" for the world is broad and wide..."

In the last four years, we've done four non-Shakespearean plays, and you might ask "If it’s a Shakespeare Festival, why do a play that’s not by Shakespeare?”  There’s one very good reason.  It’s good business.  

Much as it pains me to say it, there are folks who are put off by Shakespeare - who are reluctant to commit to an evening with the Bard.  So, we have to woo them!  The non-Shakespeares are a way to do that.  They tend to sell well and bring out a different audience.  And that’s good for us.  New people get introduced to our space, our actors, and all the fun of coming out to Ewing.  We hope they'll have such a good time that they can't resist coming back for a different show...one by that guy from Stratford!

To put some hard facts to all this...last summer, our non-Shakespeare production was Complete Works of Shakespeare - Abridged, and it sold at around 81%.  If we take out the figures for the rained out show, the percentage is closer to 87%.  We only had three houses that were under 80% for this show - all of them early in the season when we traditionally have smaller houses.

In contrast, The Winter's Tale played at 68% and Romeo and Juliet at 66%.  There were more performances of R&J, so the percentages are a little misleading - we actually did more traffic for the story of the young lovers.  But even with the popularity of R&J (and we saw a lot more teens coming through the gate for this show), it didn't hit the numbers of Complete Works.

What's most important is that some of the patrons who "tried us out" by seeing Complete Works came back to see one of the other shows.  When we did Complete Works four years ago, one new patron told me that he'd never seen a Shakespeare play in his life, but that he now wanted to read and see them all.  That was a wonderful thing to hear!

It’s important for every theatre to continue to expand its audience base - to bring in younger people and those folks who "don't go to theatre."  Our non-Shakespeares are one way the Festival can do it.


We are not alone, by the way, in this move away from all-Shakespeare, as a survey of any of the major summer Shakespeare festivals will show.  Utah Shakes even featured the following link to an article about this on the homepage of their web site early last summer.  It's worth a read:

http://www.denverpost.com/commented/ci_18385720?source=commented-entertainment

And by the way, the Illinois Shakespeare did its first non-Shakespeare in 1989.  The play was She Stoops to Conquer - like The Rivals, a very funny English play!

Next week, I'll have some things to say about our morning shows for families.  Until then...