Vaudeville more profitable than The Book of Mormon

"One circuit [of vaudeville theatres] will speak for all. It has a theatre in New York, one in Philadelphia, one in Boston, and one in Providence, and they give no Sunday performances; and yet these four theatres entertain over 5,000,000 people every year, give employment to 350 attaches and to 3,500 actors. Four thousand people pass in and out of each one of these theatres daily. Ten thousand dollars are distributed each week in salaries to the actors and $3,500 to the attaches. Take one theatre for example, the house in Boston. It is open the year round and it costs $7,000 a week to keep it open, while its patrons will average 25,000 every week. On a holiday it will play to from ten to twelve thousand people. How is it possible?" - Edwin Milton Royle (1862-1940) from The Vaudeville Theatre

Essentially the Boston house was paying the staff and cast almost double what the show costs, making the weekly profits of the show at least three times the cost. To put this into perspective...The Book of Mormon costs just over $600,000 a week to produce and rack up a profit of 1.2 million/wk (excluding royalties which diminish this) so their profit is roughly double.

Serving up a little post-holiday realness...

“You're just another American who is willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick being shoved up your asshole every day... The owners of this country know the truth... it's called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it!” -George Carlin

Portrait of the Artist as Money Man Forbes '82

Recomended Film-The Flaw "How was the American Elite able to get away with it?"

The Flaw is a documentary by David Sington, it's available on Netflix and really coherently breaks down how the credit and mortgage bubble created our current economic recession.

Check out the Trailer Here: The Flaw Trailer

Check out a Clip Here: The Flaw Clip 1

Synopsis: 

 "When you have growing inequality, typically your level of consumption goes down. In the United States we said to those whose income was not going anywhere don't worry continue to spendas if your income was going up. But the only way you do that is throughdebt and that particular model has been broken." 

Taking for its title Greenspan's description that he'd found a flaw in his model of how the world worked, THE FLAW attempts to explain the underlying causes of the crisis in more depth than any documentary to date.

Made by international award-winning documentary maker David Sington, THE FLAW tells the story of the credit bubble that  caused the financial crash. Through interviews with some of the world's leading economists, including housing expert Robert Shiller, Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, and economic historian Louis Hyman, as well as Wall Street insiders and victims of the crash including Ed Andrews - a former economics correspondent for The New York Times who found himself facing foreclosure - and Andrew Luan, once a bond trader at Deutsche Bank now running his own Wall Street tour guide business, the film presents an original and compelling account of the toxic combination of forces that nearly destroyed the world economy.

The film shows how excessive income inequality in society leads to economic instability.  At a time when economic theory and public policy is being re-examined this film reminds us that without addressing the root causes of the crisis the system may collapse again and next time it may not be possible for governments to rescue it.

Quote 12.18

"How miserable that man is that Governes a People where six parts of seaven at least are Poore Endebted Discontented and Armed." - Governor William Berkeley, Jamestown 1676

from The Believer magazine

Gold, Golden, Gilded, Glittering: Representations of Value, or The Unexpected Double History of Banking and The Art World

Damien Hirst's For the Love of God

 This skull consists of a platinum cast of an 18th century human skull encrusted with 8,601 flawless diamonds, including a pear-shaped pink diamond located in the forehead that is known as the Skull Star Diamond. Costing £14 million to produce, the work was placed on its inaugural display at the White Cube gallery in London in an exhibition Beyond belief with an asking price of £50 million. This would have been the highest price ever paid for a single work by a living artist. According to Art Knowledge News, a sale was being completed at the $100 million asking price.

psychology of the audience

Psychology of the audience - the rules of engagement for immersive theatre

NYTIMEs article on money and the art scene now

Marina Abramović & Ulay

In 1976, after moving to Amsterdam, Abramovic met the West German performance artist Uwe Laysiepen, who went by the single name Ulay. Thus began an intense creative relationship from which sprang some of their most controversial works. In Imponderabilia (1977, reenacted in 2010) two performers, both completely nude, stand in a doorway. The public must squeeze between them in order to pass, and in doing so choose which one of them to face. Watch video here.


In Breathing in, Breathing out the two performers devised a piece in which they connected their mouths and took in each other’s exhaled breaths until they had used up all of the available oxygen. Seventeen minutes after the beginning of the performance they both fell to the floor unconscious, their lungs having filled with carbon dioxide. 

Gilbert and George

Interview with Gilbert and George 2010 with lots of footage of singing sculptures and prints. 

A Conversation between Ben Franklin and Alex Hamilton
Two men whose faces appear on my money. Also from Whim Quarterly.

Whim Quarterly: Market Report on Power Couples

Buy, Hold, or Sell: The Bond Market Report
This very short article from Whim Quarterly (a humor magazine printed on actual, flammable paper) is someone else's version of using "economic speak" to examine romantic relationships.

Burlesque (n.)

1. That species of literary composition, or of dramatic representation, which aims at exciting laughter by caricature of the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects; a literary or dramatic work of this kind. 

2. Grotesque imitation of what is, or is intended to be, dignified or pathetic, in action, speech, or manner; concr. an action or performance which casts ridicule on that which it imitates, or is itself ridiculous as an unsuccessful attempt at serious impressiveness; a mockery

3. A variety show, frequently featuring strip-tease. 

4. Of the nature of derisive imitation; ironically bombastic, mock-heroic or mock-pathetic; now chiefly said of literary or oratorical compositions and dramatic representations; formerly (quot. 1712) also of pictorial caricatures. 

(OED)

Some Gender Definitions (Greta & Conrad)

Transvestite: A person with a desire to wear the clothes of the opposite sex. Transvestites generally have lesser or no desire to permanently change their sex, but simply enjoy being able to cross-dress from time to time.

Transgender/Transsexual: someone who lives as the sex opposite that of his or her birth

Cross-dressing: the act of wearing clothing and other accoutrements commonly associated with the opposite sex within a particular society.

Transgender: An umbrella term for individuals who blur the lines of traditional gender expression. It sometimes refers to cross dressers and transsexuals. It also reflects recent scholarship which suggests gender to be socially constructed. Transgendered individuals recognize the social construction of their genders and thus do not fit neatly within societal-prescribed gender roles determined by biological sex.

Drag: is specifically for performers. Drag is something you do for someone else’s entertainment and cross-dressing is for your own enjoyment. Drag is a part of gay culture that deals primarily with subverting gender stereotypes and roles and relies heavily on camp and glitz. Cross-dressing constitutes its own culture and has more to do with one's personal feelings about gender identity.

Gender-queer performance art installation

Gender-queer performance art installation
At MOCA in Los Angeles. Includes a variety of different types of gender-queer performances. Some are a throwback to performance styles of the early 20th c.

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers: Cheek to Cheek

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers: Cheek to Cheek
Also from "Top Hat". Great Dance/Seduction sequence. Really gets going about at about 1:50

Fred Astaire video: Top Hat, White Tie, and Tails

Fred Astaire: Top Hat, White Tie, and Tails
A great classic performance. Watching this again made me think of DAVID and possibly the quality of his performance style

Quotes 12.5, Alexis De Tocqueville

“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.” 

“Americans are so enamored of equality, they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.” 

“The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colours breaking through.” 

― Alexis de Tocqueville

Quote 12.5

"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” 
― John Steinbeck

Workshop 12.1

Teaser of Kieran's character portrait.

from The Atlantic

Workshop 12.1

Teaser of Conrad's character portrait.

Workshop 12.1

Teaser of Sam's character portrait. 

Workshop 12.1

Teaser of Maude's character portrait.

Workshop 12.1

A teaser of Ben Franklin's initial character portrait.

Workshop 12.1

More photographs from the character portrait ensemble performances

Workshop 12.1

Cast teaching their character portraits to one another.

Workshop 12.1

First discussion with cast and crew about newest draft.