In the past, we've only allowed patrons to bring drinks into our outdoor theatre. We are now considering a plan to provide lids for hot and cold beverages into both our Bowmer Theatre (capacity 600) and our Thomas Theatre (Capacity varies by configuration 240-360).
Have other theatres implemented this? What were the results? What did you learn & change about the policy?
Thanks!
David Walper - Oregon Shakespeare Festival
Hi David -
We experimented with drinks in the theatre and we had mostly happy feedback from the patrons, so-so feedback from FOH and a couple of push backs from the artistic side (e.g. clinking ice, slurping, distracting) - all of which we were pretty much expecting. The real death-knell to the experiment for us was local liquor laws -- which after researching would have meant we would have had to buy an expensive stadium alcohol license rather than the the cheap-o non-profit sales one we have. It was too confusing for our ushers to have to police whether a drink had alcohol or not so we went back to bottled water only in the theater.
HeatherSeattle Rep