For the past three years Drama and Dance performances have been free making these events affordable for families of the performers, students, and the community.
Starting next semester, Spring 2023, Delta will resume charging for dance and drama performances. Prices are expected to stay under 10 dollars along with an opportunity to buy tickets at half price called “student rushes” for students with a student ID or Mustang Pass.
“It is a strongly held belief in the performing arts world that what they do has a value and asking people to even pay a modest amount for it, enforces that value,” said Dean of Arts and Communication Chris Guptill.
Performances have been free but not because sponsorships have been involved.
“You might note that the athletics have stopped charging and the reason that they stopped charging was that they got a specific outside the college funding to pay for that for a period of time. I’m not quite sure how long, but they got a grant and we never did that,” said Guptill.
Over the past three years, the department was able to hire a full-time box office staff since the original box office staff retired, making the ticket buying process difficult to manage. Now that new staff is in place, tickets are being priced once more.
“The person who managed the box office retired and wasn’t replaced so we did not have a box office staff. We didn’t have a full time box office staff, so it’s fairly difficult to manage all of this, the instructional event if you don’t have a staff and so we opted to not charge primarily because we no longer had the resources to manage it and we now have a full time box office staff person and a half time box office staff person so we are reinstituting it,” said Guptill.
While there are positives of free tickets since free things are the best things, what happened behind the scenes of the performance “Frankenstein” begs to differ.
“The run for “Frankenstein” was fully booked before we even opened,”said Drama Professor Greg Foro, who directed the play. “Normally this would make staff and students elated as we headed into the run of the show. The trend we have noticed over the past few semesters, however, has been one where anyone could reserve as many tickets as they would like. Because tickets were free, there were really no limitations. The result would be that the show would appear sold out and this would discourage many potential audience members from coming to the theatre as they believed that they would be turned away at the door. In reality, not all of the reservations would be claimed, and we would end up performing for half-empty houses.”
Although “Frankenstein” appeared to be sold out, 10 minutes before the curtain, 42 tickets were unclaimed out of the 100 tickets sold. The 42 tickets were then given away to those waiting outside the theater, leaving those who showed up late angry that their spot and tickets had been taken.
“This is not an efficient system and I believe there is a better way,” said Foro.
“I think that resuming charging has become a necessity because people wildly abused the free tickets system,” said drama actor Imri Tate.
Putting prices on tickets may be the best option for both the audience, performers, and behind the scenes people, especially to avoid any issues that occur with the free tickets system.
More details on ticket prices and the student rush will be coming in the near future.
“It breaks my heart to have to go back to a payment model because as a very low income student, the free shows made it so much easier on me to see shows and for my family and friends to come see me in shows, but with the free model some of them couldn’t see me anyway. I hope they keep the prices low so it’s not so much of a hardship for people to see shows at Delta, but it’s absolutely necessary at this point,” said Tate.