Christmas is looking rosy for the theatre. Later this month the Arts Council
will announce which theatres across the country will be giving away a
million free tickets to under-26-year-olds to every show in their
programmes, starting in February. The scheme was unveiled by the Culture
Secretary, Andy Burnham, at the Labour Party conference in September, along
with a free swimming initiative for under-16s, which arrives in April. If
the rest of the country is weighed down by the prospect of a prolonged
recession, young people must be thrilled at the pennysaving prospects that
the new year promises. And with a government subsidy of £2.5 million to
deliver the free ticket scheme, theatres themselves must be feeling equally
festive.
Or are they? “Most of us think it's barking mad,” says Dee Evans, the chief
executive of the Mercury Theatre in Colchester. “In the beginning, we took
one look at the scheme and said: ‘It's unworkable'.”
The main reason is that a million is a lot of tickets. And £2.5 million is not
a lot of subsidy. It works out at £2.50 a ticket. Less, once you factor in
administration and marketing costs. “So if you're a theatre selling a show
successfully,” explains Tom Morris, an associate director of the National
Theatre, “what the scheme seems to invite you to do is to say I won't get
£30, or even £10, by selling that ticket to a public who are happy to pay
for it. I'll put it into this scheme and the Government will maybe give me
£2.50 for it.”
Another option would be to give away tickets to shows that are bombing at the
box office. “Some of those shows might be great,” Morris says, “but there's
a danger they won't be. And then those new audiences will walk away, going:
‘Oh, I thought that'd be a bit naff'.”
Neither seems a good idea. “The Arts Council was throwing ideas around about
how we might make theatre free,” says an artistic director who asked not to
be named, “but the Government went ahead and announced it as a done deal
before we'd got anywhere near figuring out how to make that happen sensibly.
They needed something positive to say at the conference. This was cheap. It
sounded good. It hadn't been thought through.”
Speaking to members of the Critics Circle last month, Burnham told them: “The
time is right to do something within the performing arts that Chris [Smith]
did for the museums and the visual arts, to take an iconic step whereby you
send a message that theatre is for everybody.”
But in the wake of Burnham's initial announcement, theatres had to decide how
many free tickets they could pledge to give away to young people who felt
that theatre was “not for them”. If they failed to give away enough tickets,
or if those tickets went to the wrong people - young people, for instance,
under the impression that theatre quite possibly was for them - they faced
the prospect of paying the Arts Council back. “That kind of small print was
really very alarming,” says Ian Brown, the artistic director of the West
Yorkshire Playhouse.
The Arts Council has a budget of £100,000 to market the initiative. Most feel
that it's not enough. “You don't find new audiences on half a sixpence,”
says Sarah Frankcom, the artistic director of the Royal Exchange in
Manchester. “There's a danger that all these seats will be available and
we'll be playing to empty theatres, because we don't have the resources to
ensure that people know about it.”
And then there's the glaring, overarching question. Do free tickets actually
work?
Nica Burns, a commercial producer and president of the Society of London
Theatres, is in no doubt. “No. Had they bothered to ask anyone in the
commercial sector, who conduct extensive market research into how to attract
new, young audiences to theatre, we'd have told them: subsidised tickets are
great. Free tickets are bonkers.” Because, she suggests, it devalues the
experience on offer. And if you have nothing to lose by taking up the offer
of a free ticket, you also have nothing to lose by not turning up on the
night.
The scheme's big assumption is that young people don't go to the theatre
because it's too expensive. But at most subsidised theatres, admission is
pretty affordable. “And price comes way down on the list of reasons for not
participating in theatre,” says Adrian Vinken, the chief executive of the
Theatre Royal in Plymouth. “All the research we have done shows that it's
much more about, the Germans have a word for it, Schwellenangst - fear of
the threshold. Just reducing the cost barrier isn't suddenly going to
unleash floodgates of demand for Chekhov.”
So any theatre that applied to participate in this scheme would must be
barking mad, right? Yet, every one mentioned here has done so.
Why? “Because,” Brown explains, “persuading as many people as possible that
theatre is for them is the top, the very top, priority of every last theatre
in this country.” And young audiences of today are the adult audiences of
tomorrow. “We all invest heavily in that already,” says Josie Rourke, the
artistic director of the Bush Theatre, “without any subsidy.”
Also, as Evans explains: “We're not responsible for the total number of
tickets, and we're not thinking about that. We've worked out how many we can
realistically afford to give away. And we'll be using some of the subsidy to
market it. It may be that our bid is not successful because of that, but
that's what worked for us.” But theatres up and down the country are singing
the same tune.
What's novel is that, at the Arts Council, this canny approach appears not
only to be acceptable, but desirable. “We're working this out as we work it
out,” says the chief executive, Alan Davey, flatly. Penalties, potential
boxoffice losses, how effective “free” is as an incentive included. “We'll
keep evaluating it as we go. The sector has responded incredibly quickly
with bids full of energy, creativity and imagination. That's exactly what we
wanted them to do.”
But can they deliver a million free tickets on £2.5 million subsidy? “A
million's an aspiration,” says Davey. “We've been clear with government on
that. Together with our existing schemes, we will introduce a million young
people to theatre in the next two years.”
Which is not quite the same sizzling stuff as the million ticket giveaway
bonanza that the Government promised. But, as Davey's approach makes clear,
he's not in the business of headline-grabbing. “Lots of positive things will
come out of this, for audiences and for the sector. Theatres have come
together to form consortiums to apply, for instance. That is a fantastic
development.”
The largest of these consortiums is formed of 12 off-West End theatres in
London, including the Donmar, the Lyric Hammersmith and the Bush. If
theatres apply together for a grant, they can save money and focus on shows
that might actively appeal to young audiences. If one venue is hosting a
T.S. Eliot play and another Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover, for instance,
they can release more tickets for the latter. “Because,” says the Lyric's
artistic director, David Farr, “not everything will appeal. I want to put
the lie to this notion that excellence alone is enough. It's not. Do a great
George Bernard Shaw production and it doesn't matter which grandees of
theatre are in it, young, first-time audiences will get bored and walk out.”
When asked if they thought issuing free tickets to under-26-year-olds was the
best way to get young audiences into the theatre, nobody said yes. Most
agreed with Frankcom's assessment that “you attract young people by
investing in shows that will appeal to them, that reflect their lives and
concerns, by offering good concessions, marketing them in exciting ways, and
by taking workshops to schools and youth groups that they can participate
in”.
But a national campaign has the potential to capture the imagination. And some
subsidy, these theatre bosses conceded, is better than none.
There may still be pitfalls. It's not clear how theatres are meant to
distinguish between young people who feel excluded from theatre and the
happily paying young audiences that they already attract. But, while Rourke
agrees that cost isn't the sole barrier to under-26s visiting the theatre,
she's happier than some to admit that it is one of them. “So let's just see
what happens,” she says, “when we take it away.”
Venues participating in the free theatre initiative will be revealed later
this month at www.artscouncil.org
WHY PAY FULL PRICE? THEATRE ON THE CHEAP
The Travelex Season at the National Theatre About half the tickets are
£10. The 2009 season includes Death and the King's Horseman and All's Well
That Ends Well. (020-7452 3000; www.nationaltheatre.org.uk)
Live locally For the Lyric Hammersmith's own productions, everyone who
lives or works in the borough can queue a week before a show opens for two
free tickets to the first performance and four for children's shows. (0871
2211729; www.lyric.co.uk)
Happy Mondays (and Tuesdays) At the Royal Exchange in Manchester, 70
per cent of seats in the main house every Monday night are available for £4
to under 25s. At the Battersea Arts Centre in London Tuesdays are
pay-what-you-can night. (0161-833 9833; www.royalexchangetheatre.co.uk;
020-7223 2223; www.bac.org.uk)
Bring your mum Hairspray is offering one free kid's ticket for every
paying adult at the Shaftesbury every Monday night from January. (020-7379
5399; www.hairspraythemusical.co.uk)
Same-day release The RSC holds back up to 50 tickets at £5 for every
show for 16-25-year-olds. (0844 8001110; www.rsc.org.uk)
West End bargain The Donmar's West End season has almost 150 £10
tickets for every performance. (0844 4825120; www.donmarwestend.com)
Risk-free expenditure If you don't enjoy any production on the second
stage at Northern Stage in Newcastle, you can have your money back.
(0191-230 5151; www. northernstage.co.uk)
