Arts Entrepreneurship Awards and Haiku

Last night attended Fractured Atlas's Arts Entrepreneurship Awards at the Jerome L. Greene Performance Space in Tribeca. The five awardees worked in the different fields of Indian dance, independent theater, on-line sketchbooks, activist museum curation, and ... I did not understand what the last one was about. The most interesting idea was Flux Theater Ensemble's Living Wage ticket scheme. Tickets to their productions are free. They tell the audience the different budgets for paying actors and crew a minimum wage and a living wage, and people pay what they wish on their way out. They have had more audience and more payments since the launch of the scheme. SLF events in September will be free and open to the public. This makes the important point that everyone is welcomed. I'm thinking, however, of asking the audience to contribute whatever they can afford towards the writers' next work. They can make a donation on their way out too. Last week I also had the idea of giving the audience extracts of the writers' work before the event begins. This will give them a chance to read the writing on the page before hearing the authors, and so encourage greater interaction between audience and authors. Each festival program can hold an extract from a different author, so the audience can swap and talk among themselves too.

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Looking down Park
all the way to MetLife
sparrow between spikes



I bow my head before the sun
the sun falls sprawling at my feet


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