October Archive Highlight - “Pay Up - pt 2;

October Archive Highlight - “Pay Up - pt 2;

“Management Bets That You Won’t”

This is the second in a series of posts about my experiments in different payment Systems across my projects The Telelibrary, Fair Trade, and Undersigned). If you missed the first, I recommend reading it first then coming back. I’ll wait, I promise.


The payment System for Undersigned is meant to address and achieve a few things, but it was largely born out of a distinct experience:

A dear friend and I were on a road trip, but we knew tickets would be released soon for a very hot show we wanted to see, and so we set an alarm on our phones and pulled into a parking lot. Sure enough, tickets went out and quickly started disappearing as others booked. We selected a date, and added tickets to the cart - and then we both stopped, waiting for the other to proceed. Eventually, we put a name to the trepidation that was now sitting on the center console between us: “it feels like such a risk.”

Tickets were about $100 each; not cheap, and less so for artists, but soon the show would become even more expensive. The show was several hours long, which does some to explain the high cost, but also in some ways increases the risk (anyone who has considered chewing off their leg to escape hour 4 of a Robert Wilson piece can testify to this). We talked a bit about this feeling of risk, and about the strange ways we come to value an amount of money; take-out for two in NYC is easily $40, $50 with a tip if someone splurged and got a beverage—aren’t we as performers better positioned than anyone to agree that a transformative experience is worth cooking at home 2-3 times? But we still found ourselves asking: “what if it isn’t good?” By the time we quelled that fear and resolved to bite the bullet, there were no rounds left in the chamber; tickets had long since sold out.

More than anything else, the eventual Payment System for Undersigned attempts to speak to that moment, to acknowledge and respect the leap of faith someone has to make to sign up for any immersive experience—particularly one for an audience of one——and particularly one from a creator who provides hardly any details at all in a bid to be “vague enough to be interesting.” Here’s that attempt, as found on the website:

“For Undersigned, participants are asked to make a "Down Payment," rather than buy a ticket.

What does this mean?

Getting a reservation for this experience is a risk. This risk is certainly your money; you are putting down $60, which is not nothing (in this economy, it's approximately .... 2 gallons of milk?). It’s also your time; 50 minutes is not nothing (plus however long it takes to get to Brooklyn). Finally, this risk is also your participation; you will be taking a distinctly active role in your invocation, and you stand to gain as much as you are willing to venture.

While Management certainly supports the business of risky business, in recognition of the gamble you are taking, the Management of the Undersigned will join you in risk: at the venue, there will be an envelope with your name on it, containing $20. When your experience is complete, should you feel you got more than you bargained, you will have the option to add money to it. You will also have the option of taking money out, and walking away.

The Management of Undersigned bets that you won't.”

It’s not bad copy, if I say so myself: the tone and premise do a decent job of piquing interest, and of laying down a kind of dare—both of which are key framing if I want to turn not knowing anything about the piece from a liability into an enjoyable part of the experience. But does this System work? Well, since I’ve finally got almost 50 paid shows of Undersigned under my belt, let’s take an early look at the 4 goals I described in my previous post and see what we find.

#1 - Payment as a Lowered-Obstacle to Accessibility

The ticket prices my friend and I found ourselves scared by are certainly fueled by demand, but they also reflect a truth that my return to in-person theater delivers to my doorstep every day: this shit is expensive to make and operate. Even applying my normal practice of minimizing production elements and building props, sets, and scale iteratively over time, the high-degree of care called for in Undersigned leaves me committed to some choices that raise costs. As such, from a strictly financial standpoint, I’d say this is not the most accessible Payment System.

There are some cheaper options available in this model. “Standby Tickets” can be had day-of for $15 (we haven’t had many cancellations/no shows, but we’ve managed to distribute one of these so far). We’ve also had at least one participant “pay forward” a session, which means for our next public posting we’ll be able to build in the option to request and/or be on the waitlist for free tickets. It can be time/thought intensive to develop and operate these options (finessing a good Standby Ticket experience in particular has proved challenging in such a small venue), but I remain committed to keeping some more affordable paths open.

That said, I do think this model for payments does a good job addressing the larger cost of admission; by clearly addressing the potent blend of investing time, money, and good-faith engagement, it seems to successfully invite participants to make that risk a choice, and thus one they can make more meaningfully and enthusiastically.

#2 - Payment as a Form of Direct Feedback & Gathering Data

Many of my dear collaborators know that I generally hate a curtain call—I find the convention of clapping to mark the end of something so often chases away the feelings and thoughts an experience may have given me (I paid good money for this existential crises, please don’t take it off the table like a half-drunk sprite!).

And while I acknowledge the role applause has in expressing gratitude (more on that in goal #3), I’ve never been too convinced by the idea that clapping is how an audience can respond to a work. The convention is too locked in and expected, too culturally and socially laden - how many times have you been at a show and given a standing ovation mostly because everyone around you stood to clap? And to withhold applause entirely feels as pointed and confrontational as leaving no tip at a restaurant. Add to this the diffuse nature of applauding in a crowd, and the sum of it is something that may function well as a ritual, but really doesn’t work much as a choice.

Enter the eloquence of cash in an envelope. To me, assessing the price you want to pay for an experience is much more direct and specific than asking merely was it good? Having cash on hand is meant to make the seemingly impossible choice of taking money back quite tangibly possible (the instructions on the envelope include the phrase “If you feel you have given more than you received, use your hands.“ A take-home QR code also provides digital payment options along with a digital copy of the credits.

So what’s the verdict so far?

We’ve done 49 performances with this Down-Payment model, including 1 Standby performance*.

Data often can surprise you by challenging your anecdotal experience; without running the numbers, I’d be inclined to say adjustments happen often, but not frequently. Yet the numbers tell us that more than 40% of participants made some move to increase their contribution. Aside from being a promising indicator that this might be “good BUSINESS” rather than just “the Business of Good”(see #4 below for more on that front), I also take this to be an encouraging sign that many and possibly even most participants are experiencing this a real choice they could make. Hopefully that means many of the 55% who made no adjustment did so by choosing not to change the amount, rather than simply not choosing (philosophically, arguably similar; experientially, very different).

That said, the REAL surprise of this dataset was that it took months to get our first grabber; personally, I was astonished that 38 shows for this to happen. This may be a testament to the quality of the piece. It may also refute my earlier idea that the choice feels possible. The numbers alone can’t tell us the why of people’s choice here; did they take because they hated it, because they need the money, or because they simply could? Did they leave the money because they felt they got their money’s worth?

However “eloquent” cash in the envelope is, it has limits as a tool for communication. There are after all so many confounding factors. Fortunately, the moment of making this decision is thoughtfully crafted with something else in mind:

#3 - Payment as a Space for Meaning Making

At the end of Undersigned, participants are left alone in a room with their envelope, and given time for a number of considerations, payment among them. This means participants have often written us notes explaining why they made their choice; reasons range from the cryptic to the heartfelt to the clear and direct: “I feel like what I got was worth what I gave.” This act of assessing value also evokes many of the themes of the piece, which asks participants to consider what they desire and how much they respect, dismiss, or fulfill their desires: “what is the worth of your Wants?” The final choice of adjusting their payment invites participants to have “the last word” on not just their experience as product but also on the narrative they have just created. I’ve been very pleased to see the ways people have played out their story (and the role they’ve chosen for themselves) through their payments. This seems to potentially create a shared incentive: the more both of us work to make a compelling experience, the more a participant will be inclined to increase their contribution, and to feel that doing so doesn’t detract but rather enhances their experience.

That’s an “investment structure” I find exciting, and a relationship to risk that feels meaningful to claim.

So does it make money?

#4 - Payment as a Path to Profit (?)

As I mentioned earlier, this shit is expensive to make (energetically and pieces-of-magic-paper-ly). It’s important to me that works like this be sustainable without devaluing my time (or especially, the time of others). So as I committed to a person set up and saw how tight the margins would become, I considered raising the price to $70/appointment. However, after seeing adjustments from our first runs in July, I spoke with my collaborators on the piece** , and we decided to leave the price as is and see what would happen.

Specifically, this happened:

The piece took in 116.49% of Down Payments, creating an average ticket cost of $67.87. It’s worth noting that 10% of shows were sold at a lower Down Payment (Fringe shows were $50*, and the one Standby was $15). Looking just at shows at the “full” Downpayment of $60, the average was actually $$72.17/appointment. I can’t say if adjustments would have been more/less favorable were the Down Payment $70 instead. I do feel though that these numbers suggest that a Payment Model of this kind can raise profit while also expanding accessibility, inviting deeper audience buy-in, and facilitating more meaningful and transformative experiences.

Of course, we’ll see what we learn as more data comes in - expect an update post as we pass ~100 or so shows. For those of you who have seen Undersigned, I’d also love to hear your experiences with this model; how did it feel? Feel free to comment below, or to send me a direct message with your thoughts.

For those of you who haven’t seen Undersigned yet, we’ll be looking at The Telelibrary and Fair Trade in the same way in the coming months, and I’ll look forward to your thoughts then.

~

* Methodology note - of these 49 performances, 4 were done at the Philadelphia Fringe with a ticket price of $50 instead. Mostly this was in deference to the Cannonball Festival, where most shows were offered as “Pay-What-You-Wish” and the highest suggested contribution for shows was $50. Of these 4 performances, 1 participant added to their contribution, and no one lowered it.

**(McKenna Parsons helped build and perform the attendant role and is in rehearsals to perform the as facilitator; Jacob Ford provided production collaboration and consultation for hosting Undersigned at the City Reliquary)