Arts Integrity Initiative: If one looks around the website of The Neil Simon Festival, a yearly theatre event held in Cedar City, Utah, there’s a list of donors to the company. On that list are seven entries at the $100+ level. But the list is perhaps some 30 short, because that’s the approximate number of unlisted individuals who sent $150 to the Festival last year.
While the $150 sent by those people isn’t described by the Festival as a donation, it effectively is one for all but a single person. The $150 figure is derived from the submission fee playwrights are asked to provide as their entry fee to the Festival’s New Play Contest, now in its ninth year. While the Festival notes that every submission receives a written evaluation as part of the company’s response, it is not a fee for service. Playwrights are not offered the opportunity to submit and not receive an evaluation.
2 comments:
I was surprised how close this article hit. I expected it to complain about a fee, which it did but it went so much further. It put in very clear terms how the company believes working hard and seeing that work be appreciated should be enough. In our “internship workshop” with Molly we were warned against this very philosophy. Our work, labor, and thoughts are Worth Something More than appreciation. We as People are Worth Something more than thoughts. Thoughts don’t pay for food (I wish). Additionally, by costing participants such a large sum of money they only allow those of a certain financial status to apply. As someone on the lookout for my first summer internship this crosses my mind. Personally I’m privileged to able to look at internships and not have to spend my summer making real money. I wonder if the company has thought about supplying financial aid for submissions. Though this would not solve their problem of not valuing an artist’s work, it might act as the first step.
I thought this entry fee was really shocking and definitely a difficult topic to think about. It must be hard to find a good balance for these kinds of things, because they are small companies that need the money to stay functioning but, by charging such high amounts to even send in a submission, the festival is most likely preventing many promising and talented playwrights from sending in their work and being recognized. I also thought the point it made about high fees encouraging a wealth gap with artists was particularly interesting. When I think about being a professional artist, I never picture people who are comfortable and financially well-off. There is an idea that to be an artist, you have to struggle financially and I think, as the article points out, that there should be more of a push to encourage young artists to aim high.
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