Theatre's in trouble

Re theatres "in trouble"1) If we don't get bums on seats we don't get to put on another production so it's necessary to be very practical about this. Perhaps the solution is three bums on seats shows and one 'for ourselves' per year?2)We did an audience survey last year at Melville and the basic answer was that our audiences like comedy, comedy, Agatha Christie, comedy, 'thrillers', comedy, musicals and comedy - preferably well known ones!Two years ago we put on "The One Day of the Year", saturated everyone we could think of with advertising and audiences were mediocre, Later we did David Williamson's "Travelling North" , results ditto. We have just finished "Murder at the Vicarage", not one of Agatha Christie's best and we had practically a sell out - I've just about given up. Against that when Stirling put on "The Crucible", everyone thought that it would only attract modest audiences and it was virtually a sell out. Musicals are almost guaranteed to be a success but are horrendously expensive in money and effort and exhaustion sets in from cast and crew.3) Remember we are (mostly) in this for fun and when it stops being enjoyable a lot get out!! Add a few egos thowing spanners in the works and life gets hard.4) most clubs are kept going by a small number of stalwarts and even they get weary eventually.5) Contentious this point but the younger folk don't appear to have much of a commitment to a club, they just go where the parts are and many of them don't ;give' muchI await with interest the rebuttals!Norma Davis. (Secretary of ITA)