Hello Tessitura Family,
I hope everyone is hanging in there during this difficult time.
We've had some recent conversations that have touched the surface of what social distancing might look like in our venue come the start of our season in September. We're trying to be prepared, so we've looked at a couple of models of how me might re-scale our hall based on passive and aggressive social distancing standards and the projected revenue loss is staggering. We also have a large number of subscribers who have already renewed and we're currently trying to tackle how to have a potential social distancing option, while not displacing our subscribers, and then the timeline for that considering that our tickets go to print mid-June.
I think we've decided that we will not be re-scaling the hall and re-seating subscribers, but would rather hold some areas behind that are distanced in which guests could opt-in to. This would of course limit the number of subscriptions and single tickets we could sell, so there really is a cascading effect with each decision.
I'm really curious to see if anyone else has broached this conversation and what options your're considering, if any?
Thanks so much!
Be well,
Michelle
We've been discussing it most certainly, hoping to have shows back on in the fall. This may be at odds with your goals of not moving people around too much, but I just wanted to share what we've been considering:
1. Cabaret Style seating - a few shows we're hoping to do would work well for this format anyway, so we're looking into building a new facility for this type of seating. I've seen other posts through the forums in which patrons would purchase a "Cabaret" seat and be seated by ushers when the arrive. 2. Zoned seating - I've heard of other companies having patron purchase a general admission zoned seat. EX: a Zone A ticket is for general admission to the orchestra/floor/etc. seating. Once you arrive, you can sit wherever you'd like in that zone, and self select your level of social distancing. 3. Limiting House Sizes in general - instead of a full show being around 200 seats for us, we're looking at doing longer runs with smaller houses, and blocking out seats to allow for purchasers to social distance themselves.4. Eliminating Fixed Seats Packages - this is definitely just an idea floating around. We haven't started renewals so we are in an okay place to reconsider our entire strategy, and allow for more on the fly seating while eliminating attachments to particular seats. This would be a membership/voucher type model, where you purchase a membership and get access to all of the season's shows based on availability. I don't know of any of the financial modeling, but wanted to drop in some ideas floating that I've seen/heard.
-Ashleigh