Bills, Bills, Bills: How One Newsletter Is Breaking Down Theater's Money Taboos

In an industry where talking about money often feels taboo, Bills, Bills, Bills is doing something radical: asking theater workers to share exactly what they earn and how they make it work. Published through Lauren Halvorsen's Nothing for the Group newsletter, this crowdsourced series has featured over 40 financial diaries since 2022 — from costume workers in Cleveland to lighting designers in Australia — offering a rare glimpse into the real economics of building a life in the arts. In this conversation, series curator Jenna Clark Embrey talks about breaking down financial stigma, the power of salary transparency, and why she's still a little disappointed Destiny's Child hasn't sent a cease and desist.

Vicky Blume: I'm here with Jenna Clark Embrey, and we're talking about financial transparency in the arts. Bills, Bills, Bills started in 2022 and has had over 40 installments so far. No word from Destiny's Child?

Jenna Clark Embrey: No, and I can't tell at this point if we feel great or a little disappointed in that. I'm glad we haven't had to change the name, but I would love to have reached the stratosphere of them being aware of us, yes.

VB: Getting a letter in the mail that both excites you and terrifies you. In all seriousness, could you share some more about how Bills, Bills, Bills came to be? I presume that Lauren and Nothing for the Group are part of the story.

JCE: Lauren Halvorsen of Nothing for the Group — and her vast media empire, as we say — is one of my closest friends. We have what I lovingly refer to as the Nothing for The Group headquarters, aka the group chat. Shout out to our dear friend, Jen Hoguet, who is a brilliant producer and the other participant in this group chat. One day I said, "I really wish there was something like the old Billfold money diaries." This is a real elder millennial deep cut. There used to be a website called the Billfold that had incredible insights about finances. They're not unlike the Refinery 29 money diaries that still happen, but the Billfold was a little more focused on money and less on salacious life details, which I also love about the Refinery 29 ones. So I said in the group chat, "I wish something like this existed for theater. I wish I could curate something like that." And Lauren immediately said, "Why don't we use the newsletter for it?"

So we sent out a call for submissions and immediately got a lot of responses. Our first column went out in June 2022 with a costume worker from the Cleveland area who had worked for the same theater for more than a decade and had been laid off every single summer as a seasonal worker, which was a really fascinating way to start. And very soon after, Bills, Bills, Bills was mentioned in a New York Times article on theater pay. It's kind of taken off from there. We just published our 43rd column.

VB: 43! Currently, your process is fully crowdsourced. Folks fill out a very quick form and must transparently share their salary and geographic location, whether they rent or own, if they're a caregiver, have loans, etc. And any submission you select for publishing receives $50. I'm curious what you look for in submissions and your curatorial vision for the series as a whole?

JCE: I think our number one curatorial guiding force is geographic diversity. We just published our first column from Australia. We've also had one from England. But within the United States, that's something we really prioritize. There's a large concentration of theater workers on the East Coast, along the Northeast corridor, and our readership tends to be clustered there. So it takes thoughtful curation to make sure we have representation from other parts of the country. One of the things I love most about the column is discovering theater workers and how they're making their lives work in other areas.

Along with that, there are definitely more folks who are not parents, who don't have student loans, and who are renters. That's why we ask those other questions about caregiving and loans. We only have a few folks who have mortgages, but it's great to have them represented so we know what that's like. It's really less about the individual columns' value and more about making sure we're not publishing two New York columns back to back, two lighting designers back to back, etc.

VB: We also really loved the special anniversary edition you and Lauren did for your third birthday. There were prompts like "What is the biggest purchase you've made in the last year?" and "What's the one piece of financial advice that's changed your artistic life?" answered anonymously by dozens of people at a time. Which prompt turned out most interesting to you, and are there plans for more special editions like this? Asking selfishly because I loved it.

JCE: Our column in December was another special feature. We asked about people's financial plans for gift giving and a few other questions, and we got a lot of responses that I really loved. I don't know that I can drill down a single favorite response so much as it's really interesting to see where there are commonalities. And sometimes those commonalities are only apparent to me reading the responses. There were a lot of "having a baby was the most expensive thing I did this year" or "I got married." And that's been really interesting.

VB: It's something we talk about a lot here at Fractured Atlas, too, because we see so many arts budgets when people are applying for grants. There's such a learning curve to pricing out and naming everything it takes to fund a creative practice. It's mind-blowing for people that their laptop, for example, is a business expense. I also really appreciate seeing how the sausage is made. Throwing one of your prompts back at you, what's the wildest money misconception you believed as a child?

JCE: Thank you for asking this one because it was my favorite question. I'm going to say two-fold, one funny and one deep. Maybe I'll start with the deep one so we can end on a hilarious note.

I didn't have a family that talked about money at all growing up. Gave me no wisdom there. Glad they won't listen to this podcast — they won't know that. So I think my biggest dramatic misconception is that I would eventually just figure it out on my own, because it seemed to me that adults all kind of knew how to do money. I grew up with very humble roots, and yet I didn't see my parents freak out about their retirement plans. I now know that's because they both had jobs with pensions. Shout out to unions. So it never occurred to me that it was something I had to actively plan for. I just kind of figured there would be a time when I was saving for retirement without having to try. That was the biggest misconception. I wasn't going to accumulate this knowledge by life osmosis, and I actually had to educate myself on how finances worked.

On a cheerier note, the other misconception I had as a kid: I'm an elder millennial, and in the '90s there was a fad in advertising that presented grocery store items as luxury things. Things like Breyers — they had this Viennese cake thing that, in the commercials, was served with this big silver serving platter — or Fancy Feast cat food. I did not have a cat as a child. And of course, the most iconic are the Grey Poupon commercials. We never got anything that wasn't on the grocery list. I was like, "Oh, we will lose our home if we purchase Grey Poupon." It was built up so much in my mind that these were luxury items.

Speaking of Breyers, there's a toy company called Breyer that makes horses — just plastic horses for recovering horse girls. I always wanted one as a child but was told they were too expensive. Last Christmas, I saw them in a toy store. I have a four-and-a-half-year-old daughter and she immediately gravitated towards them. I was like, "I'm gonna do it. I'm going to buy this incredibly expensive horse that I never got." And I approached it. These horses are $20! That is with 30-some-odd years of inflation, and I am so mad. Why didn't I ever get this? So my daughter now has two.

VB: I'm glad you got to relive and resolve that with your daughter. And I hope you didn't see Grey Poupon in people's homes as a child and get confused, thinking they were ultra wealthy. My last question: let's talk about the Airtable. It totally blows my mind — nearly 600 entries so far, each one detailing an arts worker's title, salary, department, educational level, years of experience. I think it's all arts workers and not just theater for that one. How do you hope people are using or experiencing this public resource?

JCE: It started as a Google spreadsheet. Now it's an Airtable. It started in 2015, which is wild to think about. I started it because I realized there was no Glassdoor equivalent for theater workers. And of course, most of us are not working at big enough companies for Glassdoor to be a usable or viable tool. I also personally received this line — and I know lots of other people who did too — when asking for a raise or negotiating a new job: having the term "industry standard" thrown back at us. This was also before a lot of job postings had salary transparency as required by law, which is so good that we have now. But in 2015 in New York, jobs didn't have that, so I was like, "What can we do that helps people understand what the norm actually is?"

I've worked my entire career in theater admin and there is such a wide range of salaries from theater to theater and almost more notably from department to department. If you're someone who's like, "I just want to work in a theater," there are some departments that make more money than others. And that is a continued practice no matter what. Just having that knowledge base so people can use it in various ways is really important. I'd love for people to continue to add to it. We usually have various bursts throughout the year where people submit information.

VB: Listeners, let this be your call to action. We're gonna be another burst of activity for Jenna's Airtable! And I think I can speak for everyone when I say thank you for facilitating so much transparency and continually bringing more honesty and awareness to this space.

JCE: Thank you so much for having me and for chatting about it.

Readers, it's your turn! What's the wildest money misconception you believed as a child? Let us know in the comments.