Ode to Opening Nights (A Lament)

Let us talk a little bit about how haste makes waste.
One of the biggest problems I have with theatre is the opening night.
It is a nightmare.
We:

1. announce it the year prior, choosing performance dates, 
2. tell people to put it into their calendar and buy tickets
3. plan vacations around it. 

All before:

1. finding out our creative team or cast, 
2. before our first rehearsal, 
3. before the beginnings of artististry.

Why do we do that?

There is a definite motivating factor: give people enough time, make them aware enough and we will have an audience for that all important opening night.
I have done the struggle, it is hard, believe me.
However, from the creative side, for me, it is a nightmare.
Why would we give an audience  an entire year to prepare for opening night and the performers and creative team only a few weeks at most?

I am forced to conclude economic reasons.

Now kids, this is what we want to avoid.

A show has to be opened and closed in the shortest, most expedient amount of time imaginable.
Why?
Well because of rights reasons; we pay to perform the majority of shows that we do ergo a longer run or changing of the dates is impossible whether due to finances, copyright law, or the agencies that handle the scripts. They have to be notified of the performance dates six weeks prior to the first rehearsal. You have to know when you are going to perform before you can even look at the script that you want to order....Already we have a problem. But we'll come back to it:
Because of rehearsal spaces; we so often rent the theatre spaces we are to perform in, which tend to be large stages or warehouses to accommodate say...an audience? Ergo they cost a lot of green. So they are prohibitively expensive. So we rent rehearsal halls.
Now we have rehearsal hall expenses to worry about.
All of this is before we even get to creative team expenses.
Now the actors want gas money?!

Fathom this:
The design team is paid by design.
That is it.
All of the time they put into crafting their work doesn't get paid (much like actors) however, their work is due prior to the first rehearsal.
Before they have met anyone that will actually be performing in or around their work, they are expected to create it.
Why?
So we have time to build it over the course of the rehearsal process.
Well, the more time they spend on a design, the less they get paid.
And I have had designers say this TO MY FACE.

If I were to spend time in rehearsal, watching the actors, adjusting my design, I wouldn't be paid for it. Sure, it would be better, but that is stealing time away from my next design job, another opportunity for me to make MONEY.

We are so far gone if that is the mentality of theatre.
We do not have time to work on the artistic project we are currently working on.
We are forever looking towards the next project and the next.
No one feels secure artistically or financially.

This is my nightmare.
This is a description of my worst fears on how to work and it is the reality that some in the theatre live every day.
Now, this is not to say others do not find this process enlivening, enjoyable, or rewarding.
In fact, many do. I am simply not among them. I do not artistically thrive under those conditions.
But, I also know I am not alone.

So I want to make my own rules.
My advisors all throughout school said:

Miles, you may need to open your own theatre because you don't like working with anyone.

A little harsh, and just a little true.
But it isn't that I don't like working with anyone.
I don't like working with anyone in this way.

Is there a hope, a dream in any of this?
I think so, but bear with me, it is early days. A diamond in the rough.
Now, this may be the subject of another post, but I will plug my dream here and hope if it speaks to you, send me a message and we will talk about making it happen.
Ideally, we pay everyone on the creative team.
I don't know with what...the government's money? Because I don't have any.
We make a farm.
We eat, commune, and grow things together so nobody goes hungry.
We build houses for people to stay in.
The audience shows up and stays with us, in our homes, in tents outside, in their cars, wherever.
They help tend the farm.
They share in the making of a thing.
We rehearse for as long as we need.
We perform every night.
We perform in repertory.
Opening nights can then become surprising things.
Hey, you thought you were coming to see this play, but actually we are ready to perform this! Would you like to see it?
The audience and the performers become more familial and we share in the work to make theatre happen.

This is definitely the subject of a much longer post, but that is my dream.
It is rough, a little unpolished, but it is mine:
A theatre devoted to its practitioners and its audience.
Where people can come see theatre every night and not know what they will see, but trust it will be good because we are the ones making it.
Where no one is hungry or worried about where they need to go next.
An artistic home where everyone can and hopefully will return.
A rotating repertory in a single location that audience and most importantly artists are familiar.
We rehearse on the same stage as we perform and with the design elements in rehearsal.
We add to the repertory and perform classics and new works.
That is what I would like to make.
I'd like opening nights to no longer be the most important deciding factor in theatre.