TORONTO – Jon Hudson, a financial district lawyer, was overheard yesterday at a restaurant commenting on how the arts weren’t a worthwhile pursuit because they weren’t profitable. He quickly followed that up by boasting about how he dropped a thousand dollars on two tickets to the upcoming touring production of Hamilton.
“I’m just saying, I won’t have my kids going into music or theatre after graduating high school,” the 50-year-old explained, quickly checking to make sure his wife had renewed their Mirvish subscription for the twentieth year in a row. “It’s not sustainable. There’s no future in it. I don’t even know where my ticket money is going- after all, I’m pretty sure they pay the actors in exposure.”
Keisha Burton, an actor and Hudson’s server that afternoon, recounted how the man had asked her what she had studied in university.
“When I said theatre, he just laughed and replied, ‘I guess you hate money!’ Then he told me about how he and his wife had seen Come From Away five times in the last year. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I actually had been in that show and made a decent wage from it. It really would have been tough for him to know that I’m not actually starving all the time.”
Hudson also didn’t hesitate to express his resentment over the debate surrounding waning government support for the arts.
“Look, if all those artist people really wanted to stop being poor, then they should have chosen a better profession, like mine,” he said, downing his third martini. “It’s not the government’s job to support their fiscally irresponsible, and frankly selfish, decisions. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go grab tickets to see the new Second City show- it’s always the most fun my family has all year.”
Hudson was last seen chuckling about how actors waste so much money on risky artistic projects, while checking his Bitcoin stocks for the sixth time that day.
