The Business of Performance Art - Rey Sparta
Every now and again someone, for whatever reason, crosses your path, and has the same mission in life as you. “I want to use my music to tell my story live on stage” “I want to create a live show that expresses the good, bad, ugly, and the truth of what my music has to say”. “Everything I make, I envision my audience to experience live”. That was the first conversation I had with Rey Sparta. Those sentences were expressed with more honesty and vulnerability than any artist I've ever met, which is why two years later, I'm sharing our journey.
SPIRIT of the SPARTA.
The timing for this meeting was perfect. I had spent the last several years learning everything possible about producing, budgeting, and executing a live show built from scratch. Even with this knowledge, if Rey Sparta did not have a clear vision of what he wanted to accomplish creatively, it would just be my interpretation of his art, not his.
We invested money into building a small, portable, yet powerful lighting rig designed to program and reproduce his live show at any opportunity that presented itself. We began testing the capabilities of the equipment so Rey could see exactly what was possible. We did this in small rehearsal spaces, outdoors, empty garages, whatever it took. We then hired an incredibly talented Lighting Director with credentials of touring artists we all recognized and respected. Rey then took his set list and broke it down into three separate parts. Act I, Act II, and Act III. The goal was to be a mixture of his music and theatre but presented and marketed more like a play than a performance.
Once the lighting director was booked, Rey’s job was to go through the set list and visualize what he wanted each song to look like on stage. The day of programming, he had every song ready with a specific color, speed, and movement of the lighting based on what he planned on doing and physically where he would be on stage at that moment. All this was timed to match the emotional feel of the lyrics he was performing. The prep work and cost going into this is outweighed by the fact we time coded the entire show, so now we can plug and play anywhere we go moving forward.
Every artist says they want to perform and aspires to see themselves rocking large crowds on the giant concert stages they see on TV. The reality is most do not have the discipline needed to be successful at this very skill-oriented craft. It takes an enormous amount of work to make it look effortless. It also takes a great team behind you to build, create, and develop those beautiful stages and landscapes to tell your story in a live setting. For those that do not know where to start, here is some useful information.
Questions you should first ask yourself.
Do you have music that actually tells a story and can take the audience to the very place you're describing in your lyrics?
What is the stage size and capacity of the venues you realistically plan on performing at?
What references from established tours do you find inspiring. You need to be able to have some sort of design starting point and the ability to convey this message to whoever you hire?
What is a realistic budget you can afford to spend to execute one show in addition to the initial design phase phase.?
Technical Properties you will need:
Lighting director - Someone that can not just program your lighting, but sit with you song by song and assist in bringing your creative vision to life. You should come to the table with some sort of direction, color, emotion, anything that can be helpful designing your show.
Equipment - Every piece of gear on stage costs money. How many lights do you need? What can you afford? The goal is to do more with less.
Labor – Who is going to get the gear, set it up, run the cables, breakdown at the end of the night when it's all said and done and keep track of everything at 2 am in the pitch black of the dark venue? The lighting directors fee does not include this.
Video – Everyone wants video. Who is going to operate that? Do you have a budget for LED panels, or do you use projection? With projection, you have to be aware of throw distance. Most small stages do not have the room to project from behind the screen, if that’s the case, where in front of the stage are you going to put it. Once again, who's doing this? This is another operating cost. In addition, you actually need the content itself that’s going to be shown on stage, and in a resolution that maximizes quality once enlarged.
Audio – This should have been mentioned first. I always suggest bringing your own sound person. Small venues rarely provide this labor, and if they do, they have never heard your music, so if you use any sort of effects on your vocals, they are probably not equipped for this task and usually don’t care.
Rehearsal – Anytime you have this many moving parts, timing is essential. This requires ample rehearsal time and once again at a cost. You have to pay each one of these specific skilled individuals a fee just to rehearse before paying them again for the actual show.
Now, this may have been a buzzkill to many who have already given up due to not having the budget to cover all of this. However, there are tricks to execute this if you're willing to put in the work. In the AV and production industry, many people have purchased their own small amount of gear and have the technical ability to operate it. They are approachable and usually budget friendly. The negotiation should be a dollar amount for them to operate, use of their equipment, and one person to assist and set up. This cost is drastically lower than piecemealing this one by one from a major production company. Executing this will come from you or someone on your team's ability to network and find these individuals. They are present in every city; you just have to know where to look. Wishing you well on your journey building your live show.