Theatre takes a holiday

Mustard Seed Theatre's
All is Calm

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So here it is the day before Thanksgiving. The winter holidays are upon us and I find myself asking the Big Question I always ask around this time of year: why do movie producers and theatre producers have such completely different ideas about what their audiences want?

OK, maybe that's not a Big Question most folks ask as the big feast days approach, but as someone who has been appearing in and writing about theatre for decades I can't help musing on the difference between the stage and screen calendars right now. Delivery Man and the second Hunger Games movie opened last week. This week we get Frozen, Black Nativity, Home Front and Oldboy. The week before Christmas we get Inside Llewyn Davis, Saving Mr. Banks, and Walking With Dinosaurs. Christmas week it's 47 Ronin, Grudge Match, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The Wolf of Wall Street, and limited releases of August: Osage County and Labor Day.

Clearly, the film folks expect lots of people to show up at movie theaters. And it's not hard to understand why. Most of us are in a festive mood and many of us are taking extra days off work; why not check out a highly advertised movie? I'm retired now, but back when I was an IT manager at AT&T the entire department would practically shut down for most of December. Taking in a weekday matinee is a real treat if you're a working stiff. So is going to an evening show and staying out late.

Sister Act

Theatrical producers, though, avoid the big holiday weeks like the plague. Right now, for example, we have a whopping total of three live theatrical productions running and two of them (Peter Pan at the Florissant Civic Center and Sister Act at the Fox) are road shows. The only local product is Mustard Seed Theatre's much praised musical All is Calm: the Christmas Truce of 1914. And that's only true because the show was extended past its intended closing date of November 24th due to high ticket demand.

There will be a similar dearth of theatre Christmas week. A dozen shows are opening next week. Eight of them are running for two weeks or more but only one—the Rep's Mousetrap—will still be around after December 22nd. Most producers just don't want their shows to be running on major holiday weeks even when (as is always the case with Thanksgiving and this year with Christmas as well) they wouldn't be asking their actors to work on a holiday.

Why is that? The film and theatre audiences are hardly independent groups. If folks are more willing to see a movie over the holidays wouldn't they be equally willing to see a live show?

I don't have an answer to that question. Could it just be habit? Are theatrical producers just assuming audiences will be light over the holidays? Or could it be that, after years of knowing there won't be any theatre going on, audiences just don't look for it? Could some enterprising company make a killing by opening a show just before Christmas?

If you have thoughts on the subject, share them by leaving a comment. I'll check 'em out right after I get back from seeing the second Thor movie before it leaves town.