Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Short Version of Long Tale

Sorry about the dearth of posting of late, folks. I've been absolutely swamped with a number of disparate things (from work, to my personal life, to fundraising for Nosedive to prepping for The Little One). I'm actually hoping to write some entries on each of these elements at some point in the not-too-distant future.

In fact, Nosedive's working on a rather ambitious undertaking (well, ambitious for Nosedive, anyway), something that may merit a Guide to Self-Producing entry in the not-too-distant future (although I think I have to wait to see the results of said undertaking, and report on it either way, success or failure).

The short version is that we're involved in our largest fundraising effort to-date to finance our most expensive show to-date* (and bear in mind I mean, like, $12 grand...many of our peers stage shows four to five times that) as a means of enabling Nosedive to sustain itself and grow over the next few years.

Suffice it to say, we realized that we can't keep funding the shows the way we have been before. That is to say, we usually use the remaining "profit" from the previous show (about 1% of the next show's budget), collect a couple donations (about 10% of the budget), then scramble to pay for the rest (89%) ourselves based on which producer has money in their account at any given moment something is due (oh yes, we're professionals here at Nosedive Central; professionals who plan ahead).

We were fortunate to do our ninth season as a co-production with the Brick, which enabled us to produce two shows without having to put in a dime of our own money into either production. That was the upside. The downside was that we didn't really create enough of a reserve capital (since we split ticket sales with the Brick 50-50) to pay for the next show.

So, we've been working on a new(ish) finance/business plan that will enable Nosedive to continue without relying on the whims of its producers' employment statuses and income levels. If this works (even a little bit), perhaps we can continue to put out work we can be proud of and be just a little more financially solvent and independent.

We shall see. As always, we shall see.

That was the short version. I hope to write about the long version in the not-too-distant future.

Waggling his weenis at oncoming cars,

James "Business Exec" Comtois

*Little Nosedive fun-fact: our most expensive show until now was The Adventures of Nervous-Boy, which was about $9,500. And oddly enough, it was profitable.

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