More on free tickets
September 25th, 2008 • production process, theatre
With perfect timing, the Chicago theatrosphere is also talking about free theatre tickets. And - unlike the UK’s top-down, centralising, money-to-venues-already-getting-money approach - this scheme depends on companies opting in.
Here’s Kris Vire:
Theater companies, in my understanding, choose to opt in and choose how many tickets at which performances they want to give away. Audiences get a free sample, giving up nothing more than their email addresses and anonymous demographic information. And, if TCG’s numbers from other cities can be trusted, that exchange results in a significant return: one-third of Free Night patrons return to the same theater to buy tickets or subscriptions within the year.Even better is this: TCG, and particularly its executive director Teresa Eyring and its house magazine, American Theatre, have been criticized in many corners of the theatrosphere in recent months for only representing the interests and outlooks of its members, our country’s big-box regional institutions—the Goodmans, Guthries, Intimans and South Coast Reps of the world—and not reflecting the realities of the smaller theaters that make up the vast majorities, in offerings if not in budgets, of most of our cities’ theater scenes.
So, because there’s an open door policy, it’s equally open to companies of all sizes and flavours. In contrast, the UK scheme reflects existing hierarchies of money and approval: financial support to venues - not companies or productions - which already have the tacit support of state funding.
And there’s the major difference: the companies involved in the Free Night of Theater are choosing to make blocks of free tickets available for their October shows, rather than being subsidised (or persuaded, or bribed) by a funding body.
Oh, and here’s Dan - voicing the kind of pragmatism that sounds exactly like the inside of my own head:
As I said, the goal is not just to get people in the door, but get them back. As far as I know, it’s up to the individual theatres to take care of everything after the ticket has been reserved. Fine - TCG can’t run your theatre for you - but participating companies need to be aware that it isn’t magically going to increase your attendance from here on out: you need to get people to give you information, you should be prepared with discounts to future shows, you should have a follow-up plan to thank them for coming and other communications so that those folks remember your company - your brand - and not just “that play I went to about the dying girl.”This is time-consuming stuff, but it’s absolutely essential to building a company on anything other than the blind luck of a hit show.
