We only get into charity by offering the organisation blocks of seats for a performance from $5 each, for the $15 tickets, depending on the amount taken! They can flog them to their own membership for what they like & keep the difference. If they want to take the whole house, they can take over the performance & do whatever they want in the way of raffles or whatever! [usually on a mid week night] Some mobs make around $2000 & more for the night for little effort!

 I?ve been trying to get our mob to forget about charging a price fixed for the tickets!
Just have an open house & request entrance by a monitory donation.
I did this a long time ago in a country town & didn?t specify the donation being of money! We got everything thing from boxes of Tomatoes, fruit to even frozen chook! What I should have been specific about was it had to be non perishable!
We did get some of money, so we ended up doing a quick auction after the shows & we made more out of that than flogging the seats.
 When I started the theatre 2 years ago here, & directed our inaugural production, of ?Stepping Out?.
As it was the first community theatre in Cockburn City, although they put a price of $12/$10 for the tickets. I gave out a whole heap of comps to the general public, in order to get an audience. I placed a number of donation boxes around the foyer, when we did the final tally. We made around 60% more, than we what we would have done, by selling the tickets & got good audience numbers to the shows as well!
Although they have kept up the donation boxes, the return from productions since then, have just covered costs!
For their present & 4th production, they have increased their prices for each season. It is now $15/$12  & they don?t give out comps any more.  As they think by charging the full wack, this will give them better returns?
But all it has done is reduce the punters & the revenue.  Instead of playing to decent houses & increasing their audience base over a the shortest time!
Ah well!

 
 

I hear you!  Marvin's Room is an awesome play!  I'm premiering my own play in four weeks.  All the ticket proceeds are going to charity.  The tag line for the play says- A story of family, love, laughter, loss and the enduring human spirit.  We are deliberatly not giving away the story-line.  Tickets are selling slowy at a steady pace but suprisingly opening night is selling the best so far.  Once the cast members get their orders in then we'll sell even more.  It's summer theatre and not a flat out comedy so I'm not expecting sold-out nights.  Wishing for some but not setting my expectations too high.

How much did your 500 seat theatre cost you and/or what do you think it's worth at the moment?

Just for people looking for numbers.  Our theater groups just did Beauty and the Beast.  Cast of 60, lighting, customs, scenes, sound, etc, ...basically everything for just a little over $7,000.  We did three performances and sold approximately 1500 tickets at $10 per ticket.