Reports

I'm currently writing script reports. Script reports are more crib sheets than actual reports though - the idea of giving plays a score out of five for effort and a grade for attainment is pretty disturbing. And when it comes to giving them a place in the class, well: somewhere under Shakespeare? A couple of directors (you may have heard of them) did recently sit an exam - but that's not quite the same as having to rank, say, Lucy Prebble, Bruce Norris and Jez Butterworth. Perhaps they would have done better if they wrote a play in lieu of an essay. Thankfully there is not yet an AQA exam in Playwriting: budding playwrights tired of the usual route of working through the fringe producing theatres could try this one, though. Certainly I feel like I could use it.

However, it is important to remember what you thought when you first read a play, hence the reports. Once you’ve been working on it for a while I imagine your opinion becomes somewhat biased based on the effort and time you’ve put into it: after all, if you spent two months putting a play together it’s probably in your interests to say it’s great, even if you were able to objectively evaluate it. 

So a record of first impressions. Which is not to say that I won’t change your mind. I already have done so on numerous occasions about a couple of plays. Possibly it had less to do with the quality of the script report though, and more to do with the script itself. Which is how it should be. But it does make me wonder about why I bother with the reports in the first place.

The Golden Ticket

Yesterday I managed to pick up half price tickets to see Les Miserables. Although there was no mad rush to pick up the tickets, there was a tube strike. Combined with the repeated showers that sent me scurrying off my bike desperately seeking shelter, it did make the process less than super smooth. But where would the fun be if it were easy?

I got five seats together in the stalls about 13 rows back. At midday there were clearly plenty of seats going. Yet by 7.30pm the theatre was packed; I couldn't see a spare seat in the stalls. So when did all those people get their tickets? They didn't all look like the sort of people who would risk spoiling their night out by not booking up early enough in advance (I know this because I - who am just this sort of person - was wearing shorts; no one else was). And did I mention there was a tube strike? Yet just that afternoon there had been enough seats to give me 5 reasonably priced tickets at a solid 40% discount. So either they had all turned up on the door to buy tickets (to be fair, there was a queue when I arrived at the theatre) or the mechanics of selling tickets are far more complicated than might be initially expected.

I do surprisingly have some experience of this. Here's a short extract from a contract I signed for a student play I produced last summer:

"the Manager may sell tickets through ticket agents or other booking organisations subject to the allowing of credit and the sale of commission discounts and maximum booking fees and any seat allocations being determined by the Manager at his sole discretion PROVIDED THAT no agency deal or guarantee for the Play during the Engagement Period shall be proposed without prior consultation between the Producer and the Manager and any such deal or guarantee shall only be valid if the Producer and the Manager shall have mutually agreed terms and shall have jointly signed any such agreement and it is understood that the Manager has a prior arrangement with Ticketmaster exclusively between the hours of 9pm to 9am Monday to Saturday and from 6pm on Sundays."

It's even more confusing if you read it really quickly in one breath. So even with ticketmaster seemingly opening their arms to transparency it's not entirely clear. Seems I still do have lots to learn about how to sell seats.

But it's not just seats that need to be sold: the Arcola Theatre's Pieces of Vincent has cushions on the floor, and the playing space surrounds the audience - very cool to be surrounded by both video projections and live actors on all sides. Harder to tell who got the best seat though...

To book, or not to book?

I like going to the theatre. I go lots. But with the plethora of theatres offering Free Under-26 Tickets I don’t always pay full price. All you have to do is have enough time on your hands to ring round all the theatres well in advance. Add to that the occasional press night (I think I’m invited to these because I’m desperate enough to always be free at last minute to fill empty seats; also, I clap a lot, so must be one of the over-enthusiastic audience members).

So it’s come as a real shock to me when I tried to book up some tickets to Les Miserables. A belated birthday present for a friend, I and several others are treating them to a night out in the West End. We’ve chosen the show. We’ve chosen the date. But we haven’t bought tickets yet.

Imagine a holiday; better, imagine a holiday planned by your super-forward-planning grandparents. The destination (show - bear with me) would be picked. Then the dates. Then the tickets booked and paid for. Then probably half a year would pass before you actually went on holiday. And all the while the holiday operator (theatre producer - you’re getting it) would already have your money, know that you were coming, know that some destinations were more popular, while more marketing was needed for tickets to somewhere like Greece (too obvious?). 

The point is that they travel agents can plan for demand. Because they know what that demand was like in advance. And to encourage people into booking early (so they could cancel flights that were underused, don’t lose money pointlessly) they make early tickets cheap. It’s even called airline pricing.

The logic seems to be that given how expensive it would be to fly halfway round the world with only six passengers, we better make damn sure we know which flights are going to be empty well in advance of take off so we can do something about it.

Now what I’ve learnt about theatre producing so far may be limited, but it does include the fact that playing to audiences of six people is really expensive. Not to mention dispiriting for the cast and crew; no one wants empty chairs (or even empty tables). People booking up in advance are pretty important. But are they encouraged to do so with tempting cheap deals on super advance deals? Apart from Southwark Playhouse, I can’t find a single theatre doing it.

So, Les Mis tickets. Have I booked miles in advance? No. In fact, I don’t plan to book at all. There’s no point. At the end of the day, either I pay full price now and secure good seats, or I wait until the day of performance and see if there are any at the half price tkts booths. 

Hopefully there won’t be a run on tickets that’ll see me queuing at an absurd hour...