Author Topic: RUNNING: How do you decide when to cancel a performance?  (Read 11069 times)

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Bilby

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Tonight, we decided to cancel our performance after only 2 patrons (1 couple) showed up. Although this is a small show in a tiny venue, we didn't feel that it was a good use of anyone's time to go on. After talking to me and to one of the board members for the group, the director went and talked to the patrons. Thankfully they were very gracious and even refused a refund, and will be coming to tomorrow's matinee performance.

I think that we made a reasonable decision considering the circumstances, but it was still a hard decision to make. You never want to cancel a performance, even if there is just one audience member. But there has to be a line. So where is yours? Obviously it depends a lot on the venue, the show, and a host of other variables but the question running through your head on a small show has to be "how many does it take to make an audience?". How full does the theatre need to be... how many butts in seats does it take to break even today... how much bad feedback will I get for pulling the plug?

It's a hard decision. What would you do... what have you done?

stagegal1

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Re: RUNNING: How do you decide when to cancel a performance?
« Reply #1 on: Mar 19, 2011, 09:59 pm »
In a professional AEA situation that is a producer decision, not stage management.  I feel it is a producer's decision to make even in a community theatre situation. There is an urban legend that states if there are more cast members than audience members, the cast can decide not to do the show.  That is NOT true.  As a matter of fact, even if there are no audience members, the producers can still have you do the performance.  They are paying for it.

Rebbe

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Re: RUNNING: How do you decide when to cancel a performance?
« Reply #2 on: Mar 20, 2011, 10:24 am »
I think it only takes one person to make an audience.  In rehearsal actors play to just the director/SM all the time, it is still valid experience on both sides.  We watch movies and TV shows as an audience of one.  Unless your show depends heavily on audience interaction, I can’t see canceling it for low turnout.  You never know who the one or two people who show up are, what connections they may have, or what complicated arrangements they may have made to come to the show, so I would not be comfortable deciding it was not a "good use of anyone's time". 

If the actors and crew are ready and waiting too, I would think they would prefer to do a show rather than have come in for nothing.  I don’t see how it saves anyone money to not perform once they are there and the space is already reserved.  Repeated low turnout is certainly bad for morale., but I don’t think punishing the people who do come to see it is a reasonable solution. 

The only times I as an SM, equity or not, have been part of cancellation discussions has been when we were expecting severe weather, or if we had an actor emergency and no understudy, or there was an issue with physical space that might prevent the performance. 

Can you tell us more about what the benefit was of canceling in your case?
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bex

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Re: RUNNING: How do you decide when to cancel a performance?
« Reply #3 on: Mar 20, 2011, 11:29 am »
At the theatre where I currently work, a few years ago there was a performance of a show that had only 3 people in the audience- a man by himself, and a mother and daughter. Management offered them comps to see the far more popular show playing in the other theatre & tickets to this show on a different night, but all 3 people said they wanted to see it then.  They performed the show for the audience of 3, and that man has been a season sponsor for every season since.
You will have to sing for your supper & your mortgage, your dental coverage & your children's shoes, over & over again while people in desk jobs roll their eyes the minute you start to complain. So it's a good thing you like to sing.

hbelden

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Re: RUNNING: How do you decide when to cancel a performance?
« Reply #4 on: Mar 20, 2011, 12:21 pm »
In London when I was a student I went to a one-man play above a pub - it was only a 25- or 30-seat house, if that.  I paid 4 pounds at the bottom of the stairs to two women (I assume one was the box office and the other was the house manager), went up the stairs and sat down.  About 15 minutes later, the two women closed the doors behind me and sat down in the back row.  I was the only paying member of the audience.

The performer never made eye-contact with me, but played sort of over the audience or to the side of where I was sitting.  I was only about nine feet from him, but had no idea who he was as a person or why he was doing this.  I tried to follow the story, but felt very self-conscious the entire time.

I'm glad it was a one-act, I probably would have high-tailed it at intermission.  I clapped politely at the curtain call, and I think the actor smiled and nodded to me at that point. When the house lights came up, I simply said "thank you" and walked out of the pub.  As an audience member, the whole thing gave me the creeps.

Looking back on it, I think that if the house manager had come up to me before the show, maybe introduced me to the actor face-to-face, and the three of us together had decided whether or not the show was going on, I would have been much more comfortable with the whole situation.  I wouldn't have come back for another performance (I was seeing four other plays that weekend) so I probably would have stayed; but knowing the whole time that I was the only paying member of the audience (if you can call four pounds "paying" - it seemed more like a tip) made me wonder how much the cast & SM wanted to run the show that night.
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Balletdork

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Re: RUNNING: How do you decide when to cancel a performance?
« Reply #5 on: Mar 20, 2011, 01:04 pm »
SO- in 25 years we had never canceled a show- UNTIL!... We had severe weather this past January and the roads were closed! But here's some stories about nights we didn't cancel....

A CHRISTMAS CAROL- Bob Cratchit had a dibilitating migraine, and was over an hour late to the theater- we chose instead to have our 2 directors step in- one walked the blocking and spoke the lines, and the other did all the choreo & set changes. It was 2 directors, but also, one of them was the writer and the other was the producer.... also- it was OPENING NIGHT!

12th Night- severe winter weather- a sold out house; 26 people actually showed! The audience outnumbered the cast, crew and FOH staff- by 2!

And currently- we're doing DROWSY CHAPERONE- one of the leads Grandmother passed away Wednesday night- on the LOA to LORT contract we're not required to have understudies- and so the director, (who had been the role on the 1st national tour) has been going on!

WHEW!

Exciting times...... :P


On_Headset

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Re: RUNNING: How do you decide when to cancel a performance?
« Reply #6 on: Mar 20, 2011, 02:30 pm »
I worked as a house manager all through college, and that was always a conversation I dreaded. It happened often enough, but... well.

- It wasn't at all uncommon for lecture series to have audiences consisting entirely of the husband/wife of the professor who was giving the introduction.
- We once sent up a show without an audience at all. (It was a preview which had been added 4-5 days before without any promotion except for its availability at the box office. The show itself bombed, and we wound up papering the house every single night. Even then we were lucky to hit 50% full.)
- On another occasion, the entire audience of a one-man show left at intermission--including the actor's boyfriend, who had to catch a train home.
- There was also a disasterous International Women's Day symposium where they booked our largest venue, arranged for catering and merchandise for 500, and only 12 people showed up. (The staff ate very well that day.)

Luckily, we had a fairly flexible system in place to make these conversations more comfortable. If there was almost nobody in the house at 5 minutes to curtain, and the decision was made to consider cancellation, they sent us out to talk to people with the following offer:
- A refund or a comp ticket for a future performance of this show.
- A parking waiver.
- A meal voucher. ($10, good at any on-campus food outlet for anything other than alcohol.)

Of the 8-9 times I made the rounds with this offer, it was only refused once, and we went up as normal that night.

There wasn't an especially hard line drawn as to when or when not to go up. On one occasion, we cancelled a performance with an audience of 10, while on another (excluding the no-show preview), we went up with an audience of two without even considering cancellation. The pattern was that the box office manager and the house manager would feed information to the SM, and the SM would then decide whether or not it was worth calling the producer, but it was a very gisted, "I'm getting a bad feeling" sort of process.

Bilby

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Re: RUNNING: How do you decide when to cancel a performance?
« Reply #7 on: Mar 20, 2011, 05:04 pm »
Interesting replies from everyone :)    (sorry I'm late to reply, I just got back from the last performance and teardown)


Mostly I was interested in what drives or what the decision guideline is to cancel a show based on attendance, rather then weather or medical issues with actors or crew. In this case the show is small enough that I ended up defacto SM due to being the only one left. I had been called in to fix sound and lighting issues and run sound and lights, but since the director was also 50% of the cast for one weekend, I had to handle the rest of theatre-related duties.

Ultimately the director made the call to cancel last night, though he did talk to me about it first- more because we are friends then because I was SMing.

I guess a lot of it comes down to scale. This performance 'space' is a storefront in our small downtown, half of a former resturant in fact. "Intimate" doesn't begin to describe it. We often put on shows with just a few audience members, although of course we always want to pack the house!

The main thing I think we were looking to avoid was a situation like hbelden experienced. The director approached the couple much same way On_Headset did, offering a refund, comp tickets, etc. Everything worked out okay and the couple -did- come to today's performance.


err... sorry if this seems scatttered, i'm pretty tired from the last few weeks but i wanted to reply. also, the text box for replies keeps bouncing up and down which is maing data input quite... challenging. unf.

lsears

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Re: RUNNING: How do you decide when to cancel a performance?
« Reply #8 on: Mar 21, 2011, 06:56 am »
The snow this winter was a challenge to audiences.  We had a matinee with 53 people, in a house with a 850 capacity.  It was a two show day with an actor talkback scheduled after that particular show, so we did the show anyway.  We moved everyone to seats down front, the audience was great, the talkback had a very different feel to reflect what became a very intimate performance.

nick_tochelli

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Re: RUNNING: How do you decide when to cancel a performance?
« Reply #9 on: Mar 21, 2011, 09:44 am »
House count should not dictate if the show goes up or not. I've had shows play to a house of 2. If there's a butt in the seat, the show goes on. I feel like the only reason to cancel a performance is during the tech period leading into previews. If you have the ability to cancel a first preview because you need the extra tech time: go ahead.

It's funny because I always had this "dream" I guess you could call it that when I'm working on a horrible show that no one will show up and I'll be able to cancel the performance and save myself the torture of seeing the bad show one more time. Hasn't happened yet, and I hope this is a dream that never comes true.

MatthewShiner

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Re: RUNNING: How do you decide when to cancel a performance?
« Reply #10 on: Mar 21, 2011, 08:15 pm »
Not stage manager's call - it's company management/general management's call - unless . . . unless it's a safety or artistic issue . . .

1) Due to the fact I have four understudies on, I don't think it's safe to do the show.
2) Due to the fact 75% of the dimmers are out, the lighting is just not adequate for the show, and without the design of the lights - the show is not the same.

BUT even then, I still need general management to sign off.

Maybe we just do a stage reading instead.
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sahuff.asm

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Re: RUNNING: How do you decide when to cancel a performance?
« Reply #11 on: Mar 25, 2011, 01:04 pm »
In my theatre the only time a show is ever canceled is if the power goes out and is out for longer than 20 minutes (the allotted time that we can hold our equity actors in a building with no power). 

We have gone on in the face of:

--A fire alarm that liked to go off 15 minutes before the end of Big River causing to have to evacuate the entire building and hold the show for over half an hour three separate times.

--Drowsy Chaperone; Man In Chairs father died in the middle of our run, he didn't have an understudy because he's one of those 'Come rain or shine I'll be there' actors.  Our managing director went on for him for three shows with script pages hidden around the set.

--A snow storm in December that shut down one of our major highways, people were late but we went on. 

Ah theatre :)  The show must go on!

Tempest

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Re: RUNNING: How do you decide when to cancel a performance?
« Reply #12 on: Apr 05, 2011, 02:32 pm »
Well, after last night's storms, there is no power in the theatre, so we have to cancel tonight's first preview!  The decision was made, by the producers before I even arrived for this afternoon's rehearsal.  It's just not safe to have an audience in dark hallways.
Rehearsal will go on, however, as we have a generator and enough work/clip lights to safely, if not brightly, light the stage and backstage areas.

(As can be imagined, I said several unprintable things when I arrived and realized the sound was not a compressor, but the generator out back, and then left the building, as I had come in early to do some work cleaning up the Q-lab file...)
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bex

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Re: RUNNING: How do you decide when to cancel a performance?
« Reply #13 on: Apr 11, 2011, 12:43 am »
Just went through my first cancelled show experience this weekend- run of Grey Gardens, and the actress playing Edith/Edie (the main role, she sings about 2/3 of the songs and is offstage for approximately 7 minutes of the entire show) has a throat infection and literally NO voice. She made it through Friday night's show but was really struggling by the end of the second act, and knew that there was a strong possibility that it was going to get worse and not better before Saturday's show.  She called our Production Manager Saturday afternoon, the PM talked to the producers, and they decided to cancel Saturday with a TBA on Sunday's matinee, which ended up being cancelled as well. 

Our producers don't do understudies, but apparently this is the first time something like this has happened in quite a long time. I had nothing to do with the actual decision to cancel, I was just the messenger to the cast, crew, & band. Honestly, our poor box office staff had a more stressful weekend than I did!
You will have to sing for your supper & your mortgage, your dental coverage & your children's shoes, over & over again while people in desk jobs roll their eyes the minute you start to complain. So it's a good thing you like to sing.

BARussell

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Re: RUNNING: How do you decide when to cancel a performance?
« Reply #14 on: Apr 11, 2011, 04:06 pm »
Our Producers are considering cancelling low attendane shows on the show I am currently working on, which is ridiculous since it is mostly students working on it , so even if only like 5 people show up they can pay all the professional actors. I prefer to do a show no matter what, even if it is a small house sometimes a small house can be your best house. I hope they don't cancel any.
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