The Burning Man festival typically draws a sellout crowd of at least 70,000 revelers. But this year, the sprawling cultural event, which takes place over a week starting in late August, is facing an unusual drop in demand.

For the first time since the festival started selling out in 2011, the organizers are offering tickets to last-minute buyers without requiring preregistration. Also, the resale market is flooded. On sites like StubHub and SeatGeek, customers can currently get their hands on a ticket for less than half of the regular price.

Festival organizers are saying the “spontaneous” ticket offering is intentional.

In an email to NPR, Burning Man spokesperson Dominique Debucquoy-Dodley said the festival came up with the instant gratification option in response to the global trend for last-minute ticket buying, adding that this “encourages immediacy and makes it easy for more people to immerse themselves at the heart of the global Burning Man cultural movement.”

Blame the weather and the economy

Members of the Burning Man community said the slowdown is happening for a couple of reasons, including severe and unpredictable weather.

Hudson Valley, New York-based Burner Jaky Levy blames the record-breaking heat of 2022 followed by the mud-bath-inducing rains of 2023 for putting people off in 2024.

“It takes so much work to already get there, that after all your things get drenched and ruined, a lot of people just don’t want to put themselves through that again,” Levy told NPR.

Other festivals like Coachella and Lollapalooza have also been struggling with ticket sales lately. One of the main reasons could be the economy. And Burning Man’s sluggish sales may equally be a result of potential attendees feeling like they can’t afford to attend.

Attendees look at a rainbow over flooding on a desert plain on Sept. 1, 2023, after heavy rains turned the annual Burning Man festival site in Nevada’s Black Rock desert into a mud pit.

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Festival demographic data shows a big increase over the past decade in attendees with personal incomes of $100,000 to $300,000, and a steep decrease in those who earn less than $50,000. Many of those high-earning Burners work in tech — an industry which has been beset with layoffs lately, which could partly explain the drop in ticket sales.

The event is expensive: A standard ticket in 2024 costs $575. And there are plenty of additional expenses, ranging from parking and camp fees to RV rental and flights. A 2023 BBC report included attendees who said they spent up to $8,000 to attend Burning Man.

A changing culture

The Burning Man festival has evolved a great deal since its scrappy beginnings in San Francisco in the 1980s.

Beyond the escalating costs and bad weather, longtime attendees said the vibe of the event has changed over the past decade or so — and not necessarily for the better.

“We’ve definitely seen a tendency toward these huge expensive camps, almost concierge camping — what are called ‘plug-and-plays’ — where people pay to attend,” said Marisa Lenhart of Alameda, Calif., who has been a festival attendee since 1999.

Instead of contributing a skill, service or product to Burning Man’s community-minded gift economy, Lenhart said the plug-and-players are paying others to haul in their lavish accommodations and clean up after them. Even though the festival organizers have been trying to tamp down this behavior, it’s causing some die-hard Burners to stay away.

Vehicles seen departing the Burning Man festival in Black Rock City, Nev., in September 2023.

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Vehicles seen departing the Burning Man festival in Black Rock City, Nev., in September 2023.

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Lenhart herself isn’t among them, though. She said she still plans to lead Death Guild Thunderdome, the big camp she’s been running at Burning Man for years.

“What keeps me going back is Thunderdome,” she said. “The community around this group of people who are my absolute friends and family in every way that matters.”

Though, Lenhart added, her group will have fewer members this year.

A silver lining?

The slump in ticket sales isn’t all bad news for those who return year after year.

Oakland, Calif.-based Burning Man attendee and artist Tim Bremner said it might signal an end to the jet-setting plug-and-play crowd.

“With this turn of maybe not selling out, I think people are hoping, like, ‘Oh, they got bored of it,’ ” he said.

Bremner added the instant gratification ticket sales also potentially mean an influx of new people who might otherwise not be able to go. He said buying a last-minute ticket was what made it possible for him to attend his first Burn, back in 2001. (The festival stopped allowing people to buy tickets without preregistering when the event started to sell out in 2011.)

“They’ll probably get a new generation of interested folks, which is pretty cool,” Bremner said.

Members of this “new generation” have been posting comments and questions on the Burning Man 2024 Facebook group about the upcoming event. Some shared their excitement.

“I’m a newbie,” posted Katie Kritzell. “Happy to share laughs, great vibes, the cost of gas, and snackaroonies!”

Other self-described first-timers, like Mike Morrow, took a more cynical approach, prompting questions from members of the community about whether Morrow was indeed a Burning Man virgin.

“Looking at the mild weather forecast and the high probability of a low turnout with shorter lines, smaller crowds, and maybe even a decent exodus,” Morrow wrote, “I’m wondering if I should skip this year and try again another year when the weather or crowds might be bad so I can get the ‘true’ Burner experience.”

Late last year my dad was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis — or ALS — an objectively terrifying neurodegenerative disease. It’s progressive and fatal. It’s already taken my dad’s ability to talk and eat normally. There is no cure. When he told me about his diagnosis, I knew two things right away: I wanted to spend as much time with him as possible and if I was going to be living in my childhood home, I would need a hobby.

Enter: the granny square.

I’m not very crafty, but I do like textiles. My mom knits, but in her youth, she’d crocheted a granny square blanket and was game to re-learn how to do it. Meanwhile, my dad — who has a funny sense of humor — decided his coping mechanism would be binge-watching “Grey’s Anatomy.” Granny squares and Grey’s became the after dinner routine and soon I was churning out dozens of multicolored squares. And it felt like this project was, maybe, helping?

A selection of granny squares that Samantha Balaban crocheted this year

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“It’s incredibly meditative,” says Gabrielle Gatto, a death educator and Manager of Public Programs at Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. “And that’s part of ritual. That’s part of really sitting with something.”

On a Tuesday evening, Gatto sets up a snack table inside the cemetery’s chapel, preparing for the start of her monthly interactive workshop, “Grieving & Weaving.”

“I think it was important to have that in the name as well,” she says, laughing a little at her rhyme. “The bold honesty of, hey, we are going to talk about grief. We are going to talk about death, dying and loss. But we’re also going to create happy memories together and eat a bunch of food and drink a bunch of things.”

Gabrielle R. Gatto, coordinator of public programs at The Green-Wood Cemetery. “We are going to talk about grief. We are going to talk about death, dying and loss. But we’re also going to create happy memories together,” Gatto says.

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Tess Rafferty is sitting in the front row, knitting a sweater vest out of beautiful copper-colored wool.

“It’s squishy, it sheds, it pills. But I love it. Smells like sheep,” she says.

It’s a project that had been sitting in her closet for months. Earlier this year, after both her grandmothers died, she lost what she calls the “knitting light” for a while. Rafferty, who is also a therapist, says she almost skipped the workshop to stay home with her dog, but she’s glad she didn’t — being here is therapeutic.

“We just don’t talk about death, right? Like death education,” she explains. “I think so much of what I struggle with, what my clients struggle with, is trying to ignore the awareness that we are not here forever. Staring that right in the face is empowering in a way.”

One thing to note — even though the series is called “Grieving & Weaving,“ you don’t have to be doing either to participate. Mary Pat Klein, who co-facilitates the event along with Gatto, says they’re just trying to create community.

Mary Pat Klein teachers beginners how to crochet at “Grieving & Weaving”

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“Recently somebody asked me — they embroidered, could they come? And it’s like, yes, please! So we’re trying to open it up. Just come and be creative,” she says.

Klein has been knitting since she was seven years old — she comes from a family of knitters and crafters — she brought quilting squares that her mom cut out long ago and she’s wearing an ivory-colored shawl her grandmother made for her decades ago. Klein is also a professional: she’s knitted items for Broadway and television productions.

Professional craftsperson Mary Pat Klein at The Green-Wood Cemetery. “We’re just trying to create community,” she says of the event series.

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They’ve turned the chapel into something like an art classroom. There’s a huge tub of donated yarn, as well as clay, colored pencils, markers, and books. Klein asks the people filling the pews for a show of hands — is anyone here to learn to knit? To crochet? Several people, including Virginia McLure, say they are.

McLure isn’t grieving a death — but she did recently get divorced — she says she’s grieving a time in her life that’s now over. “It’s a new chapter,” she says. “It’s exciting and sad. There’s a lot of like, trying to figure out what to do.” Klein teaches her the single crochet stitch — maybe this is something she’ll like to do.

Virginia McLure learns how to crochet from Mary Pat Klein. “I’m so pleased,” she said of her progress.

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Some people chat with their fiber friends, others keep to themselves. One attendee is putting the finishing touches on a beaded costume, another is making an ashtray out of clay, and someone else is embroidering a very elaborate dragon. Susan Refice didn’t know what she’d feel like doing, so she brought her entire bag of projects: a cotton and silk test swatch for a future sweater, a crocheted penguin head for her niece, and a blanket.

“When my partner’s mother died — she was a knitter and a crocheter — she had a ton of yarn,” Refice explains. “I raided her stash. So this is yarn that belonged to her.”

Nancy Jewell loved to create. Refice hadn’t even been going out with her partner for a year before Jewell made her a quilt. It has a patch on it that says: “For Susan from David’s mom.”

When Jewell went into a nursing home, Refice thought it would be nice to make her something. So she bought rainbow yarn and made her a shawl.

At “Grieving & Weaving,” any craft goes. Some people play with clay, embroider, quilt, draw with markers, and write on sticky notes.

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“It was like, her favorite thing before she passed away,” Refice remembers. “All the people in the nursing home said it looked like butterfly wings.” Refice plans to give the blanket she’s working on now to her partner, something to remember his mom by. And, she adds, there’s also something kind of nice about making something with his mother’s yarn.

“When I’m using her yarn, I think about her. And I think about what she was doing when she originally bought the yarn,” Refice explains. “That’s the nice thing when you make stuff for people, and you think about them, those memories are always going to be there.”

Death educator Gabrielle Gatto says, after all, it’s not the end product that’s the therapy. It’s the act of doing it.

“A big thing with grief is moving through it both mentally and physically,” Gatto says. “And that’s exactly what we do here. We bring something that is maybe heavy on our minds or our hearts. And then we work with our hands. We work with it, and we work together.”

Fiber friends laugh together at “Grieving & Weaving”

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I think she’s right. I’ve crocheted several finished blankets, and some unfinished blankets, over about 17 seasons of “Grey’s Anatomy.” But what I’ve loved the most is the ritual — having something to do with my hands, a quiet space for my brain: thinking about the people I’ll give my blankets to and the memories of all the nights I’ve gotten to spend on the couch, just being with my dad.

A few minutes after the play begins, the actors stop, empty their pockets and repeat their last few lines. And then they do it again. And again. And again. This live approximation of a vinyl record that catches on loop goes on for a few more minutes, the actors getting slightly louder and a tinge more testy as they continue the repetition.

They can’t move, they say, as they are “waiting for Godot.” But they are actually waiting for us, the audience, to get out of our seats, walk onstage and start to piece together a puzzle out of the fragmented pieces of paper they‘ve dropped.

Cards and letters lay on the ground for audience members to discover the next clue.

Melanie Pentecost holds a rock that gives the next context clue to to move the play forward.

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This is “Escape From Godot,” an escape room that is also a work of theater — or vice versa. It upends the conventions of both. This is a play in which audience members become participants, the game requiring patrons to hop on the dials and interact with props in order to propel the narrative forward. Puzzles are hidden in the script, ensuring that the players become actors and are in abstract communication with the performers.

But its greatest trick? Inspired by Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” the theatrical escape room taps into the themes of the original work, creating an open-for-interpretation piece of playfully interactive art that grapples with existential questions — how we communicate, or fail to, with others, and the balance among selfish behavior, free will and empathy. Like Beckett’s play, there is no Godot who will come, but we are all caught in a world where the mundane, the absurd and our own desire for answers propel us forward.

Our group — I’m playing with seven strangers — hesitates to jump onstage and set the game afoot. It’s a break of decorum, both of theater protocol and personal boundaries. One player nervously scans his ticket, trying to find a missing clue, another flips through a notebook that was placed on her chair and most of us look at each other and whisper questions about what to do. Realizing, after about seven minutes, that there will be no end to “Escape From Godot” if we don’t move, my group begins to hesitatingly work together. In order for the actors to proceed to the next scene, we need to get them a message crafted from the ephemera that they have dropped.

Actor Phil Daddario kicks into the air during his performance.

Daddario wipes sweat from his face while performing.

Audience members look on the ground for context clues to solve the next puzzle.

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“I bet you were not the longest group that has sat,” the show’s co-creator, Jeff Crocker, later tells me when I describe those seven minutes of awkwardness. Jeff is one half of Mister & Mischief, an L.A.-based husband-and-wife duo that has crafted experiences for theme parks, zoos, museums and more. (Jeff’s wife, Andy Crocker, recently created a game-like experience for the Los Angeles Public Library system.) “Escape From Godot” is their first escape room.

“Typically, theater-minded folks, the last thing they’re ever going to do is get up onstage in the middle of the scene,” Jeff says. “That’s a hidden puzzle right there. Are you the person who is bold enough to walk onstage in the middle of a performance in order to make this repetition cease? There’s a lot of weird little social bits like that happening.”

“Escape From Godot” premiered at the Hollywood Fringe Festival in 2018 and has been periodically revived over the years, its latest as part of this months RECON event at the Universal City Hilton, a convention held by escape room aficionado site Room Escape Artist. An initial run of dates through Aug. 25 at Atwater’s Moving Arts Theatre sold out, so “Escape From Godot” has been extended through Sept. 8.

The idea stemmed from Crocker hearing about an escape room in Europe that had taken place throughout a train, a promotional event tied to a film. Joking about potential properties they could base a project on, the Crockers hit on “Waiting for Godot.”

“Andy has a theater degree, and ‘Waiting for Godot’ is classically known as this play where nothing happens,” Jeff says. “To folks who don’t create theater, you hear that as the B-word, boring. It’s a go-to play where people wait for a person who never shows up. There’s more to it than that, and when you see a not-great production of ‘Waiting for Godot,’ it can feel like you want to escape. I’ve seen really great productions of it, and there’s a reason it’s a classic.”

In “Escape From Godot,” puzzles may be hidden in the bowler hats of the performers. Do we ask them to surrender their apparel or wait in the hopes that they will drop them?

Actor Mason Conrad holds a large suitcase while performing in “Escape from Godot.”

Actor Justin Okin looks through the stage play script for lines to give audience members context for the next clue.

Like Beckett’s play, characters in questionable physical shape will appear on the stage, but any sense of compassion is soon overtaken by the desire to solve the next puzzle via the props they‘re carrying. Boxes and baskets with locks may be dropped onstage, their combinations found in the monologues of the actors — Justin Okin as GiGi and Bill Salyers as DoDo, stand-ins for Beckett’s Vladimir and Estragon.

“Escape From Godot” will even nod to other theatrical works. My favorite puzzle turned out to involve a combination lock affixed to a basket, in which uncovering the solution required us to listen to a monologue that alluded to famous cats in history and culture. “Escape From Godot” won’t even start unless guests solve an initial puzzle, one the necessitates we align our tickets with a theater seating chart and find the correct seat. One could opt not to play, as long as others are, and sit and watch, taking in a script that toys with our place and faith in the world, albeit with a reference to the musical “Cats.”

The longer the audience goes without hitting on the right solution, the louder and faster the monologues will become. It creates tension and tests a group to maintain a sense of calm and patience. Nothing gets too hairy; the silliness of the situation dominates the tone.

“Escape from Godot” actors applaud the audience at the end of the play, including, from left, Tiffany Ogburn, Phil Daddario, Mason Conrad, Bill Salyers and Justin Okin.

“We purely set out to fulfill our original delightful idea of having fun from escaping from a notoriously monotonous play, but in doing so, as we started to develop what the puzzles were and the way we wanted the audience to interact, it did start to support the themes of the play while also poking a little fun at it,” Jeff says. “You get the little bits of what Beckett was trying to say about what existence wants to be, what belief in God wants to be, but doing it in a way that is mischievous.”

By the time the show ends, roles have been reversed. Members of the audience have been cast as performers and the actors at times became the audience, trapped with repeating dramatic orations while watching us play. It’s a final message that isn’t too divorced from the Beckett text: We’re all performers, too often waiting for a cue.