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| Running Your Theater | |
 Community Theater Green Room Discussion Board :Theater Administration :Running Your Theater |
 Topic: New members of theatre and audience( Topic Closed) |
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ianhornby
Player 
Joined: 11/25/10 Location: United Kingdom Online Status: Offline Posts: 13 |
 Topic: New members of theatre and audiencePosted: 11/26/10 at 6:00am |
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We've the same problem as most, I guess: falling audience numbers and membership. Community theatre doesn't seem to have much street cred atm, so younger members are not joining the older groups and the audiences are older. (As my wife cynically says, "kids today aren't interested in anything they don't have to plug in.")
We always make an announcement during the show to tell friends, that we need new members and so on, and we always have leaflets available at the door.
I had an idea some time back that we would run a free quiz each show for a bottle of wine - five fairly simple quiz questions on a sheet of paper given out at the start of the interval and collected before the show restarts, so no disruption to the show itself. We only give one bottle over the run of the play so anyone wanting to win it (and the questions are at a level where everyone should be able to answer) has to leave contact details to be notified if they win.
Consequently we have an expanding database of audiences and we mail them as each show's tickets go on sale.
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I demand a second opinion
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jayzehr
Celebrity 
Joined: 8/11/05 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 537 |
Posted: 11/26/10 at 10:40am |
I'm coming to the conclusion that if you do shows that have a lot of kids or young adults in them (the more the better) that demographic will show up. Otherwise you're facing an uphill battle. I keep getting complaints that we're not doing enough shows that appeal to twenty/thirty somethings but when we do small, recent plays like that they don't draw an audience. |
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ianhornby
Player
Joined: 11/25/10 Location: United Kingdom Online Status: Offline Posts: 13 |
Posted: 11/26/10 at 10:47am |
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I know what you mean by drawing an audience to recent plays - as a relatively unknown playwright it's difficult to find too many theatres who are prepared to give you a chance when they usually opt for the safety of Agatha Christie, Bill Shakespeare, Alan Bennett et al. Still, we have to keep trying otherwise tehatre will stagnate under the weight of safe 1950s domenstic dramas and farces!
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I demand a second opinion
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