The Illusion of Accessible Theatre: How Far Have we Come and How Far do we Have Left to Go?

Ever since my stint as a Felix arts editor began, I’ve been preaching the importance of making theatre more accessible. For the most part, the baby-boomer leaning demographics at the theatre astonish me. I strongly believe this medium of arts can be a formative part of a young person’s development. It certainly was for me, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. The thrill of live theatre can be inspiring. A brilliant script brought to life by a talented company can be transformative. In a time where we are more divided than ever, theatre can be where we’re united. However, with ticket prices upwards of £200 (I’m looking at you, Hamilton), how can we expect an average family to be able to afford a night out at the theatre? How can a young student, barely able to make ends meet, make the most of living in London, one of the theatre destinations of the world?

Over the last few years, there have been some clear steps forward when it comes to drawing younger people to the audience, but I’m not yet fully convinced that enough has been done.

Discount Schemes

A select handful of venues have programmes in place which allow young people to obtain tickets for very affordable prices. Examples include the Jamie Lloyd Company, who have introduced a £15 ticket scheme their upcoming productions including for Cyrano de Bergerac, a brand new adaptation of the French-language classic, starring James McAvoy. The English National Opera has a scheme called Access All Arias, and the National Theatre has one called Entry Pass. In addition to the Entry Pass, National Theatre sells any remaining tickets for any performance, regardless of the original price point, for £15 to those with a valid student ID card 45 minutes before the curtain call.

This is all excellent, however there is a huge flaw in this system. These schemes are extremely poorly advertised. You would only know of them them if you’ve fallen into the rabbit hole of cheap West End theatre ticket hunting. This restricts the demographics hugely as the only people who do this are theatre nerds like me. So, yeah, while some theatres do offer some deals for students, not only are they pretty darn sparse, but also hard to find out about.

The Celebrity Factor

Whenever I go to any kind of performance starring bigshot movie stars, I find that a significantly large proportion of the audience is there for the celebrity, and not necessarily the performance. Sure, I could be a snob and say how this is destroying the theatre, but I tend to think otherwise. Yes, some fans attending shows have caused some trouble (During YouTuber

Colleen Ballinger’s stint in Waitress on Broadway, there were several incidences of filming the show, or people leaving the show halfway through to grab a good place at the stage door, which is frankly disgusting), however, it’s only logical that with star power comes attendance by those who would never pay up for a theatre ticket otherwise, including young people.

This sometimes works well. For example, whenever Daniel Radcliffe stars in a play on the West End, Potterheads march directly to the theatre. Likewise, when Cate Blanchett was leading a play at the National Theatre, the tickets were so in demand that a ballot system was put in place. Albeit, most of her fans were on the older side and it was a shame that the play was absolutely horrible. Stunt-casting is a big issue when it comes to the ‘celebrity factor’. Stunt-casting is casting people in a show who wouldn’t be cast otherwise either due to a lack of skill or not being fit for the character in question. This is very common, especially when a production is suffering from poor sales and need a boost. Without naming any names, this not only makes for an unpleasant theatre experience, but also causes a spike in the ticket prices, milking the fans of a celebrity as much as possible. It’s just kind of sad.

Rush Tickets

This is by no means catered specifically towards students, but it is one way of being able to see shows in premium seats for a minimal price tag. TodayTix, a mobile app, releases ‘Rush Tickets’ at 10 am every morning for a range of shows for £15- £25, and these are allocated on a first come first serve basis. Likewise, some theatres still keep it old school, releasing Rush Tickets at the box office every morning. Popular shows such as Hamilton and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child have been doing online weekly lotteries (Cursed Child’s is through TodayTix, whereas Hamilton has its own lottery app). Rush Tickets and lotteries are great, but only if you know about them, and care enough to queue either in person or in a virtual line. Therefore, similar to discount schemes, they mainly tend to be used by those who are already involved in the theatre community, at least more so than those who have never stepped into a theatre before.

Content and Context

I suppose it’s common sense that if the content of a show caters towards a young audience, they’d be more likely to see it. Word of mouth alone should be enough to draw some young people to the theatre. Some recent examples to what I consider to be ‘approachable content’ include Hamilton, Six and Dear Evan Hansen. The former two, although focusing on historic events way before our time, have found a way to make themselves extremely relevant. Hamilton is a ‘rap musical’ about one of the founding fathers of the United States, and Six is a raging girl band concert about Henry VIII’s wives. Dear Evan Hansen, on the other hand, is written about young people, for young people, touching on important issues that today’s young people can relate to, such as depression and suicide and social media.

It is my genuine wish for productions like these to keep appearing on the West End, as every time I visit the theatre for such a production, it makes me happy to see that they do, in fact, tend to be made up of audiences that are noticeably younger. I’ve met many teenagers and young adults while watching Dear Evan Hansen and Hamilton, some of whom had travelled to the UK from across Europe.

However, it must be noted here that all this means nothing, when tickets for these shows, namely Hamilton, cost an arm and a leg. Upwards of 200 pounds in some instances. Charging almost-unprecedented (and thus most likely unwarranted) amounts for such shows is greedy, and defeats its own purpose.

Podcasts

This is an odd one. A few years back, a group of very creative individuals came up with the idea of a ‘musical podcast’, with an original story and original compositions, free for all to enjoy on all the usual podcast platforms. Their first challenge was to write a musical that the listeners would be satisfied with simply listening, and would not leave feeling like they need to see it staged on a show. The result was a three-act musical called 36 Questions, starring Jonathan Groff (Hamilton, Glee, Mindhunter) and Jessie Shelton (Hadestown, Waitress), both of whom are respected, well-known Broadway actors. And boy, does it work.

I discovered this project only a couple of months ago. However, a quick google search leads to a plethora of articles published around the time of its release that calling the project ‘the future of musical theatre’. I’m not sure that I would go that far.

This specific project is excellent, and does provide a way for anyone with an internet connection to be able to enjoy a musical free of charge. Everyone involved do a wonderful job and the final product is entertaining and original, however, I am not quite sure if it can replace the physical experience of sitting in the audience.

The initial idea of providing free, original musical content to anyone who felt like it seemed to work quite well. However, the one existing follow-up project (from a completely different team), Anthem: Homunculus, starring an endless number of iconic Broadway stars including, Cynthia Erivo and Glenn Close, has exclusively been made available on a paid podcast platform. I don’t know how much this platform costs, and I’m not sure I really care. It just makes me feel sad, knowing that a group of people have taken this selfless idea that originated with 36 Questions (their only revenue would be from the small ads that play before each episode), and charge people for it. Once again, the theatre community found another way to defeat its own purpose.

Just a small note here: between starting to write and finishing this article, a two minute trailer for a new project called Childish: The Podcast Musical has made its way onto the internet. A quick google search shows that this project was brought to life as a result of a campaign that raised around £1700. From what I gather, this will be more along the lines of 36 Questions in terms of broad availability. So maybe all is not lost for musical podcasts after all. Only time will tell.

In conclusion, I honestly do think that over the years we’ve made great progress when it comes to audience diversification. Solid efforts have been made, be it through discount schemes or bringing theatre to you in the form of podcasts. However, there’s still a long way to go, especially since greed seems to be playing a role in gatekeeping the barrier between the theatre and the youth.