Comments

1
Oh god, what a loss. I'm so, so sorry for everyone, audiences and theaterfolk alike.
3
I've seen 4 of those in and around southern California in the last 2 weeks. Sadly, they are out of a job come Monday.
4
Well, if Trapnell decided it was necessary, it's probably necessary. She's smart and capable and I trust her. Still sucks, though. Guess I better start hiring some Intiman stagehands now to keep them fed.
5
I hope to god that they can find a way to fix things and open a new season next fall. But this is the right decision for now. As someone who closed a business this last year the quote "when you don't have enough cash, you can't do anything well, and that takes a toll on good people." rings all too true. Best of luck to all at the Intiman.

6
All I can say after working for every Artistic Director, multiple Boards, and appearing in over 40 productions is...

SHIT.
7
This hurts us all. Recriminations and blame are collectively moot. Now we must hope for a better future for all of our theater institutions. Our city's soul needs its nourishment.
8
Brendan - NOW will you commit to writing a full-length story about this total and utter FIASCO??!?

They took people's money for the past 2 months and didn't even have enough cash to pay for the rest of the season???

At what point did someone finally say: HEY! Enough is enough!

Oh, wait: That was today.

9
@8 that's what I was just thinking. I thought they had just promised to stay open despite falling short by $100k at the end of last month?am I missing something?
10
Sad news but not wholly unexpected either. And, it's too bad considering they've had several hit shows in the last year: Ruined, Doctor in Spite of Himself and the current All My Sons all had large audiences. Obviously Kate Whorisky has an eye on creating strong theater seasons.
11
@10: No they didn't have large audiences. If they had large audiences, or were even capable of adding and subtracting basic number in a spreadsheet, they wouldn't be in this position. I hope their board ends up on the bad end of paying back the subscribers and donors.
12
Here Brendan. I'll make it easy for you:

Board Officers
Bruce A. Bradburn, President
Cynthia Huffman, President-Elect
Paul J. Lawrence, Treasurer
Bob Alexander, Secretary
Craig G. Campbell, Vice President
Terry L. Jones, Vice President
Paul J. Lawrence, Vice President
Andrea Rabinowitz, Vice President
Moya Vazquez, Vice President
Kristine Wilson, Vice President
Susan J. Leavitt, Ad-Hoc
Will Ludlam, President’s Appointee
Kim A. Anderson, Immediate Past President

Trustees
Joel Bodansky
Nancy Beyer Cannon
Rosalind Christensen
Peter Davis
Maud Daudon
Kevin McCarthy
Daniel Nye
Maura O’Neill
Robin Romeo
Kenneth L. Schubert III
Julie Tokashiki
Susan Trapnell*
Kate Whoriskey*
* Ex Officio
13
@11: You are mistaken. Their houses were fine.
14
#13: You are mistaken. Please look up the definition of LARGE and the definition of FINE. The average house in Seattle is doing business far north of the Intiman's audience, and their subscription revenue is in shortfall. It's basic math: If they had subs, they could budget their season. Instead, they counted on single ticket sales and missed their numbers. Poof: Budget blown.
15
Apparently the Stranger assumes that its readership consists primarily of theater employees, because it's missing the information that consumers care about: what about the tickets I bought? The Seattle Times article has that info:

She is working with other theaters in town to see if they will honor Intiman's tickets. Other likely choices will be for ticketholders to either write their ticket costs off as a donation to the theater; or to apply the cost as credit for the 2012 season.


In other words, the ticketholders will not be getting their money back. When a business can't supply me with the goods I paid for, I generally expect to get my money back. If the business can't give me my money back, that makes them bankrupt. Not re-grouping and re-thinking, but legally bankrupt.
16
Maybe one of the silver linings to this will be a wake-up call to boards of other nonprofits that their role is to know what the fuck is going on financially with their institutions, and if they don't know how to read the balance sheet, they need to learn how to do it.
17
Oh, that's where my comment went. It should have been posted to Goldy's Liberty Tax post. My bad.
18
This isn't the first time for Intiman. Back in '85 they were in debt, had no performing space, and was down to one employee, a book keeper, when they hired Liz Huddle as artistic director and Peter Davis as managing director.

With Huddle's intituitive ability to understand a Seattle audience combined with her artistic acumen and Davis' practicality and penurious budgeting, within six years the company had moved into the renovated playhouse at the Seattle Center, produced The Kentucky Cycle which was the first play to recieve a Pulizter before arriving in NYC, imported a Russian theater company for the 1990 Goodwill Games, created the acclaimed Living History program for high schools, and a million bucks in reserves by the early 90s.

Sure we are in tough economic times, but now is the time to brave and optimistic. Saving Intiman can be done.
19
To those on here who believe ticket sales make the difference, you are way off. Some shows sell well, some don't, but the cost of a ticket is a small percentage of what the theatre pays to produce a play for each said ticket. True, that the more tickets sold the better, but it is not the driving source of funding.
And to the many who seem to enjoy the downfall of another organization, I'll remind you that the people who failed this theatre and ran it so poorly are the ones who will be least effected by the closure, other than the subscribers who, while are not going to get what they paid for, stand to lose very little comparatively. The people who lose the most are the employees who did not have a hand in the failure, and now have to repair their own lives. So enjoy it if you must, just keep in mind that it can happen to you as well.
20
My picture of things is that ticket sales cover about half the cost of a production at companies like Intiman. That's more than a small percentage, and it's enough to make a big difference. Do I have that wrong?
21
Oh man, if we lose Andrew Russell... Damn it. He knocked it out of the park with his staging of Jake Heggie's "For A Look Or A Touch" at McCaw Hall at the beginning of the month. I thought the economy was turning around. I hope they can regroup and pull through.
22
@14 I am sorry but you are just mistaken. The houses were PACKED. "Ruined" brought in the 2nd highest ticket revenue and attendance in Intiman history. You should realize that ticket sales don't even make up 50% of the theatre's income. The majority of income comes from donations, grants, and corporate funding. It is completely possible for a theatre to have a sold-out season and not be able to survive. Intiman wasn't sold out, but did have record high sales. That's what happened. -Intiman Employee
23
RE: Raventrickster's comment--Liz Huddle was artistic director there well before 1985.
24
@22. Are we going to pretend that Intiman was anything other than a touring house for that production of Ruined. It could have been done at ACT or REP or the Garage for God's sake. It was just like getting a shipment from NY. The box arrived and Intiman unpacked it. If you are right and they had record box office, then that is even WORSE for them, because it means that they had a record audience and STILL couldn't leverage that success into keeping their business going.

As to those of you who think this is gloating or sour grapes? Far from it. I think the board of this theatre are 100% responsible for this happening. Between the lack of fundraising (hey: if ticket sales were strong then it had to be outside raising at fault) and the lack of fiscal discipline and basic management, this was a doomed to fail moment.

No one is surprised. No one but the Intiman board, it seems.
25
Intiman's failure has nothing to do with the subscribers, or the audience or the lack thereof...the people with the power to SPEND money at Intiman spent too much and the Board of Directors failed to do anything about it, (like curb spending, reduce overhead, and/or raise more money).

Intiman's troubles are sad but it's also not the end of the world.

1)They could recover
2)They might not, and if so, that theater isn't going to sit empty. In a wise and just world, some wise heads need to start thinking that maybe large, top heavy, theater organizations aren't practical business models anymore. Maybe a group like Theater Puget Sound needs to take over running the actual BUILDING, and leasing out the theater to smaller, leaner but artistically valid companies like Seattle Shakes, Book-It, New Century and Straw Shop for their bigger productions. Both the Shakes production of "Hamlet" and Book-It's "The Cider House Rules" would have greatly benefited from having the larger Intiman stage.

And, if Intiman CAN survive, they need to seriously downsize their huge overhead. They need to get lean and mean and perhaps SHARING that space might be a way to go.

Stop thinking of this as a potential tragedy and start thinking of it as an opportunity for theater growth.
26
@24: So basically you were wrong about the one assertion you made, and now you're making some different assertions, which amount to "the theater is broke because they have no money!" Thanks for your insightful remarks.
27
hmmm...there are folks on here who really don't understand how a large non-profit theater works.

Ticket/Subscription sales make up a sizable percentage of a theater's income (and obviously it varies greatly from theater to theater) with another large chunk coming from donations, both individual and corporate and a rather small percentage coming from various government entities, (ie, in Seattle from 4Culture but probably not for much longer...sadly.)

But, if a theater company consistently brings in $8m a year but spends $8.5m a year, eventually it's going to go kaput...just like any other business that spends more money than it brings in.

It all boils down to basic math, kids. Selling out the house every night isn't going to compensate for a big overhead and big budgets and rampant spending and a severe lack of responsible oversight from department heads, both the ED and the AD, and the Board of Directors that dates back many years.

And, Intiman's co-production of "Ruined" was actually a step in the right direction, saving thousands of dollars in production costs. For some reason, Kate Whoriskey seems to be one of the people being scapegoated for the demise of Intiman, when the fact is, their troubles started long before her arrival and her regime has seen both a rise in ticket sales and an attempt to reign in spending. The Intiman's financial follies began LONG before she arrived on the scene.
28
I wonder how much they paid Bart Sher to devote about 1/3 of his attention to them?
29
@ 23

No she wasn't. Megs Booker was. I was an employee.
30
Mr. Strangeways,

What many people also really don't understand is the simple fact in the non-profit theater world there are basically two types of employees:

*What you pay for

*True Believers

Our voluntary Boards of Trustees know this salient fact only too well.

In order to hire competent comptrollers, communications directors, etc., the organizations must compete with market rates and demand. This costs real money. Staff churn can be quite the problem as a result. For example, just prior to going belly-up, TAG had a listing in Arts Search for a new director of marketing attached to a 35-40K starting salary. Actors appearing in TAG productions were making a tenth of that amount in their one lucky contract a season.

In a classic example of Supply and Demand 101, artists routinely subsidize this profession through low wages. I personally and voluntarily did this for well over 30 years--while working practically nonstop at regional theaters hither and yon around this country. Volenti non fit injuria. Yet I never approached the starting annual salary of the above-referenced departmental position. With all due respect, audience members do not purchase tickets to see a Marketing Director onstage. It cannot be stressed enough: artists are migrant workers--a 6 or 8 week gig here and there, and then another field, another crop, another plantation.

Work in the non-profit theatre world is for the young, the partnered, or the wealthy.
31
Although I was very impressed with Whoresky's hand in Ruined, Doctor, and Sons, it seems to me, when Intiman's crisis came to light earlier this year, they could've post-poned (the very interesting and worthy) titles in the 2011 season and announced an 'Impact Intiman' Season with crowd-pleasers and local actors. Since there was no marketing budget (one Intiman employee told me there wasn't money to even hang a banner on the theatre for 'Sons'), why not pick titles that will sell themselves... rather than new and/or edgy work that requires a fair amount of marketing? Also, it may have been easier to get reluctant subscribers/donors back on board if this season followed the formula from last (except for Scarlet Letter).
32
I absolutely respect what Larry is saying above, and artists do indeed have it badly, but a $40k/yr Director of Marketing can expect to work 60+ hrs/wk for that salary.

In my own case, in a local arts marketing department, we have 2 fewer FTE than we did 3 years ago, and received not one raise in that time. Same amount of work, fewer people to do it, and wages that don't even keep pace with inflation.

So, to Larry and anyone else that takes that tack - let's not drive a wedge between artists and admin every chance we get. We are all suffering, and plenty of us in admin are true believers, or we wouldn't do what we do.
33
Intiman still has jobs posted on Craigslist.

If anyone in management knew about this, why were they posting for positions as late as 4/8?

34
@33: They not only posted jobs, but I've heard that they filled jobs in the past 2 weeks.
35
Laurence Ballard's point is central, and it has been known for a long time. Nonprofit arts in the US have always relied on a heavy subsidy from working artists. Even the management side of the arts is underpaid, though not nearly so dramatically as the artists. It's not sustainable and it places bad relationships at the very center of the artistic project. I remember when John Kazanjian hired his actors as management staff at New City Theater. They got paid, but there were also some predictable problems with that approach; New City morphed into other attempts to solve these basic problems of nonprofit theater funding. So what has worked? Anywhere. Anyone have success stories that are relevant here?
36
I fully respect your point, Jim. Never said Admin can't (or doesn't) include the T.B.'s. Ask any intern. Hard work is hard work. But artist's salaries at our nonprofits have flat-lined for fifteen years. (Which is a major reason I'm no longer acting.)

I'm simply saying something is very, very, wrong with a nonprofit theater system routinely placing artists at the bottom of the income pyramid.
37
I tend to agree with Mr. Ballard here. The only people that get paid at my scrappy little theater, when we've made enough income from the box office are Actors and Crew. And whomever tends the bar keeps their tips. I'm a volunteer unless under an AEA or IATSE contract, and heavily subsidize the output with my own sparse time.
38
Go Laurence!
39
Reading this thread it's as clear as even that artists across the board need to rethink their sense of entitlement when it comes to the idea of expecting to someday be paid a living work for their work, especially in this day and age of a dwindling economy facing numerous economic and supply crises. The days of a worker in the arts being able to expect a working career in their field are coming to an end.

Art has always been above all else a labor of love. Many of us never expect to make a living from working on it, even if successful. If theatre is to survive, those who make it probably need to downsize their expectations.
40
That said, can it be possible to make a living making theatre in such a world? I'm sure you can and many can/still do, though today it's not as likely or feasible as it was 10, 20, 30+ years ago.
41
Did anyone watch Bill Maher this week-end, and hear his rant about the NEA? Although I respectively disagree about his summation of the Culture Wars, I did agree with the pittance amount the feds give to the NEA.
All our lives we were responded to, regarding our chosen professions, with scoffs and "You're doing what? An Actor? A designer? A director? You'll never make a living doing that!," but we did it anyway. I think the term NON PROFIT is self fulfilling in someways, and if we were monks it wouldn't matter, but we all want families, dogs, and a car. Bill Maher gives us something to ponder.
42
I TOTALLY disagree about the LABOR OF LOVE bullshit. A labor of love is when I delivered twins.
43
I'm a stakeholder capitalist, Mr. Gomez. Not a dilettante.

Your homework: http://thurly.net/1bxk
44
A pithy blog? That's Steven's homework, Larry?

You may not be a dilettante, but you also ain't here working the front lines any more and Steven is. So. . . so much for your capitalism.
45
That's true Paul. I'm teaching students how to properly perform plays by our best new playwrights, such as yourself.
46
And for that Larry I can be neither grateful nor ungrateful. To be the latter seems unnecessarily churlish, to be the former is to ignore one of the grandest ironies of the art form: one can make a living teaching others to do that which no one can make a living at, thus producing at a geometric rate more and more teachers of artists for whom there are less and less paid opportunities. This virus may indeed kill the host-- indeed, Intiman may well be one of the first wave of victims, but theatre itself will survive it.

But by all means, send those students out here when you’re done with them. They are sure to be useful somehow in the revolution.
47
Here, here, Mullin. I don't know your work, Mullin and am not referring to anything you have ever written, but Another Great Irony is to write a play about writing a play and how it sucks to work in the theatre.
48
Intiman's demise is not the result of one bad managing director, a few poorly performing shows or even the downturn in the economy and subsequent decline in funding from individuals and corporations. That theatre has been a ticking bomb for well over a decade, as its IRS statements going back to the beginning of the century show, as will the honest observations of any employee during that time. And while it's hard to be anything but sad at the loss to the theatre community and the actors, artisans and administrators who it employed, it's also hard to be anything but angry at the gross mismanagement and poor stewardship over such a loooooooooong period of time that led to it.

That said, the root cause is an operational structure across US regional theatres that has not changed in the 61 years since Zelda Fichandler founded the Arena Stage. Think about that for a second. Is there any industry or business that has survived and thrived over that period of time without any fundamental changes to its business model? Of course, the greater irony here is that while there theatre has always had a focus on immediacy and innovation on the stage, none of that has ever transferred to the actual business of doing theatre; you will find few institutions in the profit or non-profit world as conservative in operations as a theatre. Which is really too bad, as there is an astounding amount of innovation and art happening in the world of business which continues to be willfully ignored as theatre's large and small putter along the same track on the same train and hope for a different outcome.

But that, of course is due to the old saw - rearing it's ugly head here - that theatre for the sake of butts in seats and a living wage for its creators and practitioners is somehow "impure" or less than real theatre. Why shouldn't we be applying our energy and imagination to creating a business model - and it is a business, folks, Intiman once had a budget over $5M and employed more than 200 people annually - where actors as fine as Larry Ballard and playwrights as gifted as Paul Mullin and talented designers and directors CAN make a living wage from the manufacture and delivery of their product? Because, short of that, we'll just be trying to rescue institutions so they can fail again, and this story will be no more than a drop in a very big bucket.
49
We can't ignore that elephant in the room, Paul. Proof positive a college degree is not a prerequisite for employment in the theatre, I was hired four years ago--along with eight other working professionals--to help construct a new program from the ground up: with a focused eye on the entrepreneurial 21st century (which in our field, at least, is looking more like the early 17th.) With our connections and experience we're actually finding gainful work for many of our students--this despite the fact we're a non-conservatory private college in the South and notwithstanding the cultural truth that in America, theatre is mostly a game for the younger, not the older. We're creating the kind of artists we would like to act with, direct, and write for. Individuals who understand the primacy of the written word. People who fully grasp the ugly truths of unemployment. Artists who wish to mindfully create. We endeavor to create a runway from which our students will eventually fly.

Of course the theatre will survive. When the electricity fails--and it will--we will still have stories to tell and the need to hear them. Besides, as Declan Donnellan writes, "we direct and perform in our own dreams each night. Theatre will never die until the last dream has been dreamt."
50
Beautifully put, both by Declan (my son's name!) and yourself. I look forward to working with your students, Larry.

Mindful creation is always needed, if not always welcome.

I explain to my own students when I teach (and yes, I do participate in the grand irony myself on occasion) that art is the act of telling the truth. But that when you think about it, that act is not as grand or as gratifying as one might first think. Basically what artists do is tell people that they have spinach in their teeth. Now, one always wants to know that sort of thing, but one is rarely in turn grateful for the knowledge. Usually you're annoyed at the bearer of such news, and disinclined to, say, give them 20 bucks for their troubles.

Send us some folks ready to tell the truth whether or not anyone is ready to remunerate them for the service. And perhaps we'll make some headway in these dark times.
51
IMHO nothing can be learned about the arts or the Intiman's business model by looking at this and other recent actions.

The point at which this discussion should have been launched is when that first drawn-down of their endowment's principal was required. They started eating their seed-corn and seemingly thought nothing of it.

However long ago that happened, and however it happened, it was ignored. And it continued. All of this is damage control protecting private and corporate parties from liability and loss.

As far as the question of who deserves what ... I just don't understand the question. This is America - you don't deserve anything. This country will throw you out of a hospital to die on the streets for lack of money. I think art is a lovely flourish, but arguing about the value of culture in a country that doesn't value life strikes me as silly.

People in unions don't 'deserve' their wages and benefits, they took them by force. You get what you can take and keep ... you're not going to get anything by pointing out you deserve it.
52
Sadly, the arts model, (A tiny few make a lot, a few more make a decent living, and the majority do not) is being replicated in every other American industry...

But, it still doesn't excuse the fact, Intiman financially mismanaged the business.
53
@McCandless: Is Annex Theatre going to follow ACT's lead and offer free tix to screwed Intiman subscribers? Carlo Scandiuzzi is a philanthropist, but no dummy: it's a smart play to lure a few moneyed patrons over. After watching their duckets whirl down the drain, those disappointed folks might like to see some new work featuring local artists. A few dozen new Microsofties with matching funds on the A-List might even let Annex to pay an artist or two.
54
@Butterup - It's an idea, but the theatre experience offered by Annex departs wildly from the more established houses. I admire the gesture that ACT has made, and I appreciate the business acumen behind it. It would be simple enough to offer the TPS discount at the door for anyone presenting ACT season tickets, but it's such an outlandish proposition that we would run the risk of being seen to be making a mockery of events.

As for Microsofties, matching funds and artists pay ... our new Artistic Director Pamala Mijatov has made it clear that it is a priority that we increase the stipends we pay our artists. While no one makes very much at Annex, the stipends that the artists receive are higher than those received by the staff and administration of Annex. A small gesture to be sure, but philosophically important. Already A-List members from Microsoft make a significant contribution to the bottom line of the theatre.

Our staff is working constantly to improve both the technical capacity of the space and the front-of-house service at the theatre. Our production staff lead by Meaghan Darling works tirelessly to shepherd a constant stream of programming. All of this working to stabilize our theatre "in these troubled times" and to secure the revenue required to increase artists pay.

But we will never be able to pay people enough to live on. Theatre is manual labor and is costly and awkward to scale. Amusingly, Annex is not eligible for many grants because we have no paid administrators. Having paid administrative staff is a prerequisite for the serious-dollar grants - I've never run across a grant that required a theatre to pay artists.
55
A question from a non-theater-knowledgeable reader: If Intiman was going down the drain, why did they hire a consultant? To simply confirm that fact?
56
@sarah68: I'm guessing when they originally hired Susan, it was with the notion of having some steer them through the crisis and back on the path to solvency. I have a feeling that folks still may have been living in lala land with regard to the magnitude of the fiscal problems, and that Susan - to her great credit - injected a serious dose of reality into the proceedings. The fact that she said that the $500K of emergency funding they said they needed - and essentially raised - by March 31 wasn't nearly enough should give you some insight into just how out of touch folks there were.
57
Trust me when I say I didn't post that with any glee or scorn, and I'm saying that as an artist that, like anyone else, wouldn't mind a living doing theatre and would love for his colleagues to be able to do so... but realizes that we're now living in a different time. I also am not surprised that such a comment upsets people who have worked their entire lives under the pretense that someday they were going to make a living doing theatre. Times have changed, and finding out late in life that your life goal is a mostly untenable one is not an easy reality to accept.

There is just not the capital to go around that there was 10, 20, 30, 50 years ago. As we, as a society and economy, start downsizing our budgets to meet our needs, people are getting more honest about the net value of a theatre donation. You can make all sorts of tangential and moral arguments about how theatre contributes to an economy, but the raw fact is that when you make a donation, you as a donor get little other than your name in the program and regular spam from the company you donated to, asking you for more money weeks or months later. It's like giving your money to a transient crackhead, except the people who take it aren't destroying their lives and in fact are making an effort to enrich their lives and others. Yet they still come back with their hands out, having not changed or grown any more self sufficient.

On top of that, most companies don't throw anything in for your donations: Donors are typically still expected to pay for tickets and concessions, and their donations go to no length to make the company self sufficient, because the company just blows the money and comes crawling back asking for more donations. And even after all that money intake, these companies are still in trouble and begging as if on life-support.

From a non-artist's perspective, that's like throwing money down a hole. The tax deduction has a marginal impact on your finances at best, and given the above is still a net loss. Any warm fuzzies you get from doing so don't pay your bills and often won't keep the theatre company alive.

If ticket sales aren't paying your bills, then you're spending too much money. Yeah, equipment and AEA/IATSE salaries and rentals and all else are just too expensive, which means today's theatre is living an untenable. Whenever I've been faced with untenable expenses in my personal life, whether because of losing a job or a deadbeat roommate skipping off or some other sudden crisis, I've always had to downsize my spending. If theatre is to survive, it needs to downsize... not just the companies themselves, but in the monetary expectations that its artists have, until companies can survive on ticket/concession revenue.
58
All that said, I also want to give credit to Annex Theatre for bucking the donation black-hole trend and offering a bang for the donation buck with their A-List program, where $25 a month gets you admission to all their shows and drinks at the lounge. Theatre companies ought to open themselves to the idea of offering a physical return on theatregoer donations.
59
@57, 58: I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt that your somewhat offensive "transient crackhead" analogy is a momentary lapse in judgment, but there are at least a few points I think need to be made.

#1: You said: "There is just not the capital to go around that there was 10, 20, 30, 50 years ago. As we, as a society and economy, start downsizing our budgets to meet our needs, people are getting more honest about the net value of a theatre donation." While it is true that some types of corporate and foundation support have been more difficult to come by during this recession, many individuals are in fact giving more. See for example http://bit.ly/hqNNFP and also note that Intiman was able to raise nearly half a million dollars in a few weeks' time. The money is out there to be found and there are people willing to give it. That's not the issue here.

#2: As to your "crackhead" theory, if you've been giving to the arts thinking that any performing arts organization raises money with the goal of being "self sufficient" enough to never have to raise any more money, you might want to read those ask letters a little bit more closely. I know of none that do this. You're free to choose not to give to the arts, but if you're giving thinking that's how it works you're in it for the wrong reasons.

#3. You said: "the raw fact is that when you make a donation, you as a donor get little other than your name in the program [...] most companies don't throw anything in for your donations: Donors are typically still expected to pay for tickets and concessions". Donors don't get anything? That simply isn't true. Spend a few minutes at the websites of the 5th, the Rep, Intiman, ACT, the Symphony, the Opera, Book-It, et al.--they all have donor benefits at various levels, and those benefits are explicit. What most donors want and expect in return for their giving is enhanced access to participate in the arts community they are helping to create and sustain through their support. If what you want is to give an organization X dollars in return for tickets, you want to be a subscriber, not a donor. Generally I would say there's nothing wrong with that as a personal choice, except...

#4. Your expectation that one should receive tickets and concessions in exchange for nominal philanthropic support is directly at odds with your belief that arts organizations should be able to survive on ticket and concession revenues alone. Next time you see something somewhere like the Rep, if you want to put your money where your mouth is you really ought to be prepared to drop about $150 per ticket. If you buy at what they consider full price, (even more so if you get a discounted ticket), you're allowing your attendance to be heftily subsidized by people with more resources/generosity/foresight than you, and that might be, as you put it, untenable.

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