So I was thinking about Capital Fringe, the Hip Hop Theatre Festival, and the Source Festival. They are all theatre festivals with low budgets, but they're all important to the Arts in Washington. They take place in the summer when most regional theatres are dark or mostly dark. I was thinking of how these festivals often bring in out-of-towners. Why don’t regional theatres that have artist housing in the area lend a hand to these younger festivals? I am not saying they should give housing for free, but at Arena I know we had apartments sitting empty in the summer months. Maybe the festivals could pay for upfront costs, like cleanings, and maybe even have them cover ten percent of the cost. So if, let's just say, “Big Regional Theatre XYZ” had 10 empty apartments for which they paid $1,500 each month, they could give it to the festival for $150 a month, plus cleaning cost. Then “Big Regional Theatre XYZ” could make something off the apartment and help out a smaller festival.
Would this work? I know the devil is in the details, but if I got together Festival leaders and General/Company Managers, could they work out a plan to make this happen for next summer? Who knows. I will forward this blog to them and ask them to comment on the blog. And if you have ideas, you should comment too.
Not a bad idea, but it's important to understand the differences between these kind of festivals.
ReplyDeleteFringe is a self-producing festival, so it has typically acted more as a broker than a producer in securing housing for its artists. I ran this one year and we used conference housing at GW, which was actually very cheap and well-located.
The Hip Hop Theatre Festival is produced by the organization that also produces a festival in NY, if I am not mistaken. Source hires almost all local artists because part of the mission is to highlight the DC performing arts community.
It would probably be really helpful if there was a contact list of all the company managers from DC theatres so that there could be a central place for visiting artists to investigate what might be available at any point during the year...