Derek Tague, who lives in New Jersey, just sent me this…
It's great that you're alerting your readership about a rare live performance by Dick Van Dyke. Unfortunately, I reside on the wrong coast and, hence, will not be able to entertain attending. However, many of the live vehicles you recommend are prohibitively expensive for the average person to attend. I accessed the "Buy Tickets" link and the ducats range in price from $50.00 to $75.00 (VIP).
There are hidden, inherent implications whenever anybody uses the term "VIP." This is shorthand for "very important persons." In essence, the venue is implying that anybody who cannot afford the higher pricier seats are not "very important." How can you possibly subscribe to such a dehumanizing rubric? Answer me that, Mister Green Lantern.
V.I.P. tickets to events have become a pretty well-established marketing ploy for ticketed events. I dunno what it means in the case of Dick's show but they usually include some kind of "meet-and-greet" opportunity to get an autograph and/or a selfie or something. A lot of house managers and promoters won't book events if they don't get the extra bucks from selling V.I.P. packages. Or if they can't, they'll likely compensate by raising prices for everyone. In a sense, the V.I.P. purchasers make your L.I.P. (Less Important Person) tix more affordable.
Or sometimes V.I.P. just means better seats. Almost any place you go for a live event is going to charge a little more for better seats.
By the laws of nature, they're also going to have better seats and worse seats so someone is going to wind up in the worse seats and I guess you could call being seated in one of them a dehumanizing rubric. I wouldn't feel slighted by it any more than when I get on a plane and have to walk past folks in First Class to get to where my seat is…usually somewhere out on the tail assembly.
Non-V.I.P. tickets are just plain ol' tickets — usually the same seats at the same price as if the deluxe kind wasn't offered. Yeah, many of the live events I recommend are prohibitively expensive for some. I also think they're worth the money if you have it.
But I also recommend cheap shows. I've often pushed Instaplay, a great improv show that a bunch of my friends do from time-to-time. The next one is March 3 and a ticket, including service fee, is $12.89. I also highly recommend another improv show, The Black Version. The next one of those is February 26 and a seat for that will run you $21, also including a service fee. Neither of those is prohibitively expensive unless you add in the cost of air transportation from and to New Jersey.
The only unfair thing there is that I still don't understand why when I book online using the time of no employee of the firm selling me the tickets, I need to pay a service fee. I always feel like I'm the one performing the service.
[UPDATE, a bit later: I am informed that the "V.I.P." tix for Mr. Van Dyke's show at the Catalina merely get you better seats, nothing more. For what it's worth, there are some really bad seats in that club. The room is "L"-shaped with the performers at the corner, usually only playing to one side of the "L". I mention this not to push the more expensive tix — which I did not buy, by the way — but just to alert you that you may not be happy with where they sit you.]