The Value of a Cheap Ticket

I'm growing concerned that blogs are promoting a non-existent set of generalities about audiences and programming. What is "new and daring" exactly? What is "younger"? What is "older"? There are certain markets that don't offer senior discounts because they're affluent retirees who don't need the extra two bucks. Other markets may represent a wide spread between the haves and have-nots that make pricing acrobatic. Not every theatre caters to every market. If you are subsidized, find underwriters that subsidize your new and daring work.

Comparing anything to Broadway is like shooting fish in a barrel. They have the highest prices anywhere. They also have the most expensive theatre real-estate, ergo, the highest rent anywhere. Broadway houses have union employees - the highest paid theatre workers anywhere.

Stay local. Compare your theatre to others in your area. Price accordingly. Understand your audience, your goals, your competitive differential before you decide that the blue-hair crowd who walk out when you drop the f-bomb on stage don't understand your work and the world of hungry would-be liberal arts grads all hate Rodgers and Hammerstein.

"it's not like we're incredibly careful with our money. It's just that we don't see why we should spend that SAME amount of money on ... a play."

Ha.
Many's the time when I've been out drinking with fellow theatre folk and we get around to bemoaning theatre ticket prices and then the bill comes and it's about fifty dollars each. For beer. And then someone suggests we take a cab back.

Thanks for writing. I think I'd like to challenge a few of your assumptions about audiences. FYI serve as senior marketing & communications officer for Berkeley Repertory Theatre in CA.

Firstly, current audiences may be old but they're not necessarily rich. They're just richer than you and me.

Secondly, current, mature audiences do not as a rule prefer safe programming. Witness the theatres who mount classic after classic to dwindling audiences. Because timeless doesn't necessarily equal timely. The old folks are getting bored! At Berkeley Rep, our more mature audiences are our most adventurous. They're the folks willing to buy tickets to new, untested shows, to check out forms with which they're unfamiliar. They're the folks who are willing to dislike a show and return for the next show, filled with anticipation.

Younger audiences may like new, adventurous forms of expression, but they do not like risk -- not even at discount prices. They see theatre less frequently, and attending is a BIG DEAL, and they come with BIG expectations. They seek out the validation of peers (Yelp, anyone?) before committing. They look for free drinks and music to hedge their bets on the art. So we who try to attract these new audiences bend over backward to give them a guarantee -- a video sample, a soundbite, a free cookie -- that minimizes the risk factor.

And -- I may be contradicting myself but it's a wide open world -- our younger audiences are often the ones plunking down big money for premium seats on Saturday night, and then dropping another $75 on dinner. Why? Because coming to the theatre is a BIG DEAL rather than a way of life.

We love our young audiences at Berkeley Rep. They bring their youthful energy and youthful faces into the theatre, and they bring their unique world views. They do enable us to do different kinds of work. More adventurous, maybe. More risky? I'm not so sure.

Finally, our highest priced ticket doesn't cover but half the cost of putting on the play. Those half-priced tickets we at Berkeley Rep offer to everyone under 30 are the deal of the century. You give us 25 cents and we give you a dollar's worth of show.

I'm definitely playing devil's advocate here. I don't think it's possible for a reasonable person to deny your point... that higher ticket prices affect audiences purchasing decisions and suppress audiences with less cash. And you're exactly right...household incomes that see $100 as a gifting price ("Here's a ticket to see a Broadway show, Madison!") as opposed to a price that demands sacrifice ("If you see Legally Blonde, we can't go on vacation in June!") is the real distinction. The ages aren't as relevant as the economic access that these prices demand.

I also (as much as I'd love to) can't blame the victim in terms of programming. We all love to kvetch about the lack of adventurous programming...but the fact is, economics demands careful decisions and long-term thinking. If you alienate the audience you KNOW is coming, there may not be any funding to cater to this theoretical new audience.

So in a lot of ways, the idea of lower prices is an attempt to create this new audience, so that someone can say, with some confidence..."Hey. There's a new audience. Let's put on plays they want to come and see."

Everyone knows that there's no such thing as an Off-Off Broadway ticket over $18 right? And a lot of them are a lot cheaper. And that, while there's lots that can be awful, there's lots that are pretty darn good.

freeman - I make clean-cut distinctions (and based largely on observation, personal experience, and post-show eavesdropping) for the sake of argument, but I do think that ticket prices are keeping audiences homogeneous in a dangerous way.

To your point about young audiences and Broadway, it's still audiences with money, and often parents' money. Which still means that theatre is catering to the taste(s) of people who can afford $100 a ticket, or who come from a household that can.

And sure, some of the young'uns who plead poverty do spend lots of money elsewhere. (Not all, but, yes, some.) But if those young iPod owners aren't seeing theatre, aren't they more likely to start if they can do it for $20 rather than $60? Cheap tickets alone aren't going to fill houses with diverse, eager, open-minded audiences, but I think they're a vital part of making that happen.

99 makes a great point about risk & ticket prices. Maybe a lot of older folks were into the very weird work of the 60s, but - and this is where producerial fear comes in - ADs know that older/richer folks (or whoever's already buying full-price tickets and subscribing) respond well to safe work, and can't/won't/don't risk trying adventurous work out on the established audience because it's such a financial risk. If you're producing four plays a year, and one edgy play flops or a no-name young playwright in your brochure loses you subscribers, that's a huge hit. (Which I realize is more of a call for arts funding than cheap tickets, but there's a lot that needs fixing.)

Nice post. I wholeheartedly agree.

Freeman, I think of lower ticket prices in terms of not just "youth" audiences, but diverse audience and building sustainable audiences. When the ticket price is lower, the show can suck. (Not to put too fine a point on it.) For the audience member, the risk is lower. You don't mind coming back to see the next thing, which might be more to your liking. Once the theatre can build that sustainable audience, you can take all kinds of risks (and I see, depending on the theatre and the audience, producing more "traditional" plays as a risk).

I absolutely agree that we need to do a lot more, including offering up ticket incentives, to get younger audiences in the door. Totally dead on.

I'd like to sort of pose a little bit of a CW challenge though:

Aren't there plenty of younger audiences that support safe work? Isn't much of Broadway targeted to younger audiences that have almost no money - whose parents are buying them tickets to see "Legally Blonde" or "The Little Mermaid?"

Also, is it possible that older audiences have no problem with adventurous work? I mean, plenty of the audience that is now "older" were probably in their 30s in the 1960s.

I'm curious how much of what's considered true about these groups is based less on what audiences actually want, and more based on risk averse producers justifying relatively safe decisions.

One might be able to sell full price tickets to adventurous work if the full weight of the system was behind that sort of push. For example... for all the young people (I'm 32) who "don't have money"... we also all have laptops, cell phones, iPods, spend money on TiVo and cable, go into debt in order to buy a round of drinks, covet widescreen TVs and buy $600 PS3s... it's not like we're incredibly careful with our money. It's just that we don't see why we should spend that SAME amount of money on ... a play.

Thanks for the post. For all you young'uns out there that want to give some music events a try, there are a whole boatload of cheap ticket programs available in this town. You can read all about it on my website, Feast of Music:
http://www.feastofmusic.com/feast_of_music/2007/02/cheap_seats.html