At the beginning of this year, Battery Opera sold out 40 straight shows of Artistic Producer David McIntosh’s East Side literary walkabout Lives Were Around Me. Plank Magazine’s Rachel Scott began her review thusly;
Battery Opera’s production event Lives Were Around Me is an intimate and startling theatrical experience. Although I have little idea of what happened, I was captivated by every moment.
That run in January cost each of its 3-per-show audience members $26 ($18 for Students, Seniors and Battery Opera members). Tickets for this remount, which opens November 17, cost $267.67. That’s two-hundred and sixty-seven dollars and sixty seven cents. Each. And your admission price gets you a free drink at the Alibi Room, the launching point for the piece.
This little jump in ticketing is in response to the BC governments recent withdrawal of the majority of provincial arts funding. It’s reflective of the actual cost of the site-specific production, I can only imagine what that figure would be if they were renting a venue on top of things. Paying the $267.67 is the only way to reserve a spot.
If you can’t afford this price, you do have options. I’ll let David McIntosh explain it to you himself:
Simon Ogden 
This just goes to show that it’s not the arts that get subsidized. It’s the audience.