Mass or Class?

Despite our complaints about ticket prices, we have a hard time thinking of theatre as a luxury product. Especially in the nonprofit world, where our communities pay us to be accessible. But look around the auditorium some evening at your theatre and ask yourself, are the affluent in the house? Look at our proudly documented demographics: High education? check. High income? check. And are we reaching enough of those folks to survive the many challenges we face?
I’d love to say “check”, but we all know that’s an open question. And of course the artist in us, the community activist, the progressive soul at the heart of theatre, has very mixed feelings about our function as an income distribution mechanism: take from the wealthy and give to the starving artist, the under-served student, the eager young worker who could never pay the $250 per person our shows would cost without contributed income.

We’ll be exploring this and more at next week’s Innovators Forum in New York. It’s our second installment of this great collaboration between NCTF and The Nederlander Organization. Stay tuned for more insights!