Panto audiences

[wako_jacko]

This might seem like a random question, but what is the smallest audience (relative to size of venue) you've had for a panto performance, 41 in a 500 seater venue can be quite quiet for the actors. and at what stage would you pull the show- if at all.

[Dmills]

A few years back I had 25 in a 600 seater.

One class of badly briefed primary school kids lost out in the middle of the stalls, more then somewhat hard work:

 

"Oh no he didn't...."

..........

..."I said, Oh no he didn't!......"

..........

"Come on you lot...., I said......"

It ended up that a couple of follow spot ops up in the gods gave the requisite responses!

 

Not panto, but I once worked a show with 20 odd cast, and an audience of 2! Thats what you get for running a show while England - Germany fitbo is on the box.

 

Regards, Dan.

[henny]

had one today , 32 in a 1200 seater

[MarkPAman]

I think if I were one of the 32 I would much rather have my money back, or tickets for a busier performance. There would be no atmosphere at all.

[gareth]

Doesn't it make you wonder why some pantos are selling so badly? I mean, we have a capacity which isn't exactly huge (535), but we run for in excess of 80 performances and every one of them, with the exception of a very small handful of midweek shows towards the beginning and end of the run, sells out. If it wasn't for the small matter of having another show to open at the beginning of February we could put another week onto the end of the run and that would almost certainly pretty much sell out too. And this is in a semi-rural area of north-east Wales, not some big metropolis full of theatre-hungry punters.

 

A question for those who are posting tales of woe concerning houses of less than 1% capacity - what kind of panto are your venues doing? Is it something original, entertaining, fast-paced, funny, well-produced and value-for-money? Or is it something mass-produced, low-budget, sponsored by some or other confectionery company, and full of tired old C-list celebs trotting out their spesh' acts for cursory and largely irrelevant inclusion in yet another panto? Or somewhere in between?

[Neil Hampson]

The worst Panto audience was 6 in a 150 seat Studio. the reason being the company had taken our booking for, where we were charging £2.00, and then in the afternoon, playing at the local sports centre hall for free (Both council run venues). The adverts were next to each other in the local paper and I suppose it doesn't take much to work out which performance to take the kids to; 12pm in a studio space with a decent PA, Stage lighting, Tiered seating -or- in a sports hall/Gym, sat on the floor, with a portable CD player in the corner and no Lighting, but Free. By all accounts the hall was almost full.

 

The worst general show I did generated a net audience of zero. It was a series of small sketches, the performers refused to cancel and ended up performing the show to each other as they had never seen each others work. They were so embarrassed that they had a whip round between them to pay me as they knew I was only volunteering as a student Tech.

[ankersandrew]

I know it wasnt a panto but I did a kids show which went to blackpool winter gardens (which is a barn of a place) and only sold 32 and 12 of them were comps !!!!

[gareth]

I know it wasnt a panto

... and so it's off-topic for this thread. Anyone got anything to add to the idle thoughts I posted last night? Does the quality of a panto production have a lot of influence on the size of its audiences?

[JimWebber]

...and so it's off-topic for this thread. Anyone got anything to add to the idle thoughts I posted last night? Does the quality of a panto production have a lot of influence on the size of its audiences?

 

I suspect that the quality of the production does have an effect on audience numbers, in the past, I can remember some fairly reasonable "C" list celebs appearing in panto.

 

When the most many companies can come up with is Craig/Mark/Jade/Debbie/Sharron (Delete as applicable) from Big Brother, is it any wonder that punters are turning away in droves?

 

I have just finished an amateur pantomime, the houses for which were sold out weeks before opening night...

 

The local professional panto stars that bloke with his hand up a green ducks a**e, and he is by far the biggest name I am aware of locally...

 

Jim

 

PS Smallest Panto audience I have known was at the Edinburgh Fringe, we had one person in the audience, and she was from another company in the venue...

[Andrew C]

I have just finished an amateur pantomime, the houses for which were sold out weeks before opening night...

I don't think ours has ever played to less than 95%, and seldom as low as that. Doing Honk! this year, which, as it isn't "Proper Panto", may well hit next years figures. :(

[Dmills]

To be fair, my disaster was solidly down to a little misunderstanding about when the schools went back!

 

Kind of hard to sell a 2pm kids show in the first week AFTER the schools have started up again!

 

Regards, Dan.

[gareth]

I wouldn't be too sure about that! We've been having midweek daytime performances for the last fortnight (10am and 2pm twice a week) and they've been selling phenomenally well to coach parties of school kids. We haven't got any more 10am ones (thank god!), but the 2pm ones continue on Tuesdays and Thursdays right through until the end of the run - and have sold really well.

[pscandrett]

This might seem like a random question, but what is the smallest audience (relative to size of venue) you've had for a panto performance

This isn't a panto that I did, but one I attended when I was younger; it was a panto at the Hatfield Forum (now demolished :-( ) - as a family (9 of us) we decided to go upstairs. There were only three people up there, a mum/dad and youngish teenage girl in her large floppy clearly-a-Christmas-present-hat who looked very relieved when we turned up IIRC. I suspect they'd have gone downstairs at curtain up had they been the only ones up there but since we'd joined them we all stayed and were of course played up with by the actors for the upstairs/downstairs things... we upstairs for much of it may as well have been the only ones there as we were so far out of the way/shielded from the stalls, but that wasn't too much of a problem because we were throwing ourselves into it and pretending to be 300 circle-residents!

 

Of course, when we went in to sit down we plonked ourselves down behind the girl and asked her to move her hat as it was obscuring the view :-)

 

(Reminds me also of when my uncle put my dad's name in for the birthdays - IIRC it went something like "The birthdays... Laura, who's 12... Joe, who's 8... and Michael S, who's 40-something! <cue shock from my dad> "It says here that Michael's birthday's in March but he always feels left out and never gets his birthday read out, so Happy Birthday for March!" Well, it was funny at the time, anwyay...)

[Dmills]

Oh sure, a school matinée works just fine, when it does NOT work is on the first day the little darlings get back!

 

The fact that the panto was only so-so probably didn't help any, but it did sell 80+% average, so this one was very much the anomaly.

 

Regards, Dan.