www.broadwayworld.com: Not long ago, I found myself doing that familiar pre-theater math: watching the clock at the end of the workday, checking train times, wondering if there was time to grab a quick dinner, and thinking, “Can I actually make this curtain without it feeling rushed?” It is a small thing, but it can make the difference between a great night out and a stressful one.
3 comments:
This article about start times makes me think back to SOD’s experience of moving the Eurydice opening night to 5:00. Normally, we have 8 PM performances every evening, 2:00 matinees on weekends, and sometimes 4:00 matinees on Fridays. Due to a religious observance, the school decided to move one particular show to a 5:00 evening show. While this was a good solution, it did cause confusion. I know of at least one person who showed up at the theater at 8 pm, and got confused why there was no show happening.
Overall, I would agree with the article that there is no right answer about what time to start a show, based on the audience and production schedule of the venue. That being said, I would also agree that there is a strong argument for having a consistent start time. While it may mean that the time is not perfect for everyone, it will be consistent and people can make plans around it, rather than being concerned about missing shows.
Start times were something I honestly never even really thought about before probably this year. In high school, our shows were always at 7, weekend matinees were at either 2 or 3.But SoD has fairly inconsistent show times and it is something I'm curious about. Outside of an educational setting, I guess it does make sense that you need to consider people coming from work, hitting traffic, wanting to eat, and also wanting to make it home at a reasonable hour to go to work again the next day. As with all things, there is no perfect solution, no perfect time. But at the end of the day, people are going to still go see the show, even if they feel slightly rushed. I do think that having that consistency is nice, because people know what to expect and won't accidentally miss a show because there's different start times.
I think this is an interesting thing to think about and maybe there is some regular times for a show to be at 2 PM if it's a matinee and to be a 7 o'clock show for a night show but when you branch out to regional and community theatres that kinda loses it's standard a little bit and I always think it's a little bit interesting to see when a show is. As a person who is interested in arts administration and creating a theater, I find this stuff really interesting as I am curious what people prefer when it comes to a night show and if people would rather have an early night and get out of the show earlier for earlier mornings and just not wanting to be out too late.Yet it also creates a problem though if it's too early how are we thinking about when people are getting off of work plus commute times and parking. So I think it really comes to a tossup because everyone should have the opportunity to see theater and after reading the article I'm not really sure If I decided on preference yet.
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