Lyn Gardner asks if theatre membership schemes strike the right balance between raising income and attracting would-be theatre-goers.
Would you like tickets to see King Lear? Well, day seats are available for the sold out show. But there is another way. Give the National Theatre £1,200 a year or more and you will have access to a special patron's allocation of tickets. Money may not buy everything, but it can certainly get you in to a number of British theatres.
For £1,000-plus, the Donmar offers personalised help with booking your tickets (up to four a show) through the development office. But before we become outraged, perhaps we need to look at the pressure theatres are under to raise donations and philanthropic funds. Membership and friends' schemes offer a way of doing that, one upon which many theatres and companies are increasingly reliant. Last year, individual supporters pledged £3.8m to the National, contributing to the £70m it needs annually to keep its doors open and its stages full. An ongoing and entertaining riff in Max Stafford Clark's recently published Journal of the Plague Year is his frustration at the extraordinary effort required to get people to sign up to be friends of Out of Joint.
Of course, many people join membership schemes not for charitable or philanthropic reasons but simply to take advantage of priority booking. Theatres like membership schemes because it's money up front. Producers like priority booking, too, because it's a way of ensuring an advance for a show. With the exception of the Donmar, where the lowest level of membership available costs £350 – all cheaper levels of priority booking have long since reached capacity – most theatres are nowhere near closing lists on priority booking members. All insist there is no chance that shows will sell out entirely through priority booking. Some, like the Royal Court, will change the availability depending on the show: in the case of The River, the theatre ditched priority booking and only sold day seats, much to the chagrin of priority booking members.
Would you like tickets to see King Lear? Well, day seats are available for the sold out show. But there is another way. Give the National Theatre £1,200 a year or more and you will have access to a special patron's allocation of tickets. Money may not buy everything, but it can certainly get you in to a number of British theatres.
For £1,000-plus, the Donmar offers personalised help with booking your tickets (up to four a show) through the development office. But before we become outraged, perhaps we need to look at the pressure theatres are under to raise donations and philanthropic funds. Membership and friends' schemes offer a way of doing that, one upon which many theatres and companies are increasingly reliant. Last year, individual supporters pledged £3.8m to the National, contributing to the £70m it needs annually to keep its doors open and its stages full. An ongoing and entertaining riff in Max Stafford Clark's recently published Journal of the Plague Year is his frustration at the extraordinary effort required to get people to sign up to be friends of Out of Joint.
Of course, many people join membership schemes not for charitable or philanthropic reasons but simply to take advantage of priority booking. Theatres like membership schemes because it's money up front. Producers like priority booking, too, because it's a way of ensuring an advance for a show. With the exception of the Donmar, where the lowest level of membership available costs £350 – all cheaper levels of priority booking have long since reached capacity – most theatres are nowhere near closing lists on priority booking members. All insist there is no chance that shows will sell out entirely through priority booking. Some, like the Royal Court, will change the availability depending on the show: in the case of The River, the theatre ditched priority booking and only sold day seats, much to the chagrin of priority booking members.