It’s been a month-and-a-half since I last posted about The Fantastical Adventures of [Not] Being With You, so what’s going on now?

Since that last entry, a lot has happened. I’ve kept quiet about most of it because we haven’t yet reached a final decision on whether or not we’ll be seeing The Fantastical Adventures of [Not] Being With You in Canada this year.

What’s Happened Between Then and Now

• We had hopes for a BYOV in Edmonton and after making it on a shortlist (yay!) we didn’t make the final cut (boo!). We also connected with a couple other options which were either too small or not equipped for the show or far too expensive.
• We found nothing in Calgary.
• We found a BYOV in Winnipeg (yay!) but had to drop out after I went over the costs of doing just Toronto and Winnipeg and learnt that touring to only Winnipeg would cause us to likely lose money given the extremely high costs (money and/or time) of travelling within Canada (boo!).
• New factors that came forth causing us to increase our budget by about $1,000.

What Does That Mean for the Production?

We’re looking at the possibility of doing just the Toronto Fringe. Seeing how that would work in terms of numbers. When I created a budget looking at just this, it didn’t seem possible at first. But by re-examining the numbers, something happened. $2,300 of it happened.

Basically, looking at some reasonable cuts and revised projections, factoring in reasonable estimates for crowdfunding and sponsorship income, and if I choose to donate my personal share of the projected revenue to the production, that leaves us with a $2,300 gap.

When looking at ways to fill this gap, (outside of crowdfunding and sponsorship, as those numbers are included in the budget), the primary option seemed to be grants. So, I researched grants. This is what I found.

Ineligible
Toronto Arts Council – It appears that, as I am not an organisation but an individual, I am ineligible And even as an organisation I would need two people from Toronto to sign the application and I am the only one not living in the UK.
Ontario Arts Council – Ineligible as I have not lived in the province for a year.
Canada Council for the Arts – The grant for emerging artists does support an ad hoc group of artists, however, each artist in the project must submit certain documents. Eligibility requirements say applicants must be Canadian citizens and we are not all Canadian citizens in this project. The Theatre International grant, while we may have been a good fit for it, had a deadline of December 1 which is before we had any idea of our Fringe lottery results whatsoever.

In addition to these grants, there were also Canadian grants that are through the embassy to promote cultural exchange and the like, but funding for those has been completely cut by the current Federal government.

Eligible
Artists’ International Development Fund (UK grant) – This is a grant that allows UK artists to be funded to develop their career in other countries. We could actually apply for this.

Possibly another very small one for LGBT-specific but the materials on their website indicate it is highly, highly competitive and we’d also be competing against LGBT heath and research initiatives. While we may still be able to apply, it’s not enough to plug the gap and very unlikely we’d get it at all.

What Are We Doing Now?

$2,300 is an amount that’s not large at all but it is a major portion of our small budget and therefore still out of current feasible reach, so it’s been difficult for us to just say we won’t do the production. As the decision for the Artists’ International Development Fund would be released 6 weeks from the deadline (today), we chose to apply for this grant (well, for Max, Ryan, and Ina to apply) and take it from there. Unless some magical financial windfall or generous benefactor befalls us, the decision on whether or not The Fantastical Adventures of [Not] Being With You comes to Canada will rest on the outcome of that grant.

Tags: career, directing, my productions, the fantastical adventures of [not] being with you