After two years of the pandemic, some theaters are still observing audience reluctance. Director Christopher Rüping recently drew attention to the topic on Twitter – with the keyword #audience shrinkage.
Now he opened one of the most important stage festivals with the Berliner Theatertreffen. Ticket sales there were also more reserved than usual, otherwise tickets are often sold out within hours or days.
“At the moment, we don’t have the sales figures at the Theatertreffen that we had when we last took place analogously in 2019,” festival director Yvonne Büdenholzer told dpa. The director of the Berlin Kudammbühnen, Martin Woelffer, reports something similar.
Financial problems for private stages
“We also notice painfully that the audience does not go to the theater as naturally as before the pandemic,” said Woelffer on request. Apart from her hit “Murder on the Orient Express”, all other performances were below average. “This is existentially threatening, especially for private theaters.” He always said that corona aid had to be paid until the end of the crisis. “The crisis is not over yet.”
Restraint can also be observed at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg. Rüping presented his production “Breasts and Eggs” there a week ago. He had previously tweeted that it would probably be the first premiere since he had been doing theater that would not be sold out. “Break my heart.”
In the end there were more than 600 spectators in the premiere, said managing director Tom Till. This is still below their standard, but not a disaster. “Christopher Rüping’s tweet apparently helped at the box office.” The number of visitors developed differently than expected there, too.
Good autumn and strong slump
“When we planned this third Corona season 2021/22, we thought it would be difficult in autumn and from the beginning of the new year things would go as well as before,” said Till. “It turned out the other way around.” The autumn went extremely well with occupancy rates of 80 percent and more. With the beginning of the Omicron wave, demand dropped – and also with the beginning of the war in Ukraine. “People are scared and worried, keep their money together, don’t know how to proceed,” said director Joachim Lux.
The corona virus is still troubling the schedules. “We experienced the low point in April, when Corona also rushed through the entire ensemble and many performances had to be recast, changed or even canceled,” said managing director Till. Fortunately, sales seem to be picking up again in May and the remaining weeks before the season break in July, although they have not yet reached the usual level.
Büdenholzer: Focus on other things
In any case, the House of the Berliner Festspiele was full for the opening of the Theatertreffen on Friday evening, but tickets were still available for a few events in the coming days. Büdenholzer, whose festival now runs until May 22nd, sees different reasons for the slower bookings from the public. After two years of the pandemic, some people are not yet at the point of being back in the theater. “It also has to do with other things coming into focus. Netflix. Staying at home.” Some still avoided crowded rooms. Others, on the other hand, were bothered by wearing a mask or, the other way around, would like to have a mask requirement. She thinks that Putin’s war of aggression and the associated global political situation also played a role.
So what about the future of theatre? “The swan song of the theater has often been described. And I am convinced that the theater is so relevant that it will survive this crisis,” said Büdenholzer. “But I actually believe that theater – regardless of the pandemic – has to change in order to bind younger audiences to theaters.” That has to do with which topics you talk about, but it also has to start with going to the theater at school. (dpa)