Like many people I know, the last few weeks have been a matter of spending fairly large amounts of money on tickets to shows in January for Under the Radar, COIL, American Realness, and so on. Or, well, let me clarify: Under the Radar. As a critic I tend to have the opportunity to receive review comps. But for various reasons I usually wind up buying my own tickets to Under the Radar shows. Which makes me one of the lucky ones, to be sure–the cost would be staggering otherwise. Anyway, a Facebook friend threw this up this morning and it cracked me up:
As he pointed out, $25 for a 15-minute performance works out to a little over $1.66 per minute of performance. Which, for some reason, does seem expensive. $25 for a downtown performance is a little higher than average I want to say, but still solidly within the expected price range. But for only 15 minutes? It’s an odd bit of math to do: what is the value of a minute of performance?
The economics of production dictate that the fixed costs (design, set construction, load-in, etc.) are more or less the same for a show regardless of whether its run time is five minutes or 5 hours. If I were James Surowiecki writing in The New Yorker‘s financial page, I’m sure I’d have some pithy little analysis based in social science research that would provide a concrete language regarding why it is that–even though I know why the prices are the same for a short performance or a long one–that it seems somehow unfair to have to pay the same for a show that’s short as for one that’s long. Instead, I just decided to start running the math on various shows based on ticket prices I’ve paid (or would have paid had I been forced to buy them):
- Nature Theater’s Life and Times Episode 1-4 at UTR/Soho Rep ’13: $0.16 per minute (at $25 per ticket/4 tickets, over 10 hours)
- Einstein on the Beach, BAM ’12: $0.29 per minute (at $80 per ticket, over 4 1/2 hours)
- Daniel Fish’s A (radically condensed and expanded) Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again (after David Foster Wallace) at the Chocolate Factory ’12: $0.13 per minute (at $20 a ticket, over 2 1/2 hours–which is a full hour longer than the reduced version being shown as part of Under the Radar ’15)
- 600 Highwaymen’s The Record at the Invisible Dog ’13: $0.26 per minute ($15 suggested donation at nearly exactly 57 minutes–if Abby or Michael feel so inclined, they can provide exact run-time for the most accurate cost-per-minute analysis here)
- TR Warszawa’s 4.48 Psychosis at St. Ann’s Warehouse ’14: $0.75 per minute ($45 per ticket, 60-minute run-time)
- Philippe Quesne’s Bivouac at Performa 13: $1.50 a minute? Maybe? ($20 for a 30-minute…90-minute… Wait, if the bus ride was part of the performance, do I have to figure out how long it was supposed to take if the driver hadn’t gotten lost? And do I subtract the period during which the performance was interrupted to make us all stage a scene for a different performance Quesne was making? Fucking performance art…)
- Jim Findlay’s Dream of the Red Chamber in Times Square ’14: $0.00 per minute ($0.00 ticket for up to 12 hours; at zero cost it’s not worth debating the validity of whether you experience performance while you’re asleep for the purposes of calculation)
- Fernando Rubio’s Everything by my side at Crossing the Line/PS122 ’14: $0.33 ($5 for 15 minutes…though I actually think the “performance” was much less than 15 minutes)
- Gerald Kurdian’s The Magic of Spectacular Theater at Crossing the Line ’12: $0.50 per minute, or $0.30 per minute, or $15 for nothing, depending (Assumes $15 ticket purchased in advance for the performance that started 20 minutes after scheduled curtain due to artistic crisis, which in turn led to the artist not actually performing the intended show. So pricing is based on whether you assume the show started late but you accepted the alternate performance of a few songs; or whether you accept the artist’s statement that what took place onstage was all a matter of conscious decision, which means the show didn’t start late; or whether you assume you didn’t actually get the thing you thought you paid for at all)
- Elevator Repair Service’s Gatz in Seattle in ’07 or NYC in 2010: $0.06 per minute, or $0.41 per minute (depends on whether you paid $24 for the show at On the Boards in 2007 or $160 top price at the Public in 2011)