "once in history?" 11 pioneers have experienced YOU. Journalists. Artists. Businesspeople. You can see some of their reactions below. Every night there is one audience member, seven actors, a ten-thousand square-foot world of quality drama created lovingly for YOU. Theater can be different. Theater can be worth it.
Between now and the end of September, Hall and Mirrors is moving from rehearsal to performance of its new theatrical experience YOU. Each performance is designed to have a single audience member serve as the focal point for an entire cast, crew and event. The production values are strong. The cast is outstanding. The trades are top-notch. Everything about the evening is designed with the single audience member in mind and we're confident it will be amazing. Drop us a note if you're interested.
50 years ago, there was virtually no world-class wine produced in Napa Valley. Today, Napa wines contribute $330 Billion dollars to the economy and more than $13 billion dollars to the economy of Napa -- a tiny agricultural town in which _nothing else happens_. If we could move toward innovation the highest of high-end theater in Los Angeles, what would the consequences be for the economics of theater in LA? Even today, we have the largest pool of acting talent on earth, an enormous audience eager for innovation and quality, and an ability to move theater in new directions. Socks to be knocked off.
Here's the "very big picture" of theater economics: First, the history of the last 70 years is the history of The US mistaking the post-war moment for "normal." In 1950, the rest of the world was digging out of rubble. The US wasn't touched by the war and was thus -- in a way that we've never seen in human history -- a hyper-power. From an industrial, economic and military standpoint, we were unique. As a nation, we tragically decided to call that moment "normal," and for seventy years, this Disneyland version of normal has slowly disappeared. It has disappeared because the rest of the world has industrialized and modernized and become competitive with everything we do. Instead of seeing this as something the rest of the world was doing, the American answer for more than half a century has been to turn inward and blame each other. What are "we" doing wrong? Is it the Democrat's fault? The Republicans? Who can _really_ make America great again? The answer to that is nobody -- not the Democrats and not the Republicans and not Bernie Sanders. No one can re-create what was the strangest moment in economic history and if someone tells you they can, they're either wrong or lying so that you will vote for them. What we _can_ do is understand that we're in a new place and move forward. We can understand that the whole world economy grew up and that we aren't the only contributors to it anymore. Seven billion dollars of new value is added to the global economy every single day. New farms. New small businesses. New gadgets and consumer goods. Yes, this new money ends up disproportionately in the hands of the rich, but this isn't a conspiracy. This is the fact that it "takes money to make money" and the vast growth of the global economy was (and is) funded by investment from the first world. All of which has _already happened_. The horse has left the barn. Raise income taxes? Won't matter -- asset inequity is the real issue, and income taxes just limit social mobility. Asset taxes? Good luck with that one -- that's a level of political juice no one can imagine. What does all this have to do with theater. EVERYTHING. We have a theater industry that is still acting like it's 1955. We ignore the reality of money, wealth, economics, and the re-emergence of a global economy. We fiercely cling to what "should" be, as opposed to the undeniable reality of what "is." And in our ideological purity, local theater dies out. Even Hamilton sputters along with half of the profits going to scalpers who contribute nothing to the production. All because we believe things "should" be different. If we want to make things different, that's going to take hard work and an ability to face the truth. There are some battles we can win. Some we can't. We need imagination, hope, creativity and passion -- all of which theater can contribute, if we take it seriously.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzB5xtGGsTc
This is long and probably more detailed than most folks would need, but is a fascinating and data-based exploration of how pricing evolved and works in the airline industry. As a pilot friend of mine used to say, the money airlines make from coach doesn't even pay for the gas and maintenance. That's changed with things like baggage fees and all the other "add ons." In theater, all we have are coach seats. All we have are coach productions. We have no dynamic pricing based on scarcity (our shows "sell out," or they don't), and we have an active secondary market which sucks away profits further. It is no mystery why theater is going away. You'd be hard-pressed to design a more challenging business model.
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Luxury boxes contribute 20% of stadium revenue (and are easily the most reliable sources of profit -- the amount of revenue the stadium gets to keep after it pays all its expenses). If you did away with them (or if you didn't have them), the stadium would go out of business (or the team would move, which is the same thing). We can get mad at this as injustice or see it for what it is: the money gained by luxury suites allows the stadium to exist and we benefit from that because we get to watch our favorite sports live and in-person. Very significant analog for any live entertainment production.
Across the NFL and MLB, team owners know wealthy individuals and big corporations are willing to pay big bucks for a private box. It's an unbeatable formula.
Los Angeles, CA
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Every single person has a fire inside.
