ticket prices

Live Event Ethics: The Open Letter To Paul McCartney

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Ryan Ritchie, an LA witer, has written “An Open Letter to Paul McCartney Regarding Ticket Prices” in which he raises an important topic of societal ethics. His lament in part,

I had this great idea. I would surprise my parents with tickets to your Friday show at SoFi Stadium. Naturally, I would also be in attendance. The tickets would have been ideal because Mother’s Day just happened and my mom’s birthday is May 21.

…I don’t think my parents — individually or as a couple — have been to a concert. Ever. … wanted to change that by surprising them with tickets to your show. It would have been great…[but] sadly for us, when you look into that sea of 70,000 people Friday night at SoFi, we won’t be three of them because your prices are too expensive for my surprise gift. According to Ticketmaster.com, tickets for section 526 — which appears to be the absolute worst seats at the venue — are $190 each. Or, if we want to sit in section 539, tickets are a steal at $174. Let’s, Paul, for the sake of argument, say I want my parents to, you know, actually see you, so I buy three seats in section C129. Those seats are $450. Each. And, as Ticketmaster reminds me, “+ fees.”

I can’t surprise my parents with tickets to see Sir Paul freakin’ McCartney only for them to sit halfway to LAX. That’s like giving a child a toy without batteries. A $600 toy, mind you….Conservatively, if I bought the cheapest tickets, I would be looking at $700 to take my parents to your show and sit far enough away that we will not be able to see you. To be frank, Paul, that sucks. I don’t want to spend that kind of money to stare at the big screens that I am sure will be on stage. Certainly, you’ve heard of YouTube. My parents and I can get the same experience tomorrow morning for much less money.

Paul, serious question: What the fuck?.

…

“What the fuck” indeed.

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Ethics Quote Of The Week: Prof. Jonathan Turley

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

“It is astonishing to see the pride of that such individuals taken in their embrace of gender or racial discrimination as a tool of social justice. They see no moral or legal problem with penalizing people due to the color of their skin or their gender. Instead, they foster the same blind stereotypes and prejudices that once segregated societies on these grounds. They learned the history but not its lesson.”

—-Blogging prof Jonathan Turley, writing about a Canadian director who has insisted that white, “cis” males pay a higher ticket price to see his film. It’s called “Justice Pricing.”

Observations:

1 Turley is wrong: there’s nothing astonishing about it, as I just explained.

2. Now we know there is a place for all the anti-democratic social justice warriors who would be very happy to see the U.S. establish unconstitutional “Justice Pricing,” “Justice Hiring,” “Justice Promotions,” “Justice Convictions,” “Justice Admissions,” “Justice Expulsions,” “Justice Taxing,” “Justice Elections,” “Justice Sentencing,” “Justice Justice” and more: Canada.

3. “Justice Pricing” is about as Orwellian as it gets, don’t you think? Continue reading →

The Last Word On The “Hamilton” Cast’s Harassment Of Mike Pence

/ Jack Marshall / 55 Comments

death-of-a-slaesman

In the end, after several posts and a large number of comments about this incident, I am convinced that, more than anything, it shows how little the American public, even well-educated, culturally-engaged members of the public, and even participants in the entertainment profession understand and respect the importance of live theater.

This, at least, is no surprise. The New York Times recently reported that a survey had revealed that symphony orchestras no longer are viable without charity: fewer and fewer, mostly aging, patrons bother to attend concerts any more. Live theater is heading down the same path, probably irreversibly. Theater will never hit rock bottom, of course; it will always be possible to put on a show like Judy and Mickey, and live theater can exist as long as there is a single talented performer, a street corner, and a crowd. But theater is dying as something relevant to society, and that is a tragedy. Each generation goes to live theater events less and less. I have not seen the up-dated figures, but in the Nineties a study showed that Americans under 30 were more likely to have called a phone psychic at least once in the past year than to have attended a single live theater performance in their entire existence on earth.

The role of theater in society has  been extolled by Aristotle and social critics through the centuries as a unique and important community activity in which citizens of all social strata engage in the ancient ritual of sitting together in a darkened theater, and not only experience the events being portrayed on stage but experience it communally, hearing and feeling the reaction of others. Now that social force has receded to the vanishing point. A vacuum has taken its place. Movies seldom explore serious issues any more, and younger audiences have increasingly retreated to watching films online, and often alone. The potentially life-altering experience that is being lost is hard to describe when someone hasn’t experienced it. The power of the medium to communicate ideas and concepts vividly and to change minds and lives is unmatched, and unmatchable. I have seen it. I have experienced it. I have even helped make it happen.

The department store mogul Bernard Gimbel attended an early performance of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” on Broadway in 1949. The plight of Willy Loman, an aging traveling salesman being pressured out of the only employment he had ever known, so shattered Gimbel’s world view that he couldn’t sleep. The next day, he called his managers together and told them and all of his stores that no over-age employee was to be fired. Alfred C. Fuller of the Fuller Brush company asked Miller to dinner to seek his guidance on how to  keep his Fuller Brush salesmen from quitting. That’s power. That’s wonderful. We should want influential people, elected officials, business owners, policy-makers, bankers, investors and corporate executives to see that kind of theater. In today’s New York Times, Ben Brantley, the Times drama critic, explains…
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“Hamilton” Ethics Follow-Up: Somewhere In The Multi-Verse, I Am In The Audience At “Hamilton” When The Cast Decides To Abuse Its Position And The Audience’s Trust By Harassing Mike Pence, And This Happens…

/ Jack Marshall / 126 Comments

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Luckily, I had been tipped off by a friend in the production regarding what had been planned.

As Brandon Victor Dixon stepped forward and called out Pence, thanking him for attending, and then began his planned statement with “We hope you will hear us out. We, sir…,“ I stood up from my seat in the center of the fourth row, orchestra. I have a very loud voice. I said,

“Excuse me, Mr. Burr, is the show over? Or is this part of the performance?”

“It’s not part of the show, no…now, Mr. Pence…”

“That means we all can leave, right? We aren’t all being held captive while you lecture us, just Mike Pence? Is that what’s happening?”

“Well..I…Yes, yes, you are free to leave. This statement is for the Vice-President Elect. Now, if you’d let me finish…”

“Was he aware that you were going to single him out like this? If not, does that mean that every other audience member that buys a ticket to “Hamilton”—great show, by the way, though I only caught about half the words—should be ready to be singled out and told how to do their jobs by you actors? Are you pleased when you’re grocery shopping or at Home Depot or going to see a movie when the staff there recognizes you and  singles you out and tells you how to perform while everyone else stares and listens? I know that Alec Baldwin and Sean Penn take swings at people who do thing like that in the street…”

“No, this is for the Vice-President Elect only! Now if you’d just sit down…”

“I thought you said I could go!”

“You can go! Get lost! We’re trying to speak to the Vice-President elect…”
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I Can’t Decide Which Is Worse, That “Hamilton” Is So Greedy, Or That They Won’t Admit It

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

 

Hamilton

 

Producers of the smash hit Broadway musical “Hamilton,” soon to sweep the Tonys in historic fashion, have raised the top premium seat price to a record-obliterating $849.

The previous high for Broadway show’s ticket prices was $477 for the best seats to “The Book of Mormon.” The producers are taking advantage of the fact that the show has reached mania status, something like the Dutch tulip craze. Waiting lists for tickets are months long. The show is a cultural phenomenon, but it is still a show.

This musical, reinventing the genre with a hip-hop score and an intelligent, challenging book, could be that rarity, a popular musical that matters, and one that draw young…even straight!…young people back to a genre that has been rapidly declining and increasingly irrelevant to modern popular culture. So given that opportunity,and already making money hand over fist, what does the production do?

Raise tickets to an obscene level. Ensure that the tickets to other shows will rise too. Make live theater, which is already too expensive for any family to attend not named Pritzger or the equivalent, even more elite and even more inaccessible to normal, working Americans. Continue reading →