Posted on October 25, 2004

D.C. Arts Groups Enjoy Robust Box Office Rebound

Performing arts groups large and small in the Washington, D.C., area have noted a solid resurgence in ticket receipts as they close their books on the 2003-04 season, indicating a robust rebound after an attendance slump that began with the 9/11 terrorist attacks and was exacerbated by sniper attacks, two blizzards, and two power outages, the Washington Post reports.

For example, the Washington Performing Arts Society, which books plays and concerts in twelve different venues, recorded a 172 percent increase in its sold-out performances for the season just concluded. And this summer, Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts posted its best season ever for ticket sales, finishing $500,000 ahead of last year. At Arena Stage, 90 percent of full-season ticket holders renewed their subscriptions for 2003-04 performances, the highest renewal rate in recent years, and 120,000 single-ticket purchasers attended performances, the highest level in the past six years.

Managers of many of the region's sixty-plus theatrical companies, most of which are nonprofits, attribute the upturn to the rise in tourism, the resumption of school field trips, a feeling of greater economic security on the part of the theater-going public, and the increasing popularity of the Internet as an easy way to buy tickets. WPAS, for one, reported a more than 100 percent increase in sales after updating its Web site, and Arena's online sales increased by 20 percent last season, reaching nearly $2 million. "It's a theater operator's dream to have a twenty-four-hour box office and not to have to staff it," said Arena executive director Stephen Richard.

In the dark days after 9/11, some theater companies seized the opportunity to redefine and expand their specialties, giving their potential audience a wider range of choices and working to attract new audiences. "We have been directing the marketing at special audiences, and we try not to do the same thing for the same people every year," said Wolf Trap president Terrence Jones. "We have reached the Latin and black audience through programming and targeted marketing."