Mixed Blood To Stop Charging for TIckets

By Isaac Butler

If you happen to read Adam's interviews with playwrights, you're probably struck by two things: (1) some of the people are almost certainly made up and (2) most playwrights think that ticket prices are too damn high. And I agree! Ticket prices are too damn high.

Well, it looks like here in Minneapolis, Mixed Blood is about to call a lot of people's bluff on this front, as they've announced they will stop charging admission for Mainstage shows for the next three seasons.

I personally am very curious to see what happens as a result of this.  I do not believe that lowering ticket prices in a panacea (although I think in conjunction with some things, it'd be a boon).  I also am concerned that people don't tend to value things that they don't pay for, and wonder if perhaps reducing tickets to a nominal $5 might have been a stronger choice from a behavioral economics perspective.  Be that as it may, this is a bold experiment that hopefully will provide the American Theater with an object lesson in... something. We don't know yet, but we have three years to find out.  

Comments

[Josh]

Subjective has been doing free theater for years.

[Jason Grote]

Are you just joking around about the made-up thing? I know, or know of, the vast majority of them. If it's not a joke, what makes you think that?

[Jason Grote]

Oh, and relating to the behavioral economics question: I just did The Foundry's NYC... JUST LIKE I PICTURED IT series, which pairs artists with community groups and is 100% free. In our case (I collaborated with director Maureen Towey and the Green Oasis Garden) it was a huge success and attracted a large, mostly non-theater-folk audience, many of them children under twelve.

[isaac]

Jason,

Of course I'm joking. And Josh/Jason, what makes this different is that Mixed Blood is a larger, more established and more traditional theater than subjective and certainly at least more traditional than Foundry. If they can make this work, I think that creates certain pressures on other midsized theaters that a small, relatively unknown off-off broadway company (in Subjective's case) or a community outreach theater program of a well known producing organization (in the Foundry's case) don't. Which is certainly not meant as any slam on either of them, I just mean that Mixed Blood is a heck of a lot more similar to the theaters whose ticket prices we want to lower than either Subjective or the Foundry are.

[Sean Lewis]

Available Light has been doing Pay What You Want for years and seen their audience and budget grow in bounds.

[Adam Szymkowicz]

I haven't started making up people yet.

[Esther]

I checked the press release and I want to comment on a few things:

It says a "significant percentage" of seats will be held for first-come, first-serve for every performance. Is that 20 percent or 80 percent? I mean, I'm assuming if 80 percent of their patrons want to buy a season pass the theatre won't say "Oh no, we can't sell that many. We have to set aside more free tickets." Or maybe they will. I don't know.

The release also says that "subsequent to attendance," audiences will be asked to voluntarily become supporters. What does that mean? Will they call you or e-mail you asking for a donation? Will there be a collection box for donations at the door on the way out?

I don't know for sure but I don't think this theatre was charging $100 a ticket. A season pass for 4 shows is only $60. Ok, maybe that's a lot of money if you're a student or out of work or you have a minimum-wage job but it's not prohibitive. I just don't know if there are a lot of potential theatergoers out there who were saying to themselves "Oh, we really wanted to go to a play there but it was just too expensive." And now that it's free, they'll be able to go.

I mean, if you're not a theatergoer, have no desire to go to the theater, I'm not sure a free ticket to a play you've never heard of, with actors you've never heard of at a theatre you'e never heard of would get you in the door. (For example, I have no desire to see professional wrestling, even if someone gave me a ticket.)

I know they want to reach low-income people, students, people who've never been to the theatre. I'm just not sure there are waves of potential audience members out there who want to take advantage of something like this who weren't already theatergoers.

But maybe I'm wrong and it's worth a try!

[Mead]

Esther, you're totally right. Mixed Theatre's new policy -- which by the way I'm all for -- doesn't mean its problems are over with finding butts to put in seats. Quite the contrary. Though this company is already a trailblazer when it comes to outreach, it will now need to work harder than ever to raise awareness of what it has to offer and help people see they have a great resource available to them -- for free! But by making tickets free, and moreover free without any stigma (such as "underprivileged") attached to it, they've already overcome one big barrier. Good for them. I hope this is so thunderously successful as to become a permanent feature of Mixed Blood.....any of many other theaters as well.

[cgeye]

And, the unspoken burden: Mixed Blood will have to step up its development posture, to take advantage of this pure play of fulfilling their mission in their community. If they can't make bank from funders as they remove a barrier to new patrons trying their theatre, when will they?

If they're smart, they'll also step up their social media presence, so their community will build as the experiment proceeds....