Stage Door News
Stage Door News
March 19, 2016… The Stratford Festival celebrated the artistic and financial successes of its 2015 season at the Annual General Meeting on Saturday morning. Artistic Director Antoni Cimolino and Executive Director Anita Gaffney reported a 3% increase in attendance and a 5% increase in revenue, resulting in a surplus of $559,000.
Revenue for the 2015 season was $60.1 million, up 5% from 2014’s $57.4 million. Attendance was 475,742, up 3% from 462,132 in 2014, and 10% from 2012. The Festival attracted more than 102,000 new patrons, and saw a 50% increase in family ticket sales. Sales to American patrons grew by 2% in 2015, leading to an 8% increase in U.S. attendance since 2012.
“When Anita and I first took on our current positions three years ago, our first priority was to stabilize the Festival while also strengthening it artistically,” said Mr. Cimolino at Saturday’s meeting. “We owe a tremendous debt to all our colleagues who have worked so hard to help us grow our audience over these past three years. We haven’t done this just by playing it safe. Innovation is essential to growth, so even as we bent our efforts toward keeping the ship on an even keel, we did not lose sight of our ultimate mission: to explore and discover.”
“Over the last three years,” said Ms Gaffney, “we’ve achieved surpluses totalling $3.1 million, enabling us to rebuild after the deficit of $3.4 million we sustained in 2012. To achieve these surpluses, we’ve worked hard to trim expenses while making space to pursue new projects in line with our strategic direction.”
The 2015 season featured 13 productions, 635 performances and about 200 Forum events specially designed to complement the theme of Discovery. The plays ranged from the classics – Hamlet, The Taming of the Shrew, Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Adventures of Pericles, She Stoops to Conquer, The Alchemist, and Oedipus Rex – to two modern works – The Physicists and The Diary of Anne Frank – and two Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals – The Sound of Music and Carousel – through to two contemporary Canadian plays – John Mighton’s Possible Worlds and Kate Hennig’s superb new play, The Last Wife, which was extended multiple times and played to sold-out houses for the entirety of its run.
Four other productions were extended to meet the demand for tickets: The Alchemist, The Physicists, Carousel, and the wildly popular production of The Sound of Music, which, together with The Diary of Anne Frank, helped drive the 50% increase in Family Experience ticket sales.
“For me, a surprising and gratifying discovery was the extraordinary popularity of The Physicists,” said Mr. Cimolino. “I had expected that a somewhat quirky work by a Swiss playwright would have a niche appeal. I had no idea there’d be such demand for Dürrenmatt. But that’s one of the great boons we offer: repertoire our audiences can’t readily find elsewhere, performed to the highest standard. There aren’t many theatres in the world that can sell out The Alchemist!”
The diversity of the playbill opened up countless avenues for discussion and exploration in the Forum. Guests included theoretical physicist Raymond Laflamme, author Margaret Atwood and Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi. Sessions explored such topics as the role of women in the Elizabethan era and in our own society; personal experiences of the Holocaust; Shakespeare and science; and details of the historic discovery of HMS Erebus, lost for nearly 170 years during the ill-fated Franklin expedition. Other highlights included a concert version of Sondheim’s Passion, featuring Cynthia Dale, and the trial of Hamlet by some of the finest legal minds in the country, including Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin.
CBC Radio’s Ideas hosted a series on Discovery at the Forum, featuring a number of former Massey lecturers, including Adam Gopnik, Janice Gross Stein, John Ralston Saul, Stephen Lewis and Adrienne Clarkson.
Roughly 30,000 people attended Forum events, thousands more downloaded Festival podcasts and tens of thousands more tuned in to hear a variety of documentaries from the Forum on CBC.
The 2016 season begins on April 19 and runs until October 30. It features Macbeth, As You Like It, A Chorus Line, Shakespeare in Love, A Little Night Music, All My Sons, Breath of Kings, John Gabriel Borkman, The Hypochondriac, The Aeneid, Bunny and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
2016-03-19
Stratford: The Stratford Festival announces increase in attendance and revenue