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Does anyone
know where the 8 show a week model came from?
Is it
arbitrary? Is it based on The Beatles song? Was there any business
analysis done on the actual demand for theatrical performances at the time?
My gut says
that someone just picked it. It somehow made sense at that moment, which
was probably at least 50 years ago.
And thus, all
of our agreements with labor unions, with landlords, etc., were based on this
archaic idea that the demand for all shows, regardless of their cast or their
subject matter, is the same.
So Mamma
Mia does eight
shows a week and so does Macbeth.
That's like
Barnes and Noble stocking the same number of copies of the latest installment
of Harry Potter
as a Hungarian cookbook.
Smarter
industries have more of a throttle on demand. There are more flights by an
airline during the holidays (and the prices go up). There are less
waiters and cooks on staff at a restaurant during a Tuesday lunch hour.
Wouldn't it be
great to find a way to break this model? For so many shows (especially
Off-Broadway), there isn't the demand for 8 shows, but since we have to pay for
them, we all do them. And, we end up chasing our advertising tails, by
spending huge bucks trying to fill the additional shows, when we could save
money if we had fewer shows to fill.
And the fewer
shows would be better sold, creating a harder to get ticket, which would
actually increase demand as well as increase the experience for that audience
(an audience of 500 is never as good as an audience of 1000).
I can hear the
naysayers now: "Ken, but there are people that want to see a show on
Tuesday night, so you should capture whatever you can." Are you
really telling me that if 2 people wanted to come to see Altar Boyz on a Tuesday, that they
wouldn't come on a Thursday if the Tuesday wasn't available?
Two of my
shows do less than 8 shows a week. It's a challenge to make it work with
the venues, my staffs, etc. but I'm very lucky to have wonderful
forward-thinking partners that make it possible.
