Georges Bizet’s Carmen is the biggest brand in opera, and of the best known in all the performing arts. It’s got gypsies, girl fights, love triangles, and great songs everyone knows. So it’s no surprise that the Florida Grand Opera‘s production has been selling out during it’s current run at the Adrienne Arsht Center. Go, Florida Grand Opera! Still I have been surprised to find myself among the privileged few to see some great local producitons over the past two weeks. Does a show have to be a blockbuster to fill the seats, even of a small theater? Is there just not enough audience to go around? The loneliest was a Saturday night production of Talco at Teatro Abanico, with just over a dozen folks huddled around the extended platform to see Juan David Ferrer act his heart out as an aging transvestite in a decrepit movie theater in Havana. Many more people turned out for Chamaco, the first installment in this trilogy by Cuban playwright Abel González Melo. What that because the first play received more press and a big boost from a University of Miami symposium? Does Teatro 8, home of the first production, have a bigger base than the well-hidden Teatro Abanico? Is one trip into Havana’s underworld enough?

This Saturday the crowd looked sparse over at the Byron Carlyle at the start of the Miami Hip Hop Project, presented by Fundarte as part of the Miami on Stage Series. There were three cats doing solo work on the bill, so fans drifted in and out over the course of the evening, filling in the seats here and there. Still, when Rudi Goblen asked audience members to introduce themselves as part of his act, he was able to get around to a good many of us, including his two fellow performers, who had snuck out from backstage to watch. It was nice to see Goblen along with Summer Hill Seven and Meshaun Lebrone do their very different hip hop things in one night, but the work has all been seen around town before — so maybe people felt like they’d already seen it.

That may also have been the case for Mad Cat Theatre’s Broadsword, which I saw reprised at the Arsht Center last Friday. The crowd was respectable, but with all the publicity the show has received — and a promotional air guitar contest at Vagabond after Friday night’s show! — I’d expected a full house. So did the Arsht Center, presumably, which financed a bigger version of the production that wowed audiences in its first incarnation at the Miami Light Project’s Light Box. The cast certainly deserved one. After the final bows, Paul Tei encouraged the audience to spread the word by joking: If you liked the show, tell your friends. If you didn’t like it, tell them you saw Carmen. They’re sold out anyway.

Then again, there may be an even more basic reason for the small crowds, as I’m always reminded when I pick up my free press tickets. I could never afford to see all the shows I do if I had to pay. Nearly all the productions in town are subsidized to a great extent by grants and donations. As a perennial cultural freeloader, I still contend that we might as go all the way and — if not make the tickets to shows not called Carmen or Wicked actually free — at least make them competitive with the cost of a ticket to the movies. Then if the crowds don’t come, we’ll know who to blame.

Broadsword runs through May 9 on Thursday and Friday at 8pm, Saturday and Sunday at 7pm, with an additional 10pm show on Saturday; Arsht Center, 1300 Biscayne Blvd; 305-949-6722; www.arshtcenter.org; Tickets cost $35. Talco also runs through May 9 on Friday and Saturday at 8:30 pm and Sunday at 6 pm at Teatro Abanico, Arts & Minds Center, 3138 Commodore Plaza, Fourth Floor, Miam, FL 33133; 305-448-1105; www.teatroabanico.com.