There’s no shortage of good theatre on stage in Portland. But what can be harder to find is a full house of audience members paying real prices for tickets. Portland theatre has probably been under priced for a long, long time. But with the advent of powerful online discounters, the downward trend is now easier to spot.
If theatre tickets are not keeping up with inflation, who pays the difference? Is it a good thing that we expect the audience to pay less and less of the real cost of putting on a show over time? Why is this? If the price of everything else in town is going up, but theatre prices are going down, does that mean quality is going down? Is it a healthy indicator? Probably not.
As we’ve pointed out before, theatre ticket prices are generally far too cheap in Portland. Often low prices result from the mistaken belief that price is what is keeping people away – so if the price is lowered, people will come. People come – whatever the price – when there is something they want to see.
Small scale theatre that does not cost much to put on is probably selling at the right price. But when large theatres sell their tickets far below cost, it’s not a good sign.
Unfortunately, when a night of theatre is now being sold (at some of the city’s main theatres) for less than the cost of parking downtown, the message this sends to the audience is that the experience is not worth very much. Is that true? Usually not. Therefore, as counter intuitive as it may sound, theatres should hold the line on prices and keep ’em up. Even if only a handful of tickets are available on a discount site for rock bottom prices, the message an audience member gets when they see tickets in “the booth” (as the original discount location, the red TKTS booth in Times Square is known) is: “That show must not be very popular.”
THE AUDIENCE is the ultimate reality check. Will they come and pay for what is on stage?
If not – it’s not sustainable.
