The Trinity Repertory Company’s theater is grand and full of history, one of the landmarks of downtown Providence. The productions can be lavish and spectacular – not Broadway, perhaps, but big-city. The talent is nationally renowned.
And the plays are top-shelf: The upcoming season starts with Anton Chekov’s “Cherry Orchard” and will include “Our Town” by Thornton Wilder and “A Delicate Balance” by Edward Albee. The newest play, Sarah Ruhl’s “The Clean House,” was a 2005 Pulitzer finalist.
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It’s enough to intimidate many a potential patron, and to keep others away because, in entertainment, exalted isn’t necessarily a virtue. The ticket prices don’t help, either, with the best seats commanding as much as $50 or $60.
Now, with the help of North Kingstown-based Ocean State Job Lot, Trinity is offering 10,000 tickets for the upcoming season – about one-fifth of the available seats – at a steep discount. The goal is to encourage more people to check out the theater, or to rediscover it after several years of not visiting.
Already, since last season, Trinity has offered bench seats in its upstairs Chace Theater for $10. Now, along with those bench seats, it will also offer $20 tickets for the downstairs Dowling Theater for almost all shows. The only exception will be “A Christmas Carol,” which already draws a broad audience.
Curt Columbus, who took over as Trinity’s artistic director in January, said the discounted tickets fit with his philosophy that theater “ain’t just for the elites.”
Attendance is rising already, more than 10 percent last year, to about 150,000. But Columbus wants a more diverse audience..
“I worry that the theater can become a place that’s rarefied, where only a few people feel they have the intellectual, physical or financial access,” Columbus added. “It should be a lively conversation for everyone in the community.”
Low-priced seats are a popular, effective way to draw people in, Columbus said. The bench seats last season “were a huge hit,” he said, “especially with ‘Hamlet.’ They were sold out every single night.”
Columbus praised Marc Perlman, president and CEO of Ocean State Job Lot, for his generosity in making the discounts possible. But asked whether he’d like to have more such sponsors and more discounts, Columbus said that what he wants the most is subscribers. (Season tickets are priced as low as $132, not counting senior or student discounts.)
“We are trying to have a very complex and intelligent discussion with our audience,” he said. “We want to entertain, enlighten and engage, and that happens over time. So the notion of lowering the price barrier is so that people will come to us and say, ‘Oh, for a couple of bucks more, I can be a subscriber, I can get premium seats, and I can have this textured and long-term conversation.’ ”
Trinity is also working to make itself more welcoming in other ways. It has changed its logo, with a new look that Columbus described as “much more rough-hewn and handmade.” It has revamped its lobby and its magazine, Trinity Square. And it plans to create new “affinity groups,” Columbus said, to attract more people in their 20s and 30s.
It’s not that Trinity is changing what it is, he stressed. It’s just trying to look a bit less stodgy and more inviting.
“We’re trying to say, ‘It’s for everyone,’ ” he said.
And the plays are top-shelf: The upcoming season starts with Anton Chekov’s “Cherry Orchard” and will include “Our Town” by Thornton Wilder and “A Delicate Balance” by Edward Albee. The newest play, Sarah Ruhl’s “The Clean House,” was a 2005 Pulitzer finalist.
It’s enough to intimidate many a potential patron, and to keep others away because, in entertainment, exalted isn’t necessarily a virtue. The ticket prices don’t help, either, with the best seats commanding as much as $50 or $60.
Now, with the help of North Kingstown-based Ocean State Job Lot, Trinity is offering 10,000 tickets for the upcoming season – about one-fifth of the available seats – at a steep discount. The goal is to encourage more people to check out the theater, or to rediscover it after several years of not visiting.
Already, since last season, Trinity has offered bench seats in its upstairs Chace Theater for $10. Now, along with those bench seats, it will also offer $20 tickets for the downstairs Dowling Theater for almost all shows. The only exception will be “A Christmas Carol,” which already draws a broad audience.
Curt Columbus, who took over as Trinity’s artistic director in January, said the discounted tickets fit with his philosophy that theater “ain’t just for the elites.”
Attendance is rising already, more than 10 percent last year, to about 150,000. But Columbus wants a more diverse audience..
“I worry that the theater can become a place that’s rarefied, where only a few people feel they have the intellectual, physical or financial access,” Columbus added. “It should be a lively conversation for everyone in the community.”
Low-priced seats are a popular, effective way to draw people in, Columbus said. The bench seats last season “were a huge hit,” he said, “especially with ‘Hamlet.’ They were sold out every single night.”
Columbus praised Marc Perlman, president and CEO of Ocean State Job Lot, for his generosity in making the discounts possible. But asked whether he’d like to have more such sponsors and more discounts, Columbus said that what he wants the most is subscribers. (Season tickets are priced as low as $132, not counting senior or student discounts.)
“We are trying to have a very complex and intelligent discussion with our audience,” he said. “We want to entertain, enlighten and engage, and that happens over time. So the notion of lowering the price barrier is so that people will come to us and say, ‘Oh, for a couple of bucks more, I can be a subscriber, I can get premium seats, and I can have this textured and long-term conversation.’ ”
Trinity is also working to make itself more welcoming in other ways. It has changed its logo, with a new look that Columbus described as “much more rough-hewn and handmade.” It has revamped its lobby and its magazine, Trinity Square. And it plans to create new “affinity groups,” Columbus said, to attract more people in their 20s and 30s.
It’s not that Trinity is changing what it is, he stressed. It’s just trying to look a bit less stodgy and more inviting.
“We’re trying to say, ‘It’s for everyone,’ ” he said.
