#RADICALACCESS CAMPAIGN FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Why are you doing this?

This is something we’ve been thinking about for six years. And really, it’s the extension of what we’ve been doing from the beginning.

When we started, we introduced the 5 Play Package for $50. Five Mainstage Productions for $50. It was an absurdly low price, but it was necessary to convince people to give a brand-new theatre a chance doing brand new and/or obscure Canadian plays, many of which no one had ever heard of.

Over time, we’ve developed a loyal audience, and people have come to trust our work even if they don’t recognize the titles. And as our expenses have grown, we’ve raised the price, but ticket packages were always the way we sustained our operations and kept cashflow in line.

This was practical from a financial perspective, but it also kept our shows accessible as long as people committed to a whole season (for which they would save 40-70%).

By shifting that model even further, we remove the unpredictable ups-and-downs of month-to-month ticket sales. We ensure we can pay our bills consistently and without worrying if a show will be good enough to pay for heat. And it allows us to move forward with progressive, artistic leadership that ensures we are doing world-class work that maintains the high standards Cape Breton is known for all over the world.  

Will I get a Tax-Deductible, Charitable Receipt for my monthly donation?

Yes.

Aside from the Tax Receipt, what else do I get?

Nothing. And everything.

This entire program is based on the central premise of #RadicalAccess. We want to create a whole library of Cape Breton driven content – Mainstage Productions, Audio Dramas, video content, new works, etc – all of which will be accessible by anyone in the community or indeed anyone in the world, free of charge.

So you get access to all the incredible art we are now able to consistently fund, but you also get the knowledge that you’ve helped make that art accessible to all. And maybe even make history.

You’ll also have your name listed with your donor level in our House Programmes and on our website.

Is this really cheaper for me if I already buy ticket packages?

Yes. If you’re a regular subscriber and donate $25 per month, you’re actually paying less.

There are 3 Seasonal ticket packages per year that range between $50 and $115 each (depending on the season). With tax, the average annual cost for the 12 Mainstage shows through ticket packages costs you $276 (already a steal - without ticket packages the 12 Mainstage show would cost $409.25 at full price).

If you donate $25/month, that’s only $300/year and because of the charitable tax reciept, you’re getting 30-50% of that directly back as a refund with your tax return when you file for the year, so depending on your tax bracket, you’re probably saving around $100 a year per person.

That’s the math. It’s that simple.

If I have a credit on my account from cancelled tickets, etc , can I use this towards this initiative?

Absolutely. There are two options that will let you use credit or gift certificates to support:

You can simply donate the credit towards this initiative, which will subsequently be divided by 12 and added to our monthly donation totals.

Or, you can make your monthly pledge and let us know you’d like to use your existing credit for the first few months of donations (or until it runs out). We’ll start your additional payments once the credit has been used.

Or, like many people have chosen, you can certainly do both!

What do you mean by Mainstage Productions?

If we reach our top fundraising goal of $50,000, all our Mainstage Productions will be free of charge.

By this, we mean shows like the 80+ productions we’ve done since we started 7 years ago which run generally once a month and are seen by thousands of people.

Shows like:

Heart of Steel, The Drawer Boy, The Drowsy Chaperone, Dream, The Happy Prince, The Penelopiad, Vigil, The Glace Bay Miners Museum, Disco Nights, Morro & Jasp, Kitchen Party, Punch Up, Sucker, The Cape Breton Liberation Army, Next to Normal, and so many more.

Free Mainstage shows that we’ve done in the first year of Radical Access include:

House, John & Jen, Sweet Enough, Billy Bishop Goes to War, All I Want for Christmas, Tough Call, Here Comes the Sun, Tell Your Story, Comedy of Errors, The Sea Shanty Show, Samqwan, & Something to Sing About

We are not talking about musicians or touring productions that rent our theatre, additional concerts (like Port Cities or David Francey), HAT Academy Showcases or productions (Frozen JR or Seussical), or fundraiser shows like A Christmas Carol or the Confidential Musical Theatre Project. We do have to maintain some other revenue streams, and with one-night productions, there would be no fair way to open up to everyone knowing that the vast majority would be disappointed.

However, the vast majority of our programming, those Mainstage plays and musicals, would be free of charge.

What happens if I’m a donor but the shows sell out before I can book a seat?

We have never turned anyone away in six years. We will find you a seat. And if the run is truly sold out, we will add additional performances as we always have for our most popular shows. That’s one of the things we’re most excited about!

That’s all very well, but we’re living in a pandemic. When will you even be able to do shows again?

We’re actually about to start rehearsals for two shows that will be opening in August (assuming there isn’t a major outbreak in Nova Scotia). At the moment, Cape Breton (where we are based) has had very few cases and we’ve been without new cases for months.

At the moment, theatres in Nova Scotia are allowed up to 50% of their capacity up to 200 people (with physical distancing). We likely won’t be opening for that many for a long time, but our plan for these two Mainstage shows in August is to open for 50 people at a time and if things continue to go well maybe eventually open to 100 people.

The two shows we will be presenting in August are: HOUSE (written by and starring Cape Breton’s own Daniel MacIvor) and JOHN & JEN, a two-person Broadway musical featuring two of our greatest rising stars, Emily O’Leary and Kevin Munroe.

These shows will run alternative nights for the entire month of August (at least 32 performances total).

Furthermore, if we get to that top goal, we will have also unlocked live streams of each Mainstage show, so people who are not yet comfortable entering a public theatre will still get to participate from home - as can our donors from anywhere in the world!

Are they really going to be free?

Absolutely. No charge. Zero ticket price. Nada.

This is an experiment, but it’s one we believe in. Our goal is to create world-class, professional theatre in Cape Breton using primarily Cape Breton artists and to show it to as many people as possible. What better way to do that than to make all the tickets free?

As long as we can cover our operational and production costs (hence the donations), this is exactly what we’ve wanted to do. By making our work Radically Accessible, we are really just fulfilling our mandate. And if we can keep the lights and heat on too, that’s just bonus.

$50,000 a month… isn’t that an awful lot?

Certainly it is, but it’s also only half of our total budget.

In 2019, our gross annual revenue was $1.2 million dollars, with expenses just a little less. For 2020, before the pandemic, our budget was approved at $1.5 million.

People don’t realize how expensive it is to run a theatre, especially one housed in a beautiful but very old history building that was once a church. Heat, electricity, repairs, and upgrades are all incredibly expensive and that’s before we pay for any of the artistic projects.

We have a very small staff, all of whom are underpaid, and none of our artists are paid anywhere near what they’re worth.

We run our entire operation on a shoestring budget, but because of the size of the shoe (and the footprint we leave in our community), that’s a very expensive shoestring.

If that’s only half your budget, how will this keep you from going bankrupt?

Our #RadicalAccess program would be only one stream of revenue. It would replace ticket sales for the Mainstage Productions we talked about above, but as we mentioned, there will still be other shows (rentals, concerts, fundraiser shows, etc) that we will still have to charge for.

We’ve been working on creating a diverse and sustainable revenue model for years, and this is the missing piece. With monthly donations creating the stable core of our funding, we will be able to rely on the other, less consistent streams to fully realize our budget with revenue like: venue rental, concessions, fundraising initiatives, sponsorship, and – hopefully – increased government funding.

Okay, you’ve convinced me… How will this work?

After you make your pledge, someone from our staff will be in touch with you to securely confirm your payment information and set up your monthly donation. You can provide a credit card or direct deposit information for automatic electronic-fund-transfers through our bank, TD Canada Trust.

For the immediate future, in lieu of the uncertainty of COVID, we won’t be announcing full seasons at a time. We’ll still plan for approximately one Mainstage Production per month and we’ll give you advance notice when tickets will be released.

Once tickets are on sale, you’ll book just like before (online or by calling our Box Office) with reserved seating so you know you have a seat before you come. The price will just be zero. We’ll have a strict 8:00 start time and if you don’t arrive by then, you’ll potentially forfeit your seat for someone seated further back (you can still slip in the back when you arrive, but don’t be late).

There are lots of other details (many of which are answers on this page) but the core experience will be exactly the same. It will just be free.

If the tickets are free, won’t that under-value the art?

That’s another common question we get, but it’s one we really don’t understand.

Right now we’re living in an age of unprecedented content. From an electronic device in your palm, we can access the greatest literature of history, the greatest works of art via google image search, any song we can imagine from iTunes Music or Spotify, and any tv show or movie in existence thanks to YouTube, Netflix, AmazonPrime, Disney Plus, and legions of others.

What’s the one thing all of these sources have in common? They’re all essentially free.

Yes, you may pay a minimal monthly amount for a Netflix subscription or Disney plus (or maybe not, if you’re on a family account) but the central premise is near unlimited content… almost all of which is free.

We don’t think The Godfather is cheapened just because you can stream it on YouTube. Or that Stranger Things isn’t valuable just because it was made by Netflix.

If anything, these companies have been able to make better and more specific work (often lead by artists instead of producers) because they have the financial security of their monthly subscription revenue.

As long as the company is secure, they can then invest all their resources into creating the best art possible and distributing it to the masses.

That’s what we want to do. And if you think it’s cheap, you don’t have to come.

From our perspective, it will allow us to pay local artists more to do bigger and better things and ultimately, if you – as a donor – don’t see the rise in quality, then that’s on us. Nobody ever said that libraries were under-valued because they were free. No one ever complained that a Cape Breton sunset wasn’t beautiful because it was cheap.

The best local example is actually the Makin’ Waves Festival, which is funded every summer by the CBRM and hosts thousands of audience members seeing incredible musical acts like Port Cities, Dave Sampson, and Joel Plaskett – all of which are free.

That’s what we want to do, only for 180 nights of the year.

Are you the first theatre to do this?

No. There are a handful of theatres in the US that have tried this concept out on a smaller scale (they called it “Radical Hospitality”) but it was hugely successful in these cases.

Some did one show under this model or a whole season, but we think we’re the first theatre company to try something this radical on a massive scale and (as far as we can tell) we’re definitely the first Canadian company.

Here’s a quote from an interview with Logan Ellis, producing Artistic Director for Theatre Battery, an American theatre that adopted a similar system:

“A lot of people involved in Theatre Battery at the time thought radical hospitality was a really stupid idea for that reason, but I said: ‘Church is free, but people go. Libraries are free, but people still check out books. Let’s try it.’ Now we’re never going back.”

In the year since we launched Radical Access, Talk is Free Theatre in Barrie, ON also announced they would make all their main programming free of charge. There are also many theatres across the country, including Tarragon Theatre, which are experimenting this year with “pay-what-you-can subscriptions”.

How long are you going to do this?

If we reach our top goal, we’ll commit to trying this #RadicalAccess system for a year. After that, we’ll solicit feedback and decide if it was successful in reaching our goals (sustainable revenue, larger more accessible audiences).

If people stop donating, we’ll know it wasn’t wanted and we will have to integrate back to an older model. It will be up to us to prove that this model is better for everyone and that you see the value you’re getting for your donation.

What if you don’t reach your top goal?

If we don’t make the goal, we will do everything we can to otherwise fund this new model. We believe in it and we know it may take some convincing and time to get everyone on board.

But the reality is that if everyone who already attends the HAT just commits to some level of monthly donation (ideally $25 for current subscribers or $50 per households with couples who attend) we will make this goal in the next three weeks.

What if nobody shows up because the tickets were free?

Obviously, things come up. People get sick, emergencies happen, people have to miss the theatre. We get that. But we also recognize that one risk with our #RadicalAccess program is that everyone will book tickets early and decide not to come because there’s no financial consequence.

So, what we’re envisioning is a “three-strike policy” for people who book a ticket and then don’t show up. We already scan every ticket upon entry to ensure we know who is in the building (which will also be essential for contact tracing in the age of COVID). If you book a ticket and don’t get scanned, we will register a note on your profile and send you an e-mail letting you know you have a “strike”. Three strikes within a specific time period and we will limit your ability to book prime seats.

As long as you let us know with some reasonable advance notice, you can of course cancel or re-book your ticket. If you call or e-mail us at least 6 hours before the start of the show there will be no consequence (or up to the end of the show in cases of emergency).  

What happens to our Same Night, Same Seat Subscriptions?

The reality is that, unfortunately, our Same Seat subscription program is not going to be possible for the next year (or more) due to the reality of physical distancing. Even as we are gradually able to open to more and more people, it’s going to be a long time before we can have everyone seating next to each other without 2-3 seats empty in between.

You can see how this poses an issue if rows of people have all the same seats side by side, as is currently the case.

The good news is that for the ongoing future, we will be doing rough 4 times as many performances as we would usually do to accommodate the smaller audiences. This means everyone will have 4 times as many chances to book their favourite seats, and realistically every seat will be pretty perfect as you will have a 6-foot bubble around you to ensure lots of legroom for stretching.

Will donors have advance notice of tickets going on sale?

Yes. As a Radical Access donor, you will get advanced access to book your favourite seats before free tickets become available to the general public.

Whenever new shows are put on sale, you will receive e-mail notification of your access (which is why it’s very important we have an up-to-date e-mail for you).

Donors who are contributing $50 or more per month (or the one-time equivalent of $600 more) will get first access. A couple of days later, booking will open for anyone donating $25 per month or more. A couple of days later, all donors of $5 per month or more will have access.

How long is the donation commitment?

As long as you are able to do it! As long as we can keep the donation pool stable, we will commit to continuing to produce world-class professional theatre and releasing all mainstage productions free of charge.

If you have to stop or decrease your monthly commitment at any point, we will understand, but our hope is that we will prove our value even more through this new model and people will actually increase their commitment over time – allowing us to do even more exciting and daring things for our community.

What happens if there’s a fourth wave and the theatre is shut down again?

One of the reasons behind this entire campaign is to make our way of creating art COVID-proof. We recognize that the future is very uncertain and until we are fully vaccinated, we have to be ready to change plans in an instant.

We will be prepared and insulated against mass closings and are currently preparing infrastructure to allow for more fully produced audio and video digital content that will be able to be distributed even if live performances are once again limited.

That’s one of the beauties of this model: you’re not paying for a ticket, you’re paying for the idea. And we will continue creating content and art for you and the entire community even if it’s from our living rooms. Whether it’s online, on the radio, at our theatre, at another theatre, in small groups, one-on-one, in the park, or in outer space… your donation will be used to create #RadicalAccess to theatre, stories, music, dance, and other works by Cape Breton Artists.

We’ve been alone with our thoughts for too long. Trust me, we have lots of ideas.

How can I help?

1)     Make your pledge to help us guarantee our longevity, and move us one step closer to Radical Access for our beautiful community!

2)     Share our campaign videos and content far and wide for all to see.

3)     Send the campaign to 5 friends who you know treasure the HAT. Or 5 friends to don’t know the HAT but love theatre. Or love Cape Breton. Or love you.

4)     Challenge a friend or family member to match your donation.

5)     Volunteer for our #RadicalAccess Outreach Team by e-mailing us at: info@highlandartstheatre.com

For everyone who has already contributed: Thank you for helping us make history.

Wesley J. Colford, Artistic & Executive Director
Highland Arts Theatre