Hello All,
We are starting to think of ways, as I am sure you all are as well, to do seating in a responsible, socially distant way. What I am wondering is if there might be a way to have the seat count drive how the best seating works. Some venues, including ours, have some odd set-ups, which means the "best option" for social distance seating might have to be more prescribed in advance rather than "block out 4 seats in every direction from all seats purchased".
What that means, though, is that there will also naturally develop areas of the hall where you can sell anywhere between 1 and 6 seats to the same party, and another area where you can sell only 1 or 2, and these might all be within the same pricing section. Is there a way then, to maybe creatively set things up based upon the seat count so that a 1 or 2 person reservation goes to the 1 or 2 area and leaves the 1 - 6 area for a larger party that might come later? As a presenting organization, we do a lot of negotiating with touring artists, and knowing a rough capacity is great, but not knowing whether these areas are going to be sold to groups of 1 or 6 can vastly affect the scales.
At this point in time, I am mainly thinking best seating; so no online SYOS/seating map, but if you have clever ideas for SYOS, certainly I would take that, too.
Thanks!
John
Hi John A. Moskal II and J. Paul FitzGerald,
We are considering what might need to be done with Tessitura and TNEW to assist with social distance seating and there are several conversations happening across the community about it.
The larger question at the moment is the financial feasibility of this for our members, and whether it is logistically feasible to handle other aspects of the event such as ingress/egress to the building and hall, bathroom and concession queues, and management of lobby space, to maintain social distancing throughout the experience.
So far, where members have done the financial analysis, we've mostly heard that it would not be financially feasible for members to do social distance seating for events. As a result we haven't been moving forward with features to support it.
Would doing social distance seating be financially feasible for you? We're actively listening to this conversation across the community to help us make decisions around this.
Chris Szalaj
Product Owner, Business Facing Products
Tessitura Network
Hi Chris!
Having a larger performance in our mainstage theatre isn't financially feasible for us, however, something we have been talking about is moving performances from our black box to our main theatre. We are essentially moving a show from a smaller venue into a larger venue with the expectation that we will get about the same number of seats or a little more in the bigger theatre. We also have outside presenters who are interested in using our larger venue for dance recitals or lectures.
I would personally love to see a functionality around social distancing seats. I've been manually trying to model what this would look like, but it has been difficult for me not knowing what size groups to expect for any given show (it would be much different for a recital than a comedy show). We want to maximize the number of people while still being responsible.
We have done the math for 6' social distancing in all directions and our GPs would decrease by 85% for traditional productions. Because of this, traditional productions with traditional expenses would not be viable, however, we are trying to reconceive what product could be in our large spaces with a capacity around 300 guests with social distancing. I have this sinking feeling that a plan will be announced for new programming and that it will need to have social distancing and I will have 3 days to figure it out. I have a feeling that this will be similar with other PACs because all of our CEOs are talking all of the time these days. As much as I don't want you to have to launch a large expensive project like this all to have it go unused I also don't want our CEO to hear that some other platform can do it but Tessitura can't.
I'm happy to talk more offline about it if you all would find that helpful.
Nicole
Chris,
Sorry for not responding sooner, I was out for the weekend. Similar to Nicole's response, it would not be that viable for a lot of our "traditional" programs. But we also have two smaller venues that have A) resident companies who perform there primarily for whom performing in a socially distanced version of the venue IS financially viable as well as B) the option of moving their performances to the large venue and those performances and/or our normal large venue resident company performances ARE also likely to be financially viable with a socially distanced option. We have a total of 6 resident companies, and at least 4 of them (and possibly even the last two) would have no issues turning their normal performances into socially distanced performances, possibly in a different venue than normal, and be financially viable.
On top of which, while our programming committee does not have a distinct solution right now for our normal programming, they are indeed exploring any and all options which might make it viable right now. Such as the idea of a socially distanced in person audience plus a local paid-wall streaming audience. At any rate, in one way or another, I am very likely going to have to find a solution to this issue, so any help I can get on it would certainly be appreciated.
Hi Chris Szalaj,
In common with colleagues at other sites we're exploring our options for SYOS which honours social distancing. In terms of financial viability, our cinemas don't normally run to capacity and so, being able to offer socially distanced seating which can be efficiently managed through Tessitura would be extremely beneficial so we can maximise the number of people we can seat.
Looking forward to hearing more as this conversation develops.
Grae