The Price of Admission

This sketch was inspired by CoBaD’s struggles to set up this channel and gain traction in our quest to transition from our previous occupations to performing arts. Over the course of several weeks, we emailed and called many people for ideas on how to make a successful jump. Many individuals (writers, theatre professors, and performers) refused to return our calls or emails, which greatly disappointed us, given the fact that performing arts, according to one actress I talked to, is an “inclusive community.”
For those that did return our emails, they suggested classes such as comedy sketch writing classes and improv classes. They helped, but we couldn’t help but think that taking these comedy and improv classes gained us “admission” into the performing arts community much like forking over money at an amusement park will gain one admission onto a ride. That is, you have to “pay to play.”
The Artistic Indifference Carousel is a parody of just one part of our attempt to break into show business. Here is the actual timeline:
June 1, 2021: We reached out to “Mr. Standard,” a friend of ours, an artistic director for a local music group and said that we would like to do comedy skits for a living. After pestering him for two and a half months, he finally agreed to meet with us August 15.
August 15, 2021: He and a coworker of his met with us and we read the skits together. He liked the skits, but they were outside the mission statement of his arts organization. Fair enough. “Mr. Standard” then asked us to email “Jenny,” a local actor.
August 26, 2021: Once we finally got “Jenny’s” address from “Mr. Standard,” we emailed “Jenny” asking for references. Five days later, on August 31, she sent us what appeared to be an encouraging email with the opening sentence: “The best thing about the theatre world is its community,” calling it an “inclusive” one. She then appended a list of places to start (local writing guilds, opportunities to get works read and writing tools).
September 8, 2021: After a review of the list of “Jenny’s” references, we decided to start with the local writer’s guilds. We submitted a request for help on a guild’s “Contact Us” page. That very day (the quickest response in this whole adventure we might add), the president, “Mike,” referred us to a local freelance writer, named “Danny.”
September 8, 2021: We emailed “Danny” on the “Contact Us” page of his website, asking for some advice.
September 17, 2021: We finally heard back from “Danny,” who couldn’t help us, but gave us two references; “Angela,” a member of a stage writer’s group (“Danny” used to be president of the group) and “Courtney.” Neither responded to our repeated requests for help.
September 24, 2021: We sent an email to “Jenny,” complaining about how this alleged “community” was either passing the buck or ignoring us altogether. We cc’d: “Mr. Standard” in the response. “Jenny” never responded to the email, but “Mr. Standard” did. “Mr. Standard” wrote that this runaround was a very real and familiar experience for all artists. He summed it up with the rather disturbing phrase “…no one HAS to help you. They have to WANT to help you.” He then referred us to back to the writer’s guild (see #4 above), which, if he had gone to the trouble of actually reading our email, he would have known that we had already tried that option. Nevertheless, we emailed “Mike,” explaining the wild goose chase, jokingly comparing it to calling a hotline and trying to get a personal computer fixed. It was three days later, on September 27, 2021, that he responded by saying “…The people who you contacted for information are not like different departments of a company that is giving you the runaround; they're disparate individuals doing whatever it is they do and who don't actually owe you a callback.” So it appears that based on “Mr. Standard’s” and “Mike’s” email, that contrary to what “Jenny” initially said, theatre's "inclusive community" is not only not inclusive, it’s not even a community.
Note that during this whole process, CoBaD was trying to be realistic. We didn’t approach studio heads or TV executives; we simply went to grass roots level artists we knew and asked for advice; not money, not a job, simply advice on how to join the “community;” i.e., how to get started. This skit used the analogy of an individual trying to join a church. You want to join a church so you attend a service. You are welcomed by the pastor, the deacons visit you in your home, members of the congregation invite you over for Bible study, and so forth. As a member of the church, you would NEVER tell someone who wants to join your congregation “I don’t have to help you, I have to want to help you” or “I don’t owe you a callback.” A church will never grow that way. It is elitist thinking. Yet the performing arts will regularly mock the church for their elitist thinking in their improv scenes, skits, plays, films and standup routines. We think a round of Matthew chapter 7 verse 3 is in order for our “speck inspectors,” don’t you (see “The New York Times’ Effect on Man” skit)?
Incidentally, Lloyd Garrison Standard, the ticket taker on the Artistic Indifferences Carousel, refers to the poem “W. Lloyd Garrison Standard” from Edgar Lee Masters’s book “Spoon River Anthology” (1915). W. Lloyd Garrison Standard, whose heart was “…cored out by the worm of theatric despair,” said (in the very next line) he “[wore] the coat of indifference to hide the shame of defeat.” So next time you come across someone in theatre’s “inclusive community” who won’t return your emails or phone calls, don’t take it too hard. They’re merely being unresponsive in order to mask their multitude of personal and professional failures. That’s show biz.
“The Tenure Track Train” was inspired by our experiences in taking comedy classes. For more on these misadventures, see the “Witless Twit” and “Acceptance Spee” sketches.
We never took a standup class, so the “Standup Shakedown Workshop” was completely made up. We here at CoBaD were far more interested in comedy than standup. And don’t think that getting up on a stage and bitching and moaning for 20 minutes straight is the least bit funny.
In conclusion, given all that all that we here at CoBaD went through just to get this far, we can definitely identify with the ticket taker in this sketch. We can see how the ordeal of constantly put up with the idiocy and hypocrisy of the performing arts world would turn any one of us into philistines as well.