TribLIVE: Filling seats and growing diverse audiences is a constant concern for theater companies.
“We’re always looking to solve the problem,” says Mark Clayton Southers who serves as the artistic director for theater initiatives at the August Wilson Center and is also the founder and producing artistic director of Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre. “We live in a society where there are a zillion cable channels. It’s an era when it’s hard for people to gravitate toward live theater.”
Minneapolis artistic director Jack Reuler believes he may have found the answer — free admission.
15 comments:
This solution was well thought out. I always wonder what is the best way to sell seats to a production that is either unknown or not as popular as say Spring Awakening. I feel like lowering prices WILL indeed bring in larger audiences, but I also feel like having some sort of lottery would help too...Say, the theatre offers 10 tickets for $10 to the first ten winners and the rest of the people have the opportunity to buy tickets for a highly discounted price on the day of the show. I feel like there are many ways to get audiences in...we just haven't figured them out yet...
There was a theatre company back home that used to do "pay what you can" nights on their Thursday night performances. For a while, it worked. It attracted more people. The usual ticket price was $25, and for someone to see the same show for $3 the night before seemed like an amazing deal. Eventually though, the theatre company cancelled the program because it would sell out on Thursday nights, and if someone didn't get in on Thursday night, they wouldn't attempt to come back later in the weekend to pay full price. I think that theatre companies should utilize discount nights, and possibly do a show that had a certain amount of free tickets. I liked the theatre company with the idea that to guarantee a seat you would pay, but if you just showed up, it was free for all performances. That seems to be the best method I've read/heard of. Of course, theatre companies are always reliant on donors and backers. The arts couldn't be done without supporters, and especially not for theatre companies that do free shows.
Sooo... the theatre's giving away free tickets and asking for donations instead, and most people feel inclined to give something when they get their ticket for free? Shocker. It's a fundamental principle of psychology called reciprocity - you do something for me (you give me a free show), I feel obligated to do something for you (donate).
You take away the marketing promotions and the spin and It comes down to the whole "art for art's sake" vs. "art for business" argument. The August Wilson has a mission of exposing Wilson's work and the work of related playwrights to the public, especially people of color, so it follows that the theatre will want to get as many people to see the shows as they can. If they can get the money from donors to allow that to happen, that's great, they're supported. And getting the audience members to donate is also great, especially the fact that their donations have increased 300% even though the amount per donation has decreased. That means more people engaged and wanted to give back.
But I have some serious trouble with this article purporting that they've "adjusted" their ticket prices or that the donations number has anything at all to do with the revenue from the production. What we don't see in the article is a comparison of the total donated amount for a free performance against the total revenue on ticket sales for a night on full face value. They can't be considered in isolation, one will go down when the other goes up. What's at stake is to what extend it does. What we want to see is that the donation number is higher than the normal ticketing one. Until that is shown, I'm going to keep selling tickets to my shows.
Charging nothing for admission to the theater may be a good way to temporarily boost audience size but will not produce a healthy sustainable community for the organization. People love free stuff - look at all the swag that we take away from conferences, trade shows, vacations, product demonstrations, anything. If it's free, we want it. We think we are getting a deal, a great break, and are saving money by doing it. That free water bottle I won at an craft fair years ago was $5 dollars I didn't have to spend. I've just made $5 dollars. Looking at the potential value for something that is free doesn't attract attention to the object, rather it attracts attention to the dollar equivalent. I've only used that water bottle once or twice. The same thing will happen to audience accustomed to free theater.
They will gravitate towards it at first, a night of free theater is $100 dollars they don't have to spend on tickets. But because those tickets have no value, people will dismiss them from their mind. They won't be loosing any money by not going to the theater. And of course, if something remains free (even though those companies will secretly depend on donations) people will assume other people will pick up the slack. That's why there are fund drives on Public Radio - if every single person who listened to NPR donated, fund raisers would cease to exist. Everyone else assumes someone will pick up the cost. That's the root of the this problem, focusing on the cost.
People buy why you do something, not what you do. Don't focus on putting a price on a seat, focus on your organization's mission statement: why are you doing this? Do people want to see this? Once you've identified that, you can put a price tag on it. That's the real reason why the theaters mentioned in this article have succeed. Not because the price was right, but because people want to see it. When people truly want something they will pay for it.
Any movement that increases theatre audiences and spreads the joy of theatre to people who have never attended a performance earns a gold star from me. It is wonderful to see these efforts to make theatre more accessible, with free admissions and pay as you will tickets. I had always wondered how theaters managed to not lose revenue when they decide to make admission free, and an increase in donations is a wonderful solution if it works. It would be very interesting to ask the new donors what made them decide to start giving money, to find out what exactly about the free admission made them want to give their money.
It is sad to see how theatre has to advertise itself to attract audiences. Great production will eventually gather great amount of audiences. However, offering free tickets to people can be seen as a sad reality of today's society because rather than trying to see a live show where audience and performances are well interacted each other, people are just stuck in their houses and watch TV instead. Nevertheless, if the free tickets or discounts on ticket works the best to advertise a production, I would definitely want to encourage them. People can never assume that those people will be patrons or not, which is a big lottery, but still worthy of doing. I hope that more people find themselves fall in love with the art of drama and company finds other ways to gather audiences back.
I love this. I'm all about new audiences in the theater and about free access to art. This is a very interesting approach. If a patron has to pay for a ticket they want to go to something that they will like or that will be worth their money. But when it is free, people will experiment try out new things, because what do they really have to lose. I also love that they got more donors when they made all their tickets free. It makes perfect sense too, given that people feel like they are getting something, they feel like they should give something back.
This reminds me of a story that Peter Brook tells in The Empty Space. He talks about how audiences don't go to the theatre because ticket prices are too high and you never know if the performance will be "worth it" or not. Brook tells the story of a play he worked on that received bad reviews in Paris, and in order to attract audiences, they gave out three free performances. Because there was no risk, they went from empty houses to houses so full they had to turn people away. According to the story, all but one of the audience members could afford the ticket price, but it was the risk of the investment that kept them from coming, not the inability to pay. For me, attracting audiences isn't necessarily about providing opportunities to people who can't pay, but is about bringing in new audiences through a low-risk commitment. Carpenter says audience members feel like they're not losing money if they don't show up -- conversely, they're not losing money if they DO show up.
This is another issue that all theatres are facing. In a groupon age, people feel entitled to discounts, on top of loving free stuff. I find it curious that at first, the theatre didn't even accept donations. That seems a little peculiar to me--and ultimately unsustainable. But why would you discourage someone from giving you money? I would be interested to know how long this theatre can stay in business this way. Or what other programs and adjustments to those programs (educational, touring, etc...) in order for them to financially support the theatrical perforomances. I also like the other question that this article addresses about turning away a paying audience because the seats are filled by patrons who aren't paying.
I feel that all theaters should do at least one show that does not charge or give out some tickets to each show that they can expand their network of people that go to their shows so that there is always a new theater crowd to support theater in the future. I think that theaters that are struggling to fill seats should think different and do this so that they maybe can fill their seats in the future. I know that a lot of college students like to go to theater but just can’t afford it and I would love to see different theater companies take advantage of this so that they make the younger people come to more shows and get hooked so that they can go once they have money and can pay full price.
In this challenging economic situation, I say if you find a solution and a method that works for you without incurring debt, GO FOR IT! As mentioned in the article, many companies try this method of freebees but it doesn't work; typically because it is done as a desperation method to get audiences back into the theatre. Most companies who successfully achieve this, have backing from multiple investors who support the cause , like what Mix Blood Theatre has achieved. However keeping them as investors is usually the most difficult part. I think that this is easier for educational institutions and not-for-profit theaters to achieve and maintain than for commercial theaters.
People are quick to bring up the law of supply and demand in situations like this, but it isn't that black and white. Elasticity helps to address the non-black and white nature of supply/demand, but it doesn't go far enough; there are so many reasons why it is hard to get butts in seats. However, thats why I like this plan. Like so many others have echoed, it does seem well thought out and well visualized to account for 2nd and 3rd order consequences.
I think what is needed to augment something like this is to understand why people are interested in theatre as much as artists think they should. Is it not valued by society as an art form or is it, but the content is not being marketed efficiently. I think a good case study is needed to figure out how we can address the root cause, and not just a proximate cause like price.
Free admission for the sake of boosting audience numbers is a bad thing. Free admission for the sake of public arts outreach is a good thing. A company with declining audience numbers should not use the solution of free admission to try and fix their issues. If a company wants to put on a free production, like Shakespeare in the Park, for the sake of getting art to the masses, it is a good thing to do. If audience numbers are declining, the money coming into the company is declining as well. If you can't afford to give away free tickets, you really probably shouldn't.
While it's great that the theaters mentioned in this article were able to give out free tickets because they had financial backing from private donors/ firms, that is often not the case for many theaters that need to have income, both to fund shows and also pay their employees. Unfortunately the goal of just filling seats will not always lead to a successful theater company (at least as far as finances are concerned). It's interesting to note that when Bricolage tried to charge ticket prices again after building up their audience with free admission, they lost a large portion of their audience and once again diminished their audience. It's a difficult time for theaters when anyone can get anything on YouTube for free to entertain themselves. Theaters must provide something different and unique to entice their patrons--which in turn usually costs a lot of money. The idea of free admission is simply wonderful! But unfortunately it's not always that practical.
In a perfect world, all art would be free. It just feels more valuable that way, oxymoron intended. Who hasn't been to The Met in New York or the National Galleries in D.C. and felt just a little more inspired than if they had paid admission (donations accepted of course). It gauls me a little that admission breaks always seem to go to the elderly and students, as if, what, they're the only ones who could benefit from a little edification? The problem is of course, even artists have to get paid, and unless you're willing to have a completely state run theatre and all it's pitfalls (think Moscow Art Theatre a la Stalin), then you're stuck with admission. That being said, I do hope that our chosen profession will someday lead the way in wage parity that values the carpenter in the shop at least on some kind of reasonable scale with the HR Director. If we are collaborators, then lets collaborate all the way down the line.
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