Theatre attracts youth

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32802, 30 December 1971, Page 12

Theatre attracts youth

The average age of the audience at Auckland’s professional Mercury Theatre was steadily decreasing, and the theatre was attracting more people in their late teens and early twenties, said the chairman of the Auckland Theatre Trust Board (Mr R. Walker) in Christchurch yesterday.

Mr Walker, who is in Christchurch on holiday, said that on a Saturday night about 400 of the 600 seats at the theatre probably would be occupied by people in their late teens and early twenties. “Instead of taking their girl friends to the cinema or .a dance hall, young chaps are bringing them to see good strong theatre,” he said. A seven-week season of “Canterbury Tales,” which has just finished at the Mercury Theatre, attracted 18,000 people. SCHOOL PARTIES Mr Walker said the recent interest in theatre by young people probably was due to the trust’s efforts in attracting school parties to produc-

tions at the Mercury. Each year the theatre staged a number of classics aimed at school parties. When the children left school many of them retained their interest in theatre.

The future of young people and the theatre depended on the co-operation of the Department of Education. This had been slow in coming because the Mercury Theatre had come up against the same problem often experienced in Christchurch, Mr Walker said. Most of the heads of the department were in Wellington, and it was harder to get results

from people about 450 miles away. The Mercury Theatre has had a liquor licence for about a year and it has a bar with nineteenth century decor. Mr Walker said the bar had attracted the middleaged man rather than the young person. The bar is closed during the production but is open a half an hour before the show, and during the interval.

Having a bar in the same building had meant that theatre patrons were arriving more punctually, Mr Walker said.