Senior Jeff Salvadore worked on his second year as Lagniappe-Potpourri’s Managing Director after first serving on the Managing Staff his sophomore year. His duties included ticketing, budget management and show promotion. He worked with his Managing Staff and his Assistant Managing Director, junior Elizabeth Wayne.

How much money does Lagniappe generate?
We’ll generate anywhere between $25,000 and $30,000 in ticket revenue, and we are able to keep expenses down to about $10,000, so we’re typically pulling in $15,000 a year. In previous years it was much lower; expenses were high and ticket sales weren’t keeping up. In 2011, it was closer to $4,000 or $5,000.

I worked with the other board members to come up with creative solutions to keep our expenses low. Our costumers have, instead of going out and buying new costumes this year, dug through the remains of the costume room and made a bunch of new costumes out of old ones.

What are Lagniappe’s major costs?
A big part of our costs came from the orchestration fee charged by this one guy who we send our music to. Another fairly big cost is the program printing. I’ve tried to ensure we always make a profit with ticket sales.

How does budgeting for the show work?
There were some changes to the Performing Arts budget this year. In previous years, each individual show would have its own budget. Lagniappe would have its own budget, the Freshmen Sophomore Musical would have its own budget; there was the Spring Play budget. That’s all been combined into one general Performing Arts budget. So, realistically, Lagniappe can’t blow through the entire budget (even though I’ve never thought it would.)

Although it is student run and students get really excited with these big ideas, ultimately Lagniappe is not as expensive as some of these other productions, like Co-op (choir opera). Co-op is one of our most expensive productions by far (I know we spent at least 15,000 dollars on costumes alone for Beauty and the Beast last year.)

Overall, I think Lagniappe has the potential to have really high costs, but we kept costs low this year. The costume designers have been really good this year with keeping costs low, and the set this year is very minimalist yet effective. It doesn’t use as much material as in year’s past.

Where does the excess profit go?
It goes towards scholarships. Last year, every cent we had in pure profit went to scholarships. There is a specific Lagniappe Scholarship that anyone who is involved in Lagniappe can apply for. To my knowledge, the money raised in Lagniappe will go back into the general performing arts budget and then at the end of the year, whatever’s leftover in that budget will go towards the scholarships available to students.