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It may sound a somewhat
personal question, and
perhaps we should be grateful
that we still have good-sized
audiences for our shows,
but it came as something of
a shock recently to find that
85% of our season ticket
holders were of pensionable
age.
Why should it matter? It
matters because they pay for
a ticket for the whole season
- all five plays, up front in
September - which helps with
the cash-flow at the most
expensive time of the year.
(We pay for the licences for
all five plays in advance; we
then have peace of mind that
they cannot suddenly tell
us that we can’t do a play
after all, as a professional
company will be touring it
somewhere else in the country
….. maybe! But this year
that cost us a hefty £3,129.00
before we had even bought
the scripts (at about £10 a
time) which must add another
£1,000.00 or so to the bill.)
With this sort of outlay,
we need to ensure that
we choose plays that our
audiences will want to come
to see, and with an ageing
audience that does tend to
preclude modern, cutting-
edge drama. We may be
able to include one play of
this genre a season, but too
many and the audience vote
with its feet. However, too
many plays that are ‘safe’
and ‘well-known’ will not
attract new, younger actors or
challenge existing members
of a group and here is the
dilemma. Presenting a season
to satisfy the interests of our
ageing audience means that
we are likely to have a pool of
ageing actors and the situation
becomes self-perpetuating.
Plan a season of modern
plays with topical themes
to attract a younger pool of
actors and you risk the older
audience members moving on
elsewhere.
There is a certain comfort
in knowing that you will have
a core of faithful audience
members buying season
tickets year in, year out, but
it can stifle your growth as
a group and lose you actors
who want the challenge of a
broader range of theatre than
you can offer. Yes, there are a
lot of excellent plays out there
which we could present to our
audiences but there are also a
lot of plays we would love to
do but feel we can’t.
Perhaps the answer is to
have a studio theatre as well
as the main auditorium, and
How old is your audience?
all groups can be satisfied.
If only! – but that means
an extra venue, two sets of
technical staff as well as more
front of house staff and I am
not sure we have the energy
or the personnel for a project
of that size at the moment:
sometime ….. in the future,
maybe.
How do others choose
their programmes?