More Connecticut theaters move to membership models
TheaterWorks turns subscribers into members
With theaters closed for six months now, with no idea when they can safely reopen, several Connecticut theater — major players TheaterWorks and Long Wharf among them — are switching to a “membership” format for the forseeable future, offering online productions for a monthly fee. Instead of a subscription to a preset schedule of shows, there’s a monthly membership fee, with the promise of something happening every month. For now, that means online shows and other virtual events.
The new system offers a way for theaters to continue to produce shows and for their previous subscribers, and new fans, to join them. The membership model is more fluid, more conducive to a world where scheduled things don’t always happen as planned.
After pushing back its entire 202021 season, TheaterWorks last month announced an entire new season, delivered in an entirely new way. The theater was already close to a year-round operation, usually taking a break only for the month of September. The new plan offers a show of some kind every month for a year, starting Sept. 27. For the first several months, they will all be virtual offerings. The first, available for streaming Sept. 27 through Oct. 10, is a Zoom-based reading of a new musical, “At the River I Stand.” The hope is to eventually offer live shows again, with tickets for seats (rather than livestreaming codes) built into the membership.
The TheaterWorks membership plan comes in several tiers: Single ($20.21 a month or $195 a year), “Household” ($35
month/$375 a year; the same as single except it comes with two seats rather than one for whenever live theater resumes); and “Pay It Forward” ($75/$900, with four seats and a donation to assist the theater in giving live streams to students).
“We are hoping people are willing to stay interested,” Freddie McInerney, TheaterWorks’ director of marketing and communication, says. “We wanted to
create something as fluid as possible, so our audience can stay invested and connected.“Changing formats also marks a change in how the theater approaches projects, she says. ”We needed to stop saying ’We can’t do this because our 5000 subscribers expect ’X.’
Long Wharf continues to evolve
When the COVID-19 closures hit, the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven announced that while the Long Wharf building would be closed for a year, the company would look to develop works in safe public spaces and online, works that touched on contemporary themes and bore the umbrella title “One City, Many Stages.” Under the leadership of a new artistic director, Jacob Padrón, and a new managing director, Kit Inguie, the season kicked off in September
with an opening event and the latest edition of the community-centered “New Haven Play Project.”
Also this month, Long Wharf introduced a membership plan. It costs just $10 a month.
The theater also offers a one-year $150 “Household” plan. Members receive
“all access to our full range of digital and emergent programming, plus perks,” as the Long Wharf website puts it. Those perks include a fashion show, discounts at a new Long Wharf gift shop, discounts on takeout from local restaurants and “thoughtfully curated surprise gifts.”
Yale Cabaret stays flexible
Yale Cabaret, the professional-quality, experimentally minded, basement dinner-theater space run by Yale School of Drama students, has for decades had a “passbook” plan where a bunch of tickets
can be bought at once and then used in whatever way the buyer chooses: multiple seats at a single performance, a single seat for several different shows, or other arrangements.
This season, the Cabaret has a new membership program that allows access to 15 productions (each of which will have three online performances over a single weekend), an online “Cab gallery” of visual art, film and sound projects, plus a new membersonly “Cab Potluck” series described as “community-centered event[s] focusing on connection” in which participants share their own art based on a theme.
Yale Cabaret memberships are $40 per semester or $70 for the whole school year, available through yalecabaret.org.
Membership theaters are not a new concept, and may be the wave of the future. Many theaters, including such heavy hitters as Chicago’s Steppenwolf, Washington D.C.’s Woolly Mammoth and Seattle’s A Contemporary Theater (ACT) in Seattle, Washington, have been offering membership plans for years. Now, coronavirus has made the model a necessity.
“Membership models are hot now,” TheaterWorks’ Freddie McInerney affirms.