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Back in April, the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera announced fairly ambitious plans to lure back audiences gone missing since the pandemic shutdown. dj lights moving head
The pilot programs, funded by the Richard King Mellon Foundation, were developed based on feedback from focus groups. Participants said barriers to attendance included the cost of bringing the whole family; the price and inconvenience of child care; and the hassle of driving and parking Downtown.
So how’d it go?
Fairly well, says CLO executive producer Mark Fleischer, though results varied widely by initiative.
The Family Pass program, offering $10 tickets for kids, “was a real success for us,” Fleischer says. More than 1,500 tickets were sold at this special price. That’s a bit under 3% of total admissions for the season. More importantly, he says, “42% of those households were new to the CLO.”
“That means we had some young people see the show that probably wouldn’t have seen it otherwise,” he says. “And that inspires and builds an audience for tomorrow.”
Show Care, in which CLO Academy faculty curated themed music and arts-and-crafts activities for kids while their parents attended a matinee, proved less popular. Just 15 families took advantage of the service, Fleischer said.
Then there was the CLO Show Shuttle, offering ticketed Molly’s Trolley rides from four shopping centers on selected dates. Only once all season (for a performance of “West Side Story”) did the service attract the 15 ticket-buyers required to activate a shuttle run.
Still, said Fleischer, “For a pilot year, I feel proud of all the things we did.”
He said the CLO’s enhanced pre- and post-show programming also proved popular. Guest speakers — like a jazz expert who talked before a performance of the Billie Holiday tribute “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill” — each drew 70 or so ticket-buyers, and post-show talkbacks drew even better.
It’s no surprise that making tickets cheaper, as with the Family Pass, draws a crowd. (The savings averaged $45 a head.) But what about folks who said they’d come if someone minded their kids for them, or if someone else drove … but who then stayed home anyway?
With Show Care, Fleischer noted that use of the service grew as the season wore on, suggesting that word-of-mouth and other marketing helped. Also, he noted, more people reserved spots than showed up, perhaps because there was no downside to canceling a free service.
With the Show Shuttle, he said, “maybe people don’t want to give up their car” after all. But he noted that shuttle users tended to be older, suggesting that awareness campaigns might be better targeted.
Another factor, Fleischer acknowledged, might be that some people who said barriers to their attendance were economic or logistical were really just masking lifestyle changes. “I think there’s a group of people that post-pandemic shutdown went, ‘I like being home,’” he said.
Whatever the reasons, the pilot programs were not enough to reverse larger sobering trends.
The CLO’s 2024 summer season drew 52,000 — down about 20% from attendance in 2023. Some of that drop was expected: Instead of staging all its shows at the 2,800-seat Benedum, the troupe “right-sized” its venues by producing three at the Benedum, one at the smaller Byham, and two at the intimate CLO Cabaret. The move lowered costs along with seating capacity. (Overall attendance at CLO productions, including non-summer-season shows like “A Musical Christmas Carol,” also dropped about 20%.)
As with all nonprofit arts groups, ticket sales and other earned income are not the CLO’s lone source of revenue. But with admissions dropping, the troupe is relying more heavily than before on donated income. And its 2025 budget will be about $8 million, Fleischer said — a steep decline from this year’s $11.25 million.
That cut is reflected in next year’s schedule. The new summer season, which opens in June with “Camelot,” includes just three productions, half as many as this year.
The CLO isn’t the first troupe to scale back; Pittsburgh Opera, for instance, is staging five shows this season, down from its traditional six.
And who knows what changes are to come.
“We’re really trying to figure out a new model for the company,” said Fleischer. “That’s the challenge. We’re trying to figure out who we are in this new world.”
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