New (Old?) Commissioning Model

News out of the Wall Street Journal about how the economy has ushered in a new -- or rather, a very very old -- manner of support for the arts. In essence, it's patronage; WSJ spins it as small-scale private commissions. In the instance of this article, they're talking about music, but it's not a stretch to think of ways in which the model could be extended into the theatre.

What do you think about this model? What are the benefits or downfalls for the theatre? Many larger theatres solicit support from major donors for a single production, or artist residencies, etc -- so we're halfway there already -- but what about private citizens (outside the formal development structure of a theatre org) paying a playwright for a new work?

In fact, this isn't totally unrealistic. Playwright Greg Romero had a grand idea in 2008 -- a road-trip-meets-new-play-genesis kind of thing. He asked friends to donate money to fund his travel, and in exchange, wrote a short play for that donor. He collected them together, and the result was The Travel Plays. Check out his blog, here.

Here's the official description of The Travel Plays:

Greg Romero wrote "The Travel Plays" according to a set of self-determined rules. Each of the 31 plays is a gift for one of the 31 people who donated money to fund the playwright's travel from Philadelphia to Dallas in the spring of 2008. Romero determined setting and page length for each play by calculating the city where each gift would land him as well as the number of states he'd pass through (one page per state). Each play includes a gift exchange and one item from the previous locale. Moving through time, place and American history, "The Travel Plays" meet Walt Whitman, Martha Washington, Elvis Presley and a giant elephant. They make a wacky textured tapestry of histories out of theatrical gift-exchanges.