Britain | The price of the performing arts

Pit performance

How to make the most out of London theatre-goers

THE Globe theatre has pulled off an impressive feat. Unlike the West End, this replica of William Shakespeare’s playhouse stages no hoary farces or musical spectaculars, but 16th- and 17th-century plays. Unlike the National Theatre, it gets no government subsidy. Yet 16 years after it opened, it is one of the most successful theatres in London. Last year its turnover rose by 19%.

Bard-obsessed tourists are part of the explanation for its success, but since they account for only 20% of its audience, some other factor must be at work. It may be pricing policy. Since it opened, 40% of its tickets have been priced at £5 ($8) for those who want to stand as “groundlings”. More can fit in: whereas if the yard was full of seats it could theoretically squeeze in perhaps 150 people, each paying around £25, up to 700 standing audience members can be packed in each evening. It attracts regulars, keen to imitate the original groundlings who would, according to Thomas Dekker, a 17th-century writer, “hoot at you, hiss at you, spit at you”.

Cheap tickets are spreading. Since 2003 the National Theatre, one of Britain’s largest publicly-funded venues, has sold £10 seats under a scheme sponsored by Travelex, a foreign-currency exchange (from 2010 tickets were £12 or less). Over 1m cheap tickets have been sold. The scheme started partly for social reasons, explains Lucinda Morrison of the National, in order to attract new audiences and keep others returning over the summer. But by budgeting for higher capacity (75% rather than 63%), lowering production costs and relying on sponsorship, it is just about financially viable too.

Others have since followed suit, in both the not-for-profit and for-profit sector. The Donmar Warehouse, a middling-sized theatre at the edge of the West End, started a subsidised £10 scheme with backing from Barclays, a bank, last year. Punters can sit in the front row for a third of the normal price. West End theatres now feature time-limited offers or a certain number of £10 tickets throughout a run, says Tali Constantinides, a theatre producer. Partly this was inspired by other schemes. But offering cheaper seats is also a clever marketing exercise.

Artistic directors and producers mention the importance of getting young, new audiences into their auditoriums. And yet at the National Theatre only around 22% of those who buy Travelex tickets each year are going to the National for the first time. If they are regular theatre-goers, it may be that those cheap seats are being bought by those who could afford more expensive ones.

This is a familiar problem. One way of dealing with it is to differentiate the quality of the goods that the holders of cheap and expensive tickets get. That is what railway companies in France did in the 19th century: the third-class carriage had no roof, to encourage those who could pay more to buy an upgrade. The Globe takes the same approach, making cheap-ticket holders stand. Perhaps the West End should introduce pits to create an experience that is truly authentic for the audience, and pleasantly profitable for the show’s producers.

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline "Pit performance"

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