Ian, a transfer house is a venue that doesn’t have a resident company. It allows for a successful production to quickly move once its initial scheduled run is completed and it can no longer stay in its original venue. Off-Broadway has venues that do exactly this, allowing something that has developed in a small venue to reach out to a wider audience.

Now these types of venues have to be managed carefully. It was once hoped that the Elgin/Winter Garden would serve this function but it turned out to be too large and expensive for this purpose. Ideally, I see it as a two theatre venue: 300 - 500 seat house to move something that’s a hit on the mainstages of the mid-size theatres, and a 150 seat black-box for the shows that have been in smaller spaces. (Diesel’s larger space is 200, but it has a wide stage and a cabaret feel that wouldn’t work for some shows.) The trick is to have great marketing (building up TO Tix’s profile could assist this in a major way like TKTS does for Off-Broadway in NY), and venue management that can skillfully manage the times when there isn’t a big hit.

Imagine if we had this venue last year when East of Berlin and Scorched took off. Instead of Tarragon trying to squeeze them in where it could this season, they could have moved right away when buzz was at its highest and ran for months. Tarragon would have to split money with the venue, but they wouldn’t have had to go through a repeat rehearsal process and would have had more money coming to them in the long run by being in a larger venue, even if they only ran for as long as the remounts are now.

Now what are we going to do about it?

That’s the key question, isn’t it? I have further thoughts on some of this issues that I’m going to be writing in my blog, especially about the national/international aspect and the venues. In terms of the funding/PR challenges, the groups that came up around the funding cuts and the election are a good place to start these dialogues. I like Ian’s idea of a white paper, although most of those these days don’t usually lead to much change.

But most of all, I really think we need to have more opportunities to talk to each other. That’s the key that kept popping up in my analysis. There’s so many silos and that, more than anything, needs to change. Thankfully, the internet is a great tool to start with.

I wonder if we could find funding to commission a white paper that falls from this analysis. That would be wonderful.

Question: I’m not sure what a transfer house is MK. Could you elaborate on what they are and why we need them?

This is a powerful document. I could quibble with a couple of points, but it would really be the 5% i perceive differently and additional Threats that are not helpfully addressed in a public forum.

In general, it is an accurate snapshot of the community at this point in time, which is a significant accomplishment. A grad student researching the growth of indie arts in our era will lose their shit if they find this in the course of their research.

Thanks for this. Now what are we going to do about it?