Updated: 04 July 2010

Finance and prices

Last month I wrote about our ticket prices having to rise. That decision has been taken and the new prices can be seen by following the ‘Coming soon’ links on the right to the show pages for our new season’s productions.

As I have stated previously, this does not make us the most expensive LTG house in the country but it does mean that we will now be charging prices that more closely reflect the costs of creating the work and those of theatres working to similar standards. All we have to do now is to make sure that the quality of the work continues to support the price. Poor theatre costs as much for us to make as great theatre. Timber, electricity, paint and the thousand and one other physical elements that make a play in a material sense are bought on the open market. We pay what every other theatre, including professional ones pay. Where we have a potential advantage is that we don’t have to pay our artistes and designers and it is the quality of the acting and directing and effects that create the art experience for which we charge. The challenge therefore really comes back to maintaining our focus on the recruitment and retention of the best available talents in these key areas.

The move: another delay

The date for the return of tenders from the contractors pitching for the build has been delayed by two weeks at the request of most of them. They simply needed more time. Accordingly, the scrutiny will take place in early July and may well have happened by the time you read this.

Phil Reynolds and Ron Grey

At the AGM I awarded the Ron Grey Award to Phil Reynolds. The award is in the gift of the chairman and was inaugurated in 1997 by the then chairman, David Fletcher. It is awarded for ‘inconspicuous but valuable contribution’ and named after Ron Grey, a designer, set builder and general ‘good egg’ about the place who was the first recipient. The award itself is appropriately inconspicuous: there is no trophy or certificate.

Phil is an accomplished actor and director and is one of our casting directors, but did not receive it for those activities: they are far too conspicuous. Phil received it because of his invisible contributions as editor of our monthly programme/newsletter, for his immense work as our webmaster, archive researcher and proofreader extraordinaire (every piece of work that we emit for public consumption is proofed by him), for his tireless generation of voiceovers as the telephone voice of the theatre information message, for the mobile phone warning and other FOH announcements on show nights and for being a man who can always be relied upon for logical and analytic answers to questions posed. What would we do without him?

(Footnote: Ron Grey himself, incidentally, is sadly leaving the area shortly and we wish him and his wife well for the future.)

Contact me

If you would like more detail about anything I have said here or just want to chat – or complain – about any other aspect of the theatre that concerns you, please get in touch. I am always happy to talk.

Contact me by phone on 07763 974264, or via email to chairman@loft-theatre.co.uk.

Michael Rayns
Chairman

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