Opening Night in the Square and High Street Extension: REDUX

In the meeting with the ETC Board last evening, I presented both plans for leveraging the resources we're already putting into Godspell to gain a better return on investment. The first plan was to present opening night up in the Heritage Square courtyard, leveraging the promotional engine already in place for the Concerts in the Square series. The second was to move the production up to the High Street Theatre in Moorpark to try to glean eight extra performances out of the show.

In reviewing the High Street extension, Ralph Mauriello of the High Street Theatre Foundation gave me a very useful spreadsheet that called out the specific costs that would be associated with bringing the show there. I categorized the costs into Tiers, ranking them by which costs would be paid in order, according to the total amount taken in from ticket sales: musicians, royalties, and rent were tier one expenses; promotional, cost-recovery items, and consumables were tier two; all the way down to offering staff and performers a stipend at the lowest tier. Then I projected three scenarios: an average turnout (120 seats per show), poor turnout (60 seats per show), and sell-out (250 seats per show). For the poor turnout, we were only able to cover the tier one costs. With an average turnout, we covered all costs and wound up with about $2000 income for both High Street Foundation and ETC. And with sell-out, we both take home over $10K, which would be great. The problem was that we had no solid information on whether our "average" scenario was accurate or not. Based on feedback from others who've attended shows at High Street, our "poor" scenario seemed to be more typical. As a result, the recommendation was that we would decline the offer to move the show to High Street after the Petit run.

But on the positive note, the ETC Board was very enthusiastic about presenting opening night up in Heritage Square. My main goal in presenting this plan was to garner support within the board, and have someone work with the Heritage Square group to coordinate the logistic aspects of the performance. As mentioned before, I'll have no problem managing the technical aspects. The show will already be designed for portability. So board member Ruth Ballin agreed to chair the sub-committee to handle the arrangements. The numbers presented looked great, and many of the ETC board members already buy season tickets for tables to the concerts event, so we've already got a leg up on table sales. Concerns were raised regarding whether or not we dilute the rest of our run with this "big bang" opening, but honestly, we rarely do that well on opening night anyway. I'm excited to see how things shape up, but for now, it's a go!

That's it.

- Sean