No such thing as zero budget

First off, thanks to Scott Barsotti for breathing some life into this lapsed blog.

ZERO BUDGET?
A couple of days ago I got an email about Collaboraction's Studio Series project. That series has a lofty goal: creating art not tied to commercial considerations. One line in the call for particpants stuck out to me, however:

"This is a quarterly, process driven-program that lives and breathes in our studio, performs for one weekend, and operates with a $0 budget." (emphasis mine)

Now, I'm not criticising Collaboraction. They've been completely upfront about the goals, process and compensation. If you don't want to play by those rules, you just don't audition.

But it did get me thinking about the cost of making theater. And while that phrase "$0 budget" is true in the sense that there's no money exchanging hands, its not true in the sense that there is no cost.

Even if something is donated, is has a value that one could account for in a budget. Even if people are not paid, their time and energy certainly has a value.

So it strikes me that there are two kinds of budgets possible for any given production - one in which you account for cash flow. And another in which you attempt to account for donated time, materials, and space. Would publishing such "total picture" budgets help people quanitify the true cost of making a piece of theater?

Volunteer time and unpaid/underpaid time are a kind of hidden cost of making theater. And anytime there is a hidden cost, it seems to me that someone in the process has a vested interest in keep that cost hidden. Who benefits from the uncounted costs of production? Is this a product of a broken production model, or is it the neccesary cost of making an art in a form that resists commodification?