Hamilton the Musical Benefited from Government Funding, Why Can’t Our Art?
Last week Newsroom’s Steve Braunias conducted an interview with the Act Party’s arts spokesperson, Todd Stephenson. Among Stephenson’s inability to name a single book written by a Kiwi released after 1986, it was revealed in this interview that, in essence, the long and the short of his arts knowledge is having seen Hamilton in New York.
Well, we’ve all seen Hamilton. It’s just that most of us actually living and working in the arts sector only have the funds to see it on Disney Plus.
In this interview, Stephenson also discussed how he, and the Act Party, wish for arts in NZ to be funded “…by individuals and… very much not hav(ing) the government involved.” He also mentioned that, “it’s better that individuals make those decisions,” (regarding funding), than a, “bureaucratic agency imposing their choices on New Zealanders.” (presumably in reference to Creative New Zealand, the main funding body for arts in Aotearoa).
My interpretation of this statement is that Todd Stephenson and the Act Party wish for arts funding in this country to be solely-user pay; where art is entirely funded by bums on seats or individual ticket sales, instead of the wide (and precarious) network of funding bodies, patrons and companies that duct-tape together the arts world in New Zealand and barely hold us above water.
This is, in no uncertain terms, a fantasy, and would utterly tear down a wonderful world of Aotearoa art.
Think of it this way. It’d be like if the All Blacks weren’t in partnership with Adidas and Sky or if What We Do in the Shadows hadn’t received funding from the New Zealand Film Commission — they simply wouldn’t exist.
Or at least, their existence would be far more in jeopardy.
We could prevaricate all day about the untenable state of arts funding in New Zealand — but I’ll let these article writers do that for you. Instead, let’s talk about Hamilton.
Hamilton the musical made its off-Broadway debut on January 20 2015, after six years worth of development by composer/creator Lin Manuel-Miranda. A smash hit, it stepped onto Broadway on August 6 the same year and is now one of the highest grossing musicals in the world, with several tours currently running, including an Australasian one. Following the life of one of America’s founding fathers, Alexander Hamilton, this incredible musical is one that lives in the hearts of millions of people around the world.
And it would not be where it is now without government funding.
Let’s start with a recent example. On March 12, 2020, all 41 theatres on Broadway went dark for eighteen months. In terms of strict regulation, America didn’t have quite the lockdowns that we had, but there were months where theatres weren’t open and thus, theatre productions were losing revenue.
The Shuttered Venue Operators Grant was created by the federal government, under the Economic Aid to Hard-Hit Small Businesses, Nonprofits, and Venues Act and included over $16 billion dollars to support shuttered venues during this period. Hamilton, both the Broadway production and its assorted US touring shows, received at least $30 million in support, and were eligible up to $50 million.
We had a similar form of support here in New Zealand during the early stages of the pandemic — including the Arts and Culture Event Support Scheme, which gave reassurance to venues/organisers, and the Cultural Sector Emergency Relief Fund, which included a one-off $5000 grant to self-employed or sole trader practitioners who could show loss of income due to the pandemic.
Austin Harrison, a Pōneke-based theatre professional, writes about his experience during the early stages of the pandemic. “I announced that I was going full-time as an arts freelancer in February 2020. Three weeks later we entered our first lockdown.” He continues, “I cancelled more than 50 performances and was (barely) able to survive thanks to a grant from the Emergency Relief Fund and underwriting from the Event Support scheme. Even with these supports and measures in place, in my first year of trading I lived off just $27,000 in income — despite regularly working 80+ hours a week.”
I cannot overstate how much the governmental pandemic support saved the work and livelihoods of many New Zealand artists during the pandemic — and it wasn’t grants provided by private enterprise, these were strictly governmental. We would be a much less rich arts community had we not received them; and Hamilton would be a far smaller show had they not received theirs.
Returning to the Hamilton at hand: Lin Manuel-Miranda himself talks about how he personally benefited from NEA funding as a fledgling artist in America. The National Endowment for the Arts is an agency of the US federal government that offers funding for projects that show artistic excellence. They too, like CNZ, have received criticism from conservative groups for funding controversial artists. Conservative groups the world over appear not to recognise that one of the purposes of art is to spark discussion and elicit emotion — which controversy does very well.
“My first musical was workshopped at the O’Neill Musical Theatre Center, which is partly funded by the NEA,” Manuel-Miranda says, “But that’s not even the real story. The real story is the NEA funds things in all 50 states. …When we talk about the NEA, we’re talking about a very small amount of money that does get an enormous return on its investment in terms of what it gets out of our citizens.”
Governmental funding of the arts supports not just artists, but enterprise. It supports growth in communities, improved literacy and local business. Appropriate funding at the grassroots level builds strong artists from their youth all through their careers.
It also allows artists to have a chance to fail.
If you’re reading this, you might not know my work, but I’m a theatre maker and artist based in Pōneke/Wellington. I’ve been working professionally in this sector since 2018. I come from Tairāwhiti/Gisborne, and though I had a good education and a good time growing up, I certainly didn’t have the opportunities that those from wealthier communities had.
My first ever show in Wellington wasn’t a failure. It just wasn’t good. My actors did the very best they could with a hot mess of a showrunner (me) and I was overworked, burned out and still very much a twenty-two year old with big dreams and not the resources to act on them. What this show did have, however, was funding. There was a grant attached to the project, so despite the underwhelming ticket sales and further underwhelming execution, I could still pay my cast and crew for at least some of their time.
I am certain that had I had to pay them nothing, or had to pay them from my own savings, I wouldn’t still be making theatre today. That funding gave me the opportunity to learn from my mistakes and grow as an artist.
As it stands, I am still making theatre and film. I’ve toured work to Europe and Australia and am making my US debut this year. I am the closest you can get to a theatre success story, and yet, I’m still working a “real job” to survive. Why?
The arts are based on precarity and individual-pays-only does not work.
To demonstrate, here’s some maths for you. The Stage at BATS Theatre in Wellington seats eighty-five people. An average ticket price of $20 per seat, with an average season of five shows, nets the production only $8500 — and that’s if you sell the season out.
Taking fees and post-show expenses off that number drops it significantly. If you consider that most theatre shows have at least four people working on them, then the takeaway from the show’s ticket sales per person is never more than a grand — which doesn’t exactly equate to a living wage fee for the hundreds of hours you’ve put into this show.
On average, I make $4 an hour on the theatre shows I work on, and that’s on a good day. Austin adds, “When I produce a project which only has revenue from sponsorships and ticket sales, I know I will get paid on average $10/hr, and sometimes as low as $1.80/hr. Outside of corporate work, even my best-paid, fully funded projects barely scrape minimum wage when all is said and done.”
That’s the reality of arts in Aotearoa.
We can granulate over the specifics of who gets arts funding until the cows come home, but the earnest fact is — the vast majority of artists in New Zealand are used to precarity; and arts funding makes the difference between survival and not.
Now, imagine that this “individual pays” way was the sole way art in New Zealand was funded. Imagine the RNZB had to cover their costs solely by ticket sales and whatever funds they could get from their patrons; that the NZ Opera had to make their glorious sets look good only with a fraction of their money; that television shows could only shoot at one location to cut costs.
Imagine what a death to culture that would be.
The arts helped us through the worst of the pandemic. Engagement with the arts is back on track and increasing since our lockdowns and 62% of New Zealanders surveyed believe that public funding of the arts should increase. The grant structure we do have is often hard to accomplish or insubstantial to fully cover costs.
Despite Creative New Zealand’s grants being notoriously hard to get for individual practitioners — not to mention how further hard it is for emerging or new artists to get them — without their support the arts in New Zealand simply wouldn’t survive. As a part of CNZ’s Toi Uru Kahikatea investment programme fifty-eight New Zealand arts organisations have been provided multi-year funding thru 2025. These include production groups and companies like Barbarian Productions and Indian Ink, venues like the Court Theatre and BATS Theatre, festivals like the Tauranga Arts Festival and many other arts-related household names.
Gigs get cancelled because the organisers miss out on funding rounds. I’ve worked on full festivals that have been cancelled due to missing out on funding. Audiences’ expectations for what to pay for art are too low for any arts organisation to be viable without overarching support, and CNZ is one such important provider.
Todd Stephenson, do you want to see more productions that are equally as good as Hamilton? Then funding needs to be a part of the equation — and especially funding that isn’t just targeted towards the companies or productions that you deem appropriate or comforting.
One of the reasons the arts exist is to elicit emotion and provoke conversation, which you’d know if you took the time to engage with them.
