Great news – there is virtually no industry in the country immune to financial ruin.
And if you happen to be the type who enjoys a night out in Salt City with a little more “culture” than a trip to Taco Bell, this economy is actually working for you. Like their big city counterparts, performing arts venues in Syracuse are being forced to entertain creativity to fill seats. For you, the arts patron, that means, first and foremost, lower ticket prices. Barbara Beckos, director of marketing for Syracuse Stage, said new price points for some tickets have been in effect for several months now. “We’re looking at ways to make it look more attractive to come to theater in a tough economic time,” Beckos said. Naturally, the most attractive way is to slash ticket prices. Rush ticket prices, available the day of a show, have dropped from between $24 and $45 down to between $15 and $25, for students, $9 and a student ID buys a seat the day of a show. Tickets for patrons below age 40 are $20 for any performance. “That’s pretty good for a professional production,” Beckos said. In response, the stage has seen a marked increase in student and below-40 audiences. On the flip side of that bargain, subscription prices were “modestly” raised last year, Beckos said. “We’re just beginning to look at next season and what we’ll do,” she added. Other ways to cut
At Syracuse Opera, less than a month before “Romeo and Juliet” opens on March 6, General and Artistic Director Catherine Wolff can’t say for sure whether attendance is down. “It’s a little premature, because our next opera is March, and our most recent opera was in October … we’re still waiting to see the answer,” Wolff said. With tickets starting at $18 – “which is pretty cheap when you think about it,” Wolff said – the opera has not cut prices. “Ticket prices represent a real cost of what we do on the stage,” she said. Recent calculations showed about 40 percent of ticket revenue covers the cost of just putting an opera on stage – never mind the overhead. Wolff said since cutting ticket prices is not really an option, the opera has had to look at other ways to save money. A 20 percent cut in programming was in order, Wolff said, but that doesn’t mean 20 percent fewer performances. Cuts were made in less visible ways, like staffing and printing costs, as a result of decreased government and corporate grant money available, and individual and corporate giving, Wolff said. Maybe more importantly, artistic choices are also being influenced by the state of things, Wolff pointed out. “We were hoping to do an American opera that has never been produced by Syracuse Opera, which is a little risky in general,” Woff said. “We’ve decided to substitute something exciting in a different way.” Staging a relatively new and unknown opera is not exactly a sure thing, especially in this economy. Instead, the opera selected to produce their first Wagner opera, which will for the first time in the Opera’s history be staged as a “multimedia concert event,” Wolff said. The audience will experience the opera they recognize, but in a different and more cost-effective way. Implementing digital technology, for example, may give the performance a different look and feel, but the audience will still enjoy a quality production. “We believe at Syracuse Opera that business will never go back to the way it used to be,” Wolff said. “It’s scary. Sometimes it’s change or die. And we don’t want to die.” And, as Beckos points out, the economy could work in local arts’ favor, too.
With spring and summer vacation time coming up for many, those who would have traveled in previous years may be looking to stay closer to home. “Maybe people will be looking at riches in this area,” Beckos said. “You don’t have to travel to Toronto or New York City to see some great theater.”