The Decision to Crowdfund A Burlesque Show

Everyone has to decide their own standards. You have to decide what your art is worth, who you're willing and unwilling to work with, and what subject matter you won't touch. I'm generally pretty fluid about what I'll allow and do, but there's something in particular that I've seen a lot of in the last year in the burlesque community in particular, and I feel very strongly about my stance on it.

I will never ask people to crowdfund my burlesque.

I know this is going to be a divisive point, so I'm going to be dramatic and start a new paragraph. The cornerstone of my argument is that I don't feel that my audience or society in general owes me anything to see what I'll create next. Self-promotion is one thing, and fans can certainly chose to follow you if they are a fan of yours. I don't object to that, as it's voluntary and doesn't cost anything. You can certainly argue that contributing to an artist's GoFundMe or Kickstarter is voluntary, but the principles differ; Once you take their money, you have a responsibility to give them a good art/performance/product, and I firmly believe that people should only pay once to have to do that.

Of course, many people disagree with me.

I can understand the need reach out to financial supporters. If artists didn't do that, we wouldn't have had The Renaissance. When I say that I wouldn't ask for anything I produce to be crowdfunded, you might interpret that as "his opinion of his own work isn't strong." You would be right, to an extent. As far as burlesque goes, I see it as a low-cost, low-risk art form. Much like my journalism degree, I don't feel that expanding on my burlesque performance via an influx of dubiously-sourced cash is something that will yield any appreciable outcome. Besides, I feel that the gritty, approachable, sometimes rude demeanor that typifies many of my favorite burlesque performances is so far removed from high-budget spectacle that a budget boost would only serve to alienate my audience.

Still, I wanted to know where the other side sits. I spoke with Jade Sylvan, who is one of the producers of "Spider Cult: The Musical," slated to launch in 2016. This show is a spin-off of one of the shows I enjoyed being a part of for three years, "Revenge of the Robot Battle Nuns." They recently did a Kickstarter to get funding for Spider Cult, so Jade's perspective is local to the issue.

Photo credit: Caleb Cole

Dale Stones: "Okay. How do you feel about crowd funding in general?"

Jade Sylvan: "It used to gross me out when I was younger, but honestly I wouldn't have been able to do many of the projects I've done over the last five years without it. I had to get over my ego of thinking I was "too good" for crowdfunding and put the project first."

DS: "What changed your mind? Anything specific?"

JS: "Literally, not having the money to bring what I loved into creation. For instance, with Spider Cult, we knew we wanted to bring it up to the next level production-wise from what people in our community are used to doing. To do that, we needed money that we literally didn't have, because shows performed at a certain level will only generate income to sustain that level, even if they're very successful. You need a boost to grow. Businesses have bank loans. We have crowdfunding."

DS: "So how do you justify what projects should ask for prefunding?"

JS: "It's sort of an intersection of (1.) how much I (and others) believe in the project, and (2.) necessity. If there is any other way other than crowdfunding, I will generally take that route to get something made. On the other side, if it's a project that is strictly a vanity project that I don't expect or see others having any interest in, I will not crowdfund for that. That's where the responsibility comes in. When you involve others, you are responsible to them to some degree."

DS: "Do you feel that the effort is sullied a bit by other artist or people who ask for money who maybe don't have the same discretion or standards you had? Like the potato salad fund guy?"

JS: "With Spider Cult it was part of the discussion from the beginning, when we realized how big we wanted this to be. Basically, we decided we could do it on a shoe string and have a shoe string show, or we could see if enough people cared about it to bring it up a level and get involved."

DS: "What's the goal, once you have the money? I mean, having funding is all well and good, but what's the expectation that people should have for what they purchased?"

JS: "In this case, it's a show that looks and feels like it had a budget. {wink emoticon} More than that, though, a big goal is to give the members of our community a chance to showcase their abilities at the production level I think they deserve."

DS: "Like, more marketing, vocal coaching, paying them more, what are the interim goals? If that's not classified information, of course."

JS: "All of the above. More budget to spend on training, costumes, special effects, original music, payment for actors, marketing etc"

DS: "Maybe even a bigger venue?"

JS: "Possibly in the future, but we wrote the play for Oberon."

DS: "Thank you!"

I believe that Spider Cult: The Musical has only the noblest of intentions. I loved being a part of the original production that this project has spun off of, and I enjoy supporting the arts as an attendee when I'm not the one performing. Community support is incredibly valuable, after all. For many people, acquiring the funding to put on a show is the most humbling part of the process, and is something that is made easier through anonymity, or at the very least, from behind the internet curtain.

But I also believe that a big part of being a burlesque artist is taking risks, especially financial ones. If a faceless crowd is assuming that initial risk for you, your performance-based risk-taking and creativity aren't going to be at their highest. You're safe, after all. If people pay for your venture (which is different than an investment, because that money is owed back) and have to settle for whatever you decide to provide them to tide them over before (or indeed, IF) the show is produced, you are inevitably going to interpret that as "free money" on some level, as the debt has already been settled in your mind. And since the audiences in the burlesque scene are often overwhelmingly supporting, the whole situation might appear lavish and superfluous.

Nothing lavish nor superfluous to see here.

That, in turn, creates another set of problems. In this list of "14 Potential Issues with Corwdfunding," item #11 on the list  cites what I think is the most important issue; Accountability. Crowdfunding simply doesn't allow visibility into how that money is spent. You could theoretically pocket every dollar once you hit your goal and churn something out with the same rate of spend as "The Blair Witch Project" and you've essentially defrauded your backers. I say "defrauded" because if you did create a low-cost show relative to what you asked for, then you didn't need to ask for the money in the first place.

If I'm going to create a show, I want to assume the financial risk involved in that show's failure. Asking people to pay twice to see something is unfair, unless they're actually seeing it twice. If they contribute more than the cost of admission, they may even be paying three, four, or five times to see a show with no guaranteed standard of quality. I believe that decision should only be made one time, and it's when you're telling people what the price of the ticket is.

Although there isn't time to get into the issue of who should be producing a show and why, I feel that a series of shows should be able to snowball cash as a way of building up the coffers within a business. In Sirlesque, we budget based on what we can pay and save up money so that we can afford to put on bigger and better shows in the future, and that's also a way to insure ourselves in case we have a bad turnout and still need to pay people. On top of that, if people are going to see a show that you've put on repeatedly, you can use that to gauge whether or not a similarly-themed, larger-budget show would be palatable for your audience.

Sometimes, the tech required to look at your own butt on a screen is expensive.

A great example of a show that did this is the Slutcracker. Over 7 years ago, Sugar Dish put together a show that is now a mainstream Boston institution. She has a lot of pride when she talks about how the first run of the show used found costuming, and that now the Slutcracker sells out over a dozen shows a year. It's the classic bootstraps story, and it shows us that anything can be produced to greatness with enough patience and perseverance.

I believe that being transparent with every transaction surrounding burlesque performance is not only important, but crucial if burlesque is to succeed. Sure, if people are willing to give you advance money over and over again, you and those people may feel comfortable with what is essentially an enabling relationship. But such is the plight of the artist--getting rich doing art is nigh impossible. The audience needs to be entertained, and the full time artists needs to not starve.

So I suppose the only difference is the variance of each artist's guidelines.