Columbus Day Round-Up

Today is a Monday and a Holiday for many folks so I wanted to do some round-up stuff and show you all the post card image for Kit Marlowe.

Once again Marigan has done a fantastic job. Thank you to Jenny and Rachel Miller for coming in and helping two Sundays ago to get all the images for Season 8 done and out of the way. I have to be honest Jenny and I sweated our brows to come up with four original images to create this years post cards, and I think after all of the todo was over we came up with some kick ass images. I will be sharing more in the coming weeks.

I want to thank everyone who has already submitted their Get to Know Me interviews and I will publish many of them this week.

I now draw your attention to an article that I had handed to me this morning by my boss from The New York Times. The article by Charles Isherwood, If You Discount It, Will They Come? takes a hard look at discount tickets and the effect they are having on New York theatre audiences. And Helen Pafumi, points our attention to Peter Marks's Theater Tickets for Movie Prices: Behind the Dramatic Reductions in The Washington Post yesterday, examining much the same in our own back yard, looking at our friends at Catalyst Theater and what Shakespeare Theater and Arena are doing to make theater affordable.

Isherwood points out that the best seats to Young Frankenstein are going to run you $450 dollars and that most broadway tickets in the Orchestra are already running $100 a pop. Time Warner has underwritten the costs of seats at New York's Signature Theatre for the next three years and seats that would usually run you $65 are now going for $20 thanks to the unwriter. Marks makes note that tickets to the Shakespeare theatre can run over $75 dollars to a weekend performance and tickets to the Kennedy Center's touring shows reaching the $100 mark.

Isherwood comments on the greying of Broadway and Off-Broadway audiences and how many theaters are trying to combat that with discounts for younger theater goers. Much the same can be said of DC audiences.

Please read the articles and tell me what you think. Rorschach is already one of the cheapest seats in town with regular tickets running $20 and students and senior tickets only $12. And I will be honest we are charging the bare minimum to encourage as many folks to come in and sample what we have to offer. This is the second year that Rorschach has participated in Free Night of Theater and tickets to Kit Marlowe were sold out for our Thursday, November 1st performance in under three minutes.

What is the future of theater? Is it a case of only those who can afford the luxuary of theater being able to come and experience what has been for thousands of years the cultural heritage of not just the elite but the whole of society? Should we be worried that the cost of seeing a play is continually rising while those of us who are trying to persue theater as a profession are still forced to work two and even three jobs in order to survive? Does anyone know a company that might be willing to underwrite an entire season of Rorschach so that we could pretty much just give tickets away, considering Time Warner is going to be paying over twice the Rorschach ticket price so subsidize the tickets of people going to see shows at the New York Signature?

Discuss.