California Q's: Length of Show Runs
ON AVERAGE, how many weeks do your 'main' or 'MainStage' shows run?
ON AVERAGE, how many performances do you have for each week of your 'main' or 'MainStage' shows run?
If you have a second stage or performance space, ON AVERAGE , how many weeks do performances produced by your theatre run?
2-3
If you have a second stage or performance space, ON AVERAGE , how many performances do you have per week, for shows which your theatre produces?
2-3
If you present outside work which runs longer than 1 weekend, how long are those 'guest' or 'outside' performance runs?
2
If you present outside work which runs longer than 1 weekend, how many performances per week do those 'guest' or 'outside' perform?
3-4
Have you changed the length of runs of your 'main' or 'MainStage' productions in the past 5 years?
If you have changed your runs of 'MainStage' performances in the last 5 years, what prompted you to make those changes?
Since the performances weren't selling out it made financial sense to decrease the number of performances.
We needed more time between shows to build.
Declining audiences/ popularity of Matinees
We now need to pay a set rental for our theater space. It makes more sense to do three performances in one weekend and fill most of the seats rather than rent a second weekend and have smaller audiences.
In 2018 we are adding one play so going down from 5 weeks to 4 weeks for all except Christmas which will be 5 weeks. We sometimes have a 3 week run also so it varies year to year
lower attendance. We reduced from 20 performances to 19 total.
audience numbers
No and we are not considering changes.
We were selling out matinees, so we added one. For musicals, we do three or four matinees.
If you checked any of the boxes above indicating that you have changed your runs of 'MainStage' performances in the last 5 years, has the decision been helpful?
Do you believe it is better for morale, operations, or expenses to produce a smaller number of performances with the hope of filling more seats per each performance?
"We would love to do two weekends, this is totally bottom-line driven."
Do you believe it is better for the overall run of a show to produce a larger number of performances for any of the following reasons: to allow the production to grow, to allow for word of mouth or reviews to be effective, or because it's better than the theatre being dark, for example?
If you answered 'other' to the question above, please share your thoughts:
We reduced from 5 weeks- 3 shows per week in the hopes that the same number of patrons would attend. This proved not to be the case. With an increase in rent and other expenses we are face with going back to 5 week runs, raising prices, or both.
Yes, and if we owned our own theater, this is what we would do.
The cast and crew work so hard to perfect the shows that it is unfair to cut the number of performances. We'd still have a low attendance first weekend because there will always be a first weekend.
Thank you to the theatres who participated in this survey!
