The Cost of Being an Artist (and Who That Cost Really Serves)

One of the things I love about writing is how little it costs.

You can do it with a notebook and a pen. Or on a laptop you already own. Maybe you spend twenty dollars a year on paper. Maybe you shave a fraction off your keyboard’s lifespan. That’s it. Writing, as an art form, is almost free.

But writing isn’t the only thing I do.

I also make theater, and theater is expensive. Once you’ve written a piece, you need actors, a director, rehearsal space, a venue, designers, marketing, technical support. Even a modest production can cost tens of thousands of dollars for a short run.

That financial reality is almost completely invisible to audiences.

After I did my first solo show, people often asked if I’d bring it to their city.
“Are you coming to London?”
“Will you do it in LA?”
“You should bring it to Vancouver!”

And I’d say, honestly, If someone pays me to bring it there, I will.

People were often surprised by that answer. Most people only think about the experience of seeing a show, not the financial machinery required to make that experience possible.

The Festival Illusion

When I was in Edinburgh in August 2024, I was talking to a woman who had lived there more than fifteen years earlier. She was visiting briefly and remarked on how much the festival had ballooned. She remembered a time when there was very little advertising, when shows spread mostly by word of mouth, when it felt more indie and less commercial—something you had to be “in the know” about.

When I told her I spent around $8,000 bringing my show to Edinburgh, she gasped.

Then I told her that was considered a low budget. That one woman I knew hadn’t returned because she was still paying off $25,000 of debt from the year before. That another woman in my venue spent $28,000 bringing her solo show that year.

The British woman just looked sad.

When I returned to the U.S. that fall, my cousin took me to see her friend’s play in New York City. He was both the playwright and the producer. After the show (and after we’d already bought tickets) he thanked the audience and then asked if anyone would consider donating money to help him pay off the $70,000 of debt he’d accrued producing the show.

My jaw dropped.

I remember thinking: shouldn’t the fundraising have come before the production? But more than that, why did he feel obligated to absorb that cost himself?

Later, when I asked him about it, he said he just loved doing the work and trusted that the money would eventually turn up.

That answer stresses me out every time I think about it.

It Wasn’t Always This Way

I came up in theater through improv and stand-up starting in 2008. You paid for classes and coaching, yes, but you didn’t pay for stage time.

The improv theaters I spent time in ran on community support. You paid as a student. You could see shows for free if seats were available. You could volunteer running the box office, stage managing, ushering. And in exchange, you got to perform.

There were a few paid staff: a theater director, a manager, a bartender. Everyone else made the place run because they wanted to be there. And crucially: no one was paying thousands of dollars just to be allowed to perform.

I spent most of the decade from 2014 to 2023 living and working in East and Southeast Asia. When I returned to the theater world in the U.S. and U.K., the shift was stark.

Venues now charged thousands for a decent run. Coaching cost several hundred dollars an hour. Things that used to be free, or at least affordable, were suddenly out of reach.

From Performer to Customer

I remember in the early 2010s talking with relatives whose daughter had studied acting at Northwestern and moved to Los Angeles. She was getting offers, but they didn’t pay. “It’s for exposure,” she was told.

Her parents called it slave labor.

Improvisers felt similarly, though many of us stayed quiet because we understood that our unpaid labor kept the theaters open. Still, it never sat right to know someone else was making money off your work while you weren’t.

Now the situation is worse. Performers aren’t just unpaid. They’re paying to work.

Can you think of any other industry where the worker pays the organization in order to do the job?

The system has flipped. The performer used to be the product. Now, the performer is the customer.

Why People Agree to This

I ask myself why artists keep agreeing to this model.

I agreed to it myself when I brought my first show to Edinburgh in 2024. I didn’t love the system, but I was clear-eyed about why I was participating in it: I wanted the experience of doing a show at that festival, and I was willing to pay for that experience.

What I’m not willing to do is endlessly take the show on the road at my own expense. That would mean I’d absorb all the risk, because there’s no guarantee I’ll sell tickets, which means there’s no ceiling on how much money I could lose. For most, breaking even is a success story. 

At a certain point, it starts to be exploitatitve. So, I still wonder what’s driving people to participate in this new industry model. Something I keep coming back to is this:

In general, people are deeply unfulfilled in life. They are stretched in too many directions. Work isn’t taking care of them. We’ve lost a deep sense of community. People have become desperate for moments where life feels meaningful. So, whether they can afford it or not, some will spend tens of thousands of dollars for a brief period where it feels like they matter.

From the outside, touring a show can look like success. But from the inside, it can look like a lot of debt or sacrificed future financial security to fill a big hole.

If This Is What It Takes, Who Gets to Make Art?

Consider Kate Nash, a well-known British singer-songwriter, who, in an effort to afford touring her latest album, sold pictures of her butt on OnlyFans. Touring based solely on the value of the music would have resulted in a loss. The butt pictures made her tour financially possible.

If Kate Nash has to do that to tour, what does that say about everyone else? It says this kind of work is inaccessible to most people.

That doesn’t mean people with fewer financial resources aren’t creative or doing work that would be deeply meaningful to the world. It means they’re not bringing their work into these institutional spaces anymore. They’re sharing music and stories in parks, churches, backyards, barbershops, salons—places that still operate on community rather than extraction.

They’re not even looking toward traditional venues, because those venues no longer make sense. And in quietly opting out, they’re saying something important:

We’re not interested in being exploited. We’ll build spaces that work for us.

Which may be the most honest and rational artistic response.