Thank you everyone for the enlightening conversation yesterday. That post will remain active so, if you have additional thoughts or questions about ticket prices please continue to add them to the comments for that post.
Today's topic is about the production budget cap eligibility requirement. Our current qualifications state that the "Total production budget must be less than $40,000 (between $0 and $40,000)."
Our study, Statistical Analysis of Off-Off-Broadway Production Budgets, which was conducted in 2008 reported that the average Off-Off-Broadway production budget was approximately $18,000 (this was based on actual money spent on a production and did not include the value of in-kind services or donations). 16% of the responding producers noted that their production budget was above $35,000.
The Basic Equity Showcase Code sets the total production budget at $20,000.
When setting the budget cap requirement, we wanted to be as inclusive as possible. We wanted to be able to include the scrappy, "skin of our teeth" producers as well as some amazing well established Off-Off-Broadway companies with larger budgets, some of which have long histories working in this sector and were among the people who helped found this community. We wanted to allow for inflation and rising costs (especially rent) and again growth within our community. So we set the budget cap on the upper edge of the curve, but well below what it would cost to mount an Off-Broadway production.
We have, over the last seven years, had a number of wonderful companies who are no longer eligible to be included in the awards process because their budgets went over the $40,000 mark. This is especially true for those companies producing musicals.
We have had several requests during this past season to increase the production budget cap to $50,000 or more.
Should we increase the eligible budget cap to include those productions with larger expenses?
Or should we keep the budget cap as is?
And why.
Also please take a moment to review the schedule of this week's topics as well as the ground rules for the conversation.
