Deaf West Launches Kickstarter to Recoup the Cost of Performing at the Tony Awards

Is this what Kickstarter is for? (It’s complicated.)

Are you ready for a story of BROADWAY MUSICALS, CROWDFUNDING, and FINANCIAL CONTROVERSY?

I hope so, because I am very interested in discussing the whole Deaf West Kickstarter thing.

Where do we start?

How about with the fact that when a show is invited to perform at the Tony Awards, they apparently have to foot their own bill.

It is mind-boggling to think that Tony-nominated shows are told that they should perform live on television “for the exposure,” but hey, I guess that method of paying artists goes all the way to the top.

So. Deaf West’s revival of Spring Awakening gets nominated for Best Revival, and about a month later (which is to say yesterday) Deaf West launches a Kickstarter to fund the cost of the upcoming Tony performance.

Deaf West fans might remember that this production of Spring Awakening was originally funded via Kickstarter, before it transferred from Deaf West’s home base in Los Angeles to Broadway. In many ways this Kickstarter brings the Spring Awakening story full circle, and plenty of fans immediately pledged their support.

But other fans noticed that the Kickstarter campaign is scheduled to end on Saturday, June 11—less than 24 hours before the Tonys on Sunday, June 12. (Mark your calendars.)

If the Kickstarter ends less than 24 hours before the Tonys, Deaf West isn’t actually asking its fans to help them raise the $200,000 it’ll cost to “fly our cast back to New York, we have to get the costumes and instruments and props out of storage, we have to pay for rehearsal space since we don’t have a theatre, etc.”

Deaf West is asking its fans to reimburse them for these costs. That’s a significant difference.

Ken Davenport, Spring Awakening’s producer, wrote a blog post explaining the rationale behind the Kickstarter:

On a running show, funds for a performance on the Tonys would come from the advertising and marketing budget, the hope being that the exposure would increase ticket sales, and those costs would be recouped.

But what about a show like Spring, whose limited run has ended? When there isn’t a chance to recoup those costs?

Our show ended on January 24th. And the financial books are just about buttoned up now. We don’t have $200,000 to spend, no matter how important it is to all of us that this cast get the chance to appear on the show. And honestly, even if we had the money, it wouldn’t be fiscally responsible for us Producers to ask our investors to foot this bill, especially with all they’ve risked in the first place.

He uses the phrase “recoup those costs,” which might be an appropriate term in the theater production world but sounds less good in the Kickstarter world, where the fans who donate a few bucks aren’t ever going to see any return on their investment except the chance to get really excited while watching the Tony Awards (which, let’s be honest, we were already planning to do).

I get Davenport’s point. You have to pull $200,000 from somewhere, and if your show has closed you no longer have an active revenue stream (or a reason to tell investors “fund this now and you might earn more money later”).

But I also get why some fans are all “hey, Kickstarter is not the place for this.”

Also—and here’s where it gets really interesting—the Broadway production of Spring Awakening may have closed, but the National Tour is scheduled to start in 2017. Why isn’t the tour the chance to “recoup those costs?”

Broadway Revival of Deaf West Spring Awakening Announces National Tour | Playbill

This is a serious question, by the way. Is there a complicated reason why Spring Awakening’s producers/investors can’t pay the $200,000 with the assumption that they’ll sell more National Tour tickets thanks to the Tony exposure?

After all—as Mike pointed out when we were chatting about this online—Broadway shows are so hot right now. Record-breaking ticket sales and earnings, according to the NYT:

The season that ended on Sunday included 13,317,980 visitors to Broadway shows — a record number, up 1.6 percent over the previous season, according to figures released on Monday by the Broadway League. Theaters grossed $1.373 billion, also a record, up 0.6 percent over the previous season, although the grosses are not adjusted for inflation.

And a lot of people who can’t see Broadway shows in New York do in fact pay out for touring casts. There are people who have already purchased season tickets to theaters just so they can get a guaranteed seat to one of the upcoming touring productions of Hamilton IN TWO YEARS.

Want to See ‘Hamilton’ in a City Near You? Buy a Subscription and Wait Two Years

I want to see Spring Awakening perform at the Tonys as much as any theater fan does, first because it’s awesome and second because it’s inclusive and third because the Tonys have always been my way of getting glimpses of shows I can’t see live, which I’m guessing is the same for a lot of theater kids (and grown-up theater kids) out there.

But Kickstarter does not feel like the right venue for funding this opportunity. The fans shouldn’t be asked to recoup the cost.

Those are my thoughts, anyway. What are yours?

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