Margins are tight, but offering a critic a complimentary guest ticket isn’t an expensive kindness…it’s just good sense.
During The Edinburgh Fringe, there’s a fairly broad policy amongst venues, promoters, and PR agents, of not offering plus one’s to critics. Distilled, the view taken is one of ‘allowing shows to maximise their chances of making a profit/breaking even.’ It’s a rational, and considerate position to take.
TheQR.co.uk dares to suggest that this is placing virtue before practicality. Most shows don’t sell out, that’s true of theatre the year-round, and doubly/triply true of those appearing at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
So, unless you’re a headlining show, there will generally be tickets going spare, and that means empty seats.
Empty seats
Empty seats are no fun to perform to, and less fun to sit amongst as an audience; it’s just one more obstacle to overcome amidst the myriad that plague the Fringe performer in particular. By August 4th (often earlier), the city will team with promoters offering rafts of free tickets just to put bums on seats.
Which isn’t in itself a reason to offer a critic a plus one, or complimentary guest ticket, but it does suggest that in most cases, it won’t make any difference to profit-margins.
Why you should offer a critic a plus one, is multi-fold.
Throw a plus one to your critic
First, you want the critic to experience your show in the most natural, and positive state possible. You want the critic to enjoy every aspect of the show, to leave with a good feeling about the whole experience. If your show is dark, or traumatically themed, then you want the critic to have emotional support, not left to write-up the show whilst alone with their lowered mood. If your show is an up-lifting laughter fest, then you want the critic to have someone to laugh with, and to reminisce with over your brilliant one-liners with.
Second, most people don’t go to the theatre alone, and critics are no different. For those of us who like company in the stalls, our companions offer another mind to bounce our thoughts off, another mind to offer a viewpoint we might lack, another mind to share the experience with. Think of it a little like hearing in stereo sound, or seeing through binoculars, rather than a telescope; a companion gives the critic a more rounded, sharper view of a show. It’s also just nice to have company, particularly a loved one.
Both of these reasons, you could argue, are causes for a critic to pay for a companion’s seat. Thus I offer a third, and final reason to throw a plus one to your critic: money, money, money.
Money, Money, Money
Most critics aren’t paid/paid much for their work; and in that lies the rub.
Whilst there’s a good deal of theatre a critic would pay to see (if they can afford it), there’s much more they simply couldn’t…or wouldn’t…not even for a single ticket. Their budgets may not permit it, and their interest may not justify it. Maybe the show seems best shared with another, maybe it’s too bleak to be seen alone; maybe it’s just one experimental production too many.
It might be the best show they’ve ever seen, but they might just not know it yet.
The consequence is a raft of shows, particularly amidst the thousands clamouring for coverage during the Edinburgh Fringe, falling off a critic’s radar. All for the, in The QRs opinion, the cost of a seat which might well sit empty on press night. In the end even the ever well-meaning National Theatre, decided to reverse it’s experiment with a ‘no plus one’ policy, and they suffer with empty seats far less than most.
The caveat
If your production doesn’t want for press coverage, then by all means just offer single review tickets. Just keep in mind that all this achieves is a small saving on your part, whilst selecting for a critical profession dominated by the independently wealthy, hobbyists, students (via subsidised tickets), and serial killers (this is a joke, probably).
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Excellent idea – and the only negative would be if the Plus One hated it, but that is more likely to happen if the ticket for a companion has to be paid for.
Funny how that works, but negative reviews seem to have more sting when the reviewer feels they ALSO wasted money. Human nature?