We're happy to announce that as of last week and after only 2.5 months of operation, artist pay surpassed rent as our biggest monthly expense. In fact with a week still left to go, we've paid teachers and producers over $3,100 in November alone.
This should not only be the new normal for our budget now that the majority of our startup expenses are behind us, it should continue to increase when performer pay kicks in with our new schedule this weekend. Friday's Indie Night and Saturday's Local 593 and The Pickle are all paid shows with teams getting a percentage of ticket sales.
Paying artists has been one of our main priorities since opening. For example, admin work continues to be unpaid despite being the vast majority of total hours worked. Ben, Pat, and Sara all get paid to teach and run shows, but they don't get paid to send emails, update the website, work on the space, or write this blog post. That will change eventually, but it's just not as important to us in the short term as making sure we can directly compensate the people (performers, producers, and teachers) who make the products we sell (shows and classes).
That being said, starting this weekend the rest of the year is going to be pretty rough for us financially. Due to the holidays we're unable to run the full slate of classes we'd have normally, and we're not running shows Friday 12/24 or Saturday 12/25. As a new business the timing is just not great, especially right as we were starting to hit our stride. In other words,
We need your support!
Here's what you can do to help:
Buy tickets to shows!
Register for December and January classes!
Get some gear at our Merch Shop! (t-shirts are just $12 til 11/30)
Toss us a few bucks on Venmo!
Anything you do right now helps us right now, even if you're getting tickets to a show in March. Every bit helps us continue to provide paid opportunities to artists, free access to our stage for our students and performers, and low-cost live entertainment.
Thank you so much!