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 Community Theater Green Room Discussion Board :Theater Administration :Running Your Theater |
 Topic: Play Prices( Topic Closed) |
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excalibur6
Walk-On 
Joined: 1/07/08 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 0 |
 Topic: Play PricesPosted: 1/16/08 at 1:05pm |
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I have to prepare a long range plan for our theater that we are restoring that includes cost for the next six years or so. Can any one give me a price range for musical ( Tom |
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75director
Celebrity 
Joined: 8/19/05 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 122 |
Posted: 1/16/08 at 1:23pm |
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Your royalties will be based on the number of seats in your auditorium and the price of your tickets for the musicals you mentioned. For the plays unless your auditorium seats more than I believe it's 400, but I could be wrong there, you can pretty accurately go with the price that's printed in the publishing companies' catalogs (between $50-$100 per performance typically). What's your auditorium size and ticket prices? Maybe someone on here has a venue that is comparable and can help you with the musical royalties.
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excalibur6
Walk-On
Joined: 1/07/08 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 0 |
Posted: 1/16/08 at 1:33pm |
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When the theater is finished it will have around 550 seats. We have opted to get new seats for wide backsides and lost a lot of seats. I will have to let you know about the ticket prices. When we do something now, we charge between 8 and 10 dollars and are going to use 15 dollars for our plan.
Are you saying that I take the number of seats and times that by the price at places like Samuel French (I saw one that was 8.50) to get my fee?
We so need a General Manager!
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JoeMc
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Joined: 3/13/06 Location: Australia Online Status: Offline Posts: 832 |
Posted: 1/16/08 at 7:40pm |
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I don't know if this will help you?
But when I apply a seat cost to the ticket price of a show, after I glean from the publishers dogalogues the performance fee for the type of show I'm thinking of doing.
Taking into consideration the demographic appeal factor, to atract the punters & apply it to the sum. this covers the braek down of the type of ticket, be it concession or full price paid, averaging out the price per seat.
However doing the sums as being applied to a 6 year plan, may be a bit like whistling in the wind.
Do you have past prduction box office sales you can work on, if your sticking to the same type show format, as you have produced over previous years. This would help as a guide when guestimating any projected figures.
I don't know how the fees for a musical are applied there. But here they can atract anything from 12 to 20% of the gross box office take, over & above the basic licence fee, depending upon popularity of the show. Or some are charge on which ever is the greater between the the basic license fee & the gross pecentage. Which either way can make a big hole in the in the factor sumson seat costs & blow the budgets out of the window.
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[western] Gondawandaland
"Hear the light & see the sound! TOI TOI CHOOKAS {may you always play to a full house!} |
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excalibur6
Walk-On
Joined: 1/07/08 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 0 |
Posted: 1/16/08 at 8:46pm |
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It does help and I have past productions but only about one a year. In my plan I intend to boost the amount of plays by our local community to about 6 per year. We also plan to have professional traveling productions come in and also some of our regional player troops. I want a realist plan and that is why i asked for help. Thanks folks.
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dboris
Celebrity
Joined: 2/10/04 Online Status: Offline Posts: 124 |
Posted: 1/17/08 at 12:47pm |
The 8.50 price you saw was probably the price for a script. As one of the other posters mentioned, non-musical prices are usually listed in the licensing companies catalog and generally range from $35-$100 per performance.
Musicals are a lot more complicated. You will rarely see prices qouted in the catalog for musicals since they base the price on a bunch of different factors. For musicals there will also be the cost of renting the scripts and scores on top of the royalty cost. You won't know the price for sure until you apply for the performance license. You will definitly be paying more then what you would for the non-musical. I would say at least in the $300-$500 per performance price range if not more.
Dan
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excalibur6
Walk-On
Joined: 1/07/08 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 0 |
Posted: 1/17/08 at 1:16pm |
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Thanks. This is going to be a lot more complicated than the Board thinks. I was thinking about $4000 for a musical and $1500 for a non-musical. Like I said, this is a projected budget plan where a near hit is close enough. I just don't want to be way low or way high. When this is over I will be digging into this for sure. Thanks again. |
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John Luzaich
Celebrity
Joined: 2/24/08 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 174 |
Posted: 2/26/08 at 4:09pm |
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Hi Tom,
I think we might be in a fairly similar position. We have a 500 seat theatre in the midwest. We produce five productions a year and also do rentals and a small presenting artist series. Our building was built in 1910 and was restored in 1994.
Most of our plays (comedy, drama or mystery) are between $360 - $1,500. just for rental/royalties. Most of our musicals are between $4,500 - $6,000. We are a 501 (c) (3) non-profit community theatre and royalties for us are based on three factors: ticket price, number of seats and number of shows you produce. We generally produce 6 or 7 performances of each production.
John
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John
cfct@cfu.net http://www.osterregent.org http://www.facebook.com/osterregent |
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excalibur6
Walk-On
Joined: 1/07/08 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 0 |
Posted: 2/27/08 at 3:34pm |
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Hi John, Yes we are in the same position. I am having trouble making the rest of the Board and the Arts Council to understand what we need to do to make money. I am of the philosophy that we need to basically have the darn thing paid for before the curtin goes up. It takes a little work but it makes me sleep better at night. They have the mind set that children shows are money makers. They think the more kids the more seats sold, Moms, Dads, grandparents and so on. I think we need to put up money makers. Neil Simon, Rogers and Hammerstein...shows that bring in the people and are relative cheap to do. I think one musical a year and the rest should be cheap to buy and cheap to produce. Present times so if you need a couch you go to your living room and take it. Costumes are out of the closet. CHEAP! Am I off track here guys? Is that what most of you do? Let me know please Thank God I found this board. You input is greatly appreciated. Thanks Tom
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John Luzaich
Celebrity
Joined: 2/24/08 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 174 |
Posted: 2/27/08 at 4:13pm |
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Hi Tom,
Our theatre is in the 30th year of operating. We started producing plays in a middle school and did that for sixteen years. We produced two plays a year and spent about $2,000. total for the season. We now own our own building, produce a four-play season, an additional show as a fund raiser, rent the theatre and do some presenting, and have a $280,000 budget. We have 2 1/2 employees, an 18 member theatre board, a 15 member "friends group" (social support & fund raising) and 474 volunteers on our list.
Many community theatres are smaller than us and many are larger. When we did some benchmarking two years ago we found many very large community theatres. (the Des Moines Playhouse had a $1.9 million dollar budget).
The advantage of owning our own building is we can do whatever we want, we don't need to seek approval. Of course the disadvantage is there a re many expenses associated with owning our own building.
But, as far as presenting goes, with around 500 seats we can afford to present events, concerts, shows with an artist fee of $10,000 or less and make money. So, when we produce The Ozark Jubilee from Branson, we make money. When we present some big band (like Tommy Dorsey Orchestra and the Glenn Miller Orchestra) and folk music (like Leo Kottke, Roger McGuinn, Greg Brown with Pieta Brown & Bo Ramsey) we make money. It's helps to supplement our revenues, it's like getting additional grants. The pressure isn't on us to make the most profit out of every single play. We couldn't afford to compete with large venues, theatres, performing arts centers. We could do a Willie Nelson concert and afford the $30,000. artist fee. But, there are some things that we can afford to do, that there is an audience for and makes financial sense.
The great thing about all of this is those other things we present help to bring in an audience that is not already coming to our theatre on a regular basis. If they come to our theatre for one of those events, we have a good opportunity to get them back for one of our own plays. That's how we've grown our audience. That's how we've grown our budget. We had the von Trapp Family Singers here and this was probably one of the smallest venues they've evr played. But, some people that came to that concert came to some of our plays the following season.
I know some theatres own their own building. Some rent space and are the main tennant. Some rent space are are one of many tenneants, or resident companies. Some just produce their own plays and the ones that own buildings do some rentals and other presenting. It's a fine ballance. I think this is a great site for benchmarking and picking each others brains.
Later,
John
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John
cfct@cfu.net http://www.osterregent.org http://www.facebook.com/osterregent |
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