THE PRESS WEDNESDAY, APRIL 8, 1987. The trials of Court

Press, 8 April 1987, Page 16

THE PRESS WEDNESDAY, APRIL 8, 1987. The trials of Court

The financial tribulations besetting the Court Theatre are familiar to artistic endeavours the world over. Indeed, by comparison with many of them the Court, which this year will show a loss of about $117,500 on its activities, does rather well in combining its creative ambitions with the practicalities of survival. Fifteen years of entertaining Christchurch audiences bear witness to that; talent and ambition alone have not been enough to guarantee the survival of other attempts at professional theatre. The Court Theatre has an annual budget of more than $l.l million. Wages are the biggest single expense and the Court has responded to its problems with an 18 per cent cut in the number of its staff, including parttimers, from 61 to 49. It could not be said that the company is trying to avoid economic realities or side-step unpalatable decisions. The response has been properly businesslike. Although some of this year’s deficit could be attributed to $BO,OOO spent on capital improvements, the work hardly could have been delayed. The continuing programme of development and refurbishing at the Court has created two comfortable and pleasant theatres from a most unlikely site. It would be poor business to let standards slip. The theatre rightly has identified the cause of its problems as insufficient income, rather than unnecessary or wasteful expenditure. The theatre’s two main sources of income have been an annual grant from the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council and box office takings. It might surprise a few people to learn that the grant is only about half of what the theatre earns for itself; the subsidy is less than a third of the total income.

Nonetheless, the grant is vital to the theatre’s financial survival. The arts ever have relied on patronage in one form or another. Sometimes, however, policies can conflict. The Arts Council preference for making grants to theatres supporting New Zealand playwrights, for instance, helps struggling playwrights, no doubt, but it does not necessarily mean that theatres stage

productions which draw large audiences. Professional theatres like the Court, by definition, must put bottoms on seats. To do so they must give audiences the plays they want to see; these are not necessarily the plays an arts council considers worthy. The management of the Court is on record as having a policy of presenting less well-known and even experimental works, as well as plays more certain of commercial success. It is good that the theatre is prepared to tackle works which present a challenge to both the company and the theatre-going public; but the challenge is pointless if the public db not attend. The term “fostering the arts” implies for the Arts Council more than simply guaranteeing an income for artists, be they playwrights, actors, or painters. It must surely include encouraging the public to participate in and enjoy these artistic offerings. This, in turn, requires some concessions to public demand and taste.

Over the years the Court Theatre has managed to gauge fairly accurately the city’s taste in live theatre, and to cater to it. Over the last 18 months, however, it misjudged its public in a different respect. In that time the theatre doubled ticket prices yet made no appreciable gain in box office receipts. Patronage dropped away dramatically. Indeed, if the same number of people had gone to Court productions last year as went in the previous 12 months, box office receipts (at the new prices) would have been more than $1 million instead of the $641,000 recorded.

No theatre can afford to drive away its customer with unrealistic charges. The Court has embarked on many projects to attract more financial backing for the company. A review of ticket prices also is in order. As part of the review, the company might well consider the observation of the essayist Charles Lamb, who wrote in 1813 that he constantly found the interest excited at a playhouse bore an exact inverse proportion to the price of admission.