This article is from the WeChat public account: Yiyuguancha (ID: yiyuguancha), text / Bono.
The theatrical market in 2022 is "quiet".
On the one hand, on the consumer side, repertoire performances and drama festivals have been cancelled and postponed, making theater fans wait until they are "bald"; On the other hand, it is the helplessness of practitioners, affected by the cancellation of performances, dramatists are busy setting up the stage while busy dealing with cancellations, dramatist Wei Jiayi told Next Entertainment Observation (ID: yiyuguancha) that last year has been in the process of "continuous cancellation and continuous planning" over and over again, many works can be performed, but also subject to the "50% attendance" limit, resulting in "retaliatory consumption" delayed.
But there are also many "dawning" events in the theater market that deserve attention.
Whether it is the first Chinese version of "Frankenstein", which is hard to find, or because the hot search "Awakening Lion" on "1 yuan watching drama" has successfully come out of the circle, and the Wuzhen Drama Festival that sold out in 7 seconds, or the "new scene" that has persisted for 8 years, they are more like a light in a narrow tunnel, allowing practitioners who have been pessimistic for a long time to see hope and grit their teeth and persevere for a while.
"Frankenstein" stills
Therefore, although on the whole, this year's drama market seems to be like the secondary market, which is like "the dawn is emerging, but the tunnel is long", but behind the pessimism there are also new products worth looking forward to, and these forces will finally converge into a prelude to 2023 - creators continue to make efforts to create high-quality scripts; The "thin water and long stream" of financing in the theater industry not only gave practitioners a breather, but also lifted the entire industry; The "growth against the trend" of listed performing arts companies has made investors see new hope.
In the future, under the continuous improvement of epidemic prevention policies, the continuous upward trend of the macroeconomy, and the continuous increase of favorable policies, the drama market in 2023 will also be better. The return of imported foreign dramas, and the increasingly frequent exchanges between domestic and foreign theater markets; The official announcement tour of high-quality plays such as the Chinese version of "Phantom of the Opera" will also bring new vitality to the theater market in 2023; Residents' willingness to consume has increased, and the attendance rate has continued to increase; New plays created during the "home" period enter the rehearsal and entry stage, and new plays will continue to emerge... The theater market is finally going to be revitalized.
In 2022, the theater market is not having a good time
Whether for practitioners or fans, it is really too difficult to successfully watch a performance in 2022.
Zewei, a drama fan who works in an Internet giant, is usually very busy at work, but in previous years she could maintain the frequency of going to the theater once a month or two, but when she did the year-end inventory this year, she found that she only watched one this year, and she told Next Entertainment Observation (ID: yiyuguancha) that many of the tickets she bought this year have canceled the show.
Lele, a media practitioner and drama fan in Beijing, also said that he watched only three works last year, a reduction of 80% compared with previous years, and the rest of the time was replaced by interviews with Jordan Peterson and Jimmy O Yang talk shows.
It is also not easy for theater practitioners, and it is "difficult to get to the sky" if they want to successfully perform a work.
A still from "Do You Want to Eat Ice Cream"
Wei Jiayi, the director of "Good Show" and dramatist, has cancelled his new play "Do You Want to Eat Ice Cream" this year many times due to the epidemic and other reasons. He wrote in the public account of Haoxiang, ""Do You Want to Eat Ice Cream", the original innovative drama of 2022, was announced four times in March, June, August and December", but in the end, it was only performed once in August and completed 6 performances. Wei Jiayi told Next Entertainment Observation (ID: yiyuguancha) that at that time, the performance was canceled, but it was still constantly planning new performances, "at that time, I was mainly dealing with cancellations every day", he said, and last year has been in the process of "constantly canceling and constantly planning".
These cancelled performances included both performances in the theater and the crew's performances at the Aranya Theatre Festival.
In June this year, Aranya Theater Festival issued an announcement, saying that "due to the impact of the new crown epidemic, the Aranya Theater Festival Organizing Committee, after comprehensive consideration, regretfully decided to cancel the Aranya Theater Festival originally scheduled for June 30-July 10, 2022." A netizen said on Weibo, "Aranya really satisfies everyone's beauty and longing for art... I sincerely hope to see each other again next year."
It rained overnight, and not only Aranya, but another high-profile theater festival was silently postponed.
The Wuzhen Theater Festival, which was held in October, quietly rerouted to the end of November this year, postponed for more than a month, of course, for theater fans and theater practitioners, being able to perform is already the biggest victory - this is much milder than the news that the 2020 Wuzhen Theater Festival announced that it will be postponed to 2021, and even Huang Lei said in a media meeting, "This year is difficult, but by no means the most difficult one".
Wuzhen Drama Festival 2022
Even if it can be successfully performed, the drama market in 2022 does not seem to be able to wait for the "retaliatory consumption" that the outside world has been proclaiming, and one of the factors is that the impact of the macroeconomy on residents' consumption expectations has led to the impact of retaliatory consumption. Research from the China Consumer Expectation Index Report 2022 jointly released by the Institute of Industrial Economics of the China Academy of Macroeconomic Research and Xinhua News Agency shows that in 2022, category indexes including tourism, culture, education and entertainment have shown a downward trend.
However, audiences in the theater and offline performance industries do not have the absolute mentality of "worried about canceling the performance, so they will not buy tickets when they encounter their favorite works", and when faced with their favorite plays, fans will still choose to buy tickets.
Ze Wei said that although the works she bought this year such as "I Am Not Pan Jinlian" have been canceled, she will still buy her favorite works directly after that, and Lele also told Next Entertainment Observation (ID: yiyuguancha), "As long as it is a drama I want to watch, I will buy it first." She said that if it is a favorite work, if it is canceled, there is no way, anyway, the ticket money can be returned. However, some viewers said that in the face of "watch or not" plays, psychological inertia often makes fans choose the latter, which invisibly makes the show lose some potential audiences, which in turn affects sales.
"I Am Not Pan Jinlian" stills
Moreover, even fans who want to "revenge consumption" are limited by attendance.
In July, after being locked down for more than two months, Shanghai gradually moved from shutdown to recovery, and the "Guidelines on the Deployment of "Venue Codes" and "Digital Sentinels" issued by the Shanghai Municipal Epidemic Prevention and Control Headquarters said: "Film screening venues... Seating is limited to 50% and spaced out. Wei Jiayi told Next Entertainment Watch that the theater also complied with the rules of the cinema, limiting the number of people per performance to 50%.
More importantly, the audience on the consumer side is too "tired" in 2022. In previous years, when I could still dress up and go to the theater with my friends, I was entangled in all kinds of troubles and disappeared, and I just wanted to "lie flat" at home on weekends, Lele complained to One Entertainment Observation, "I am tired and impetuous this year, and I don't have the spirit to think about these entertainment things." ”
"Ticket $1" and "Single drama sold out for 7.07 seconds"
Although 2022 has a lot of bad things, there are still many "dawning" moments in the theater market.
One day at the end of July, a somewhat "pulp" picture began to circulate on social platforms, briefly introducing the news of the online performance of "Awakening Lion": "Guangzhou Song and Dance Theater's "Awakening Lion"... Because the epidemic was eventually canceled. The picture said that because the stage has been set up and the cast and crew are ready, it is a pity to cancel it on the spot, so it was switched to online live broadcast, "one yuan ticket".
"Awakening Lion" stills
Whether in the WeChat private domain or in the public domain traffic pool such as Weibo, this news has aroused the emotional resonance of netizens because of the "epidemic" superimposed on various sad scenes that have occurred in recent years, and instantly carried out multiple rounds of forwarding on social media, and finally received more than 3.2 million viewers to pay for viewing on the day of the performance on July 21. The enthusiasm for online performances has also spread to offline, and the "Awakening Lion" performed at the Guangzhou Opera House in August was also sold out after the ticket was released.
The mobile online viewing mode of "Awakening Lion" has also made practitioners think more, corresponding to the persistence of the brand "New Scene" for many years. 2022 marks the eighth year of the establishment of Ozhevi Culture's "New Scene", which has become a bridge connecting domestic and foreign theater culture in the process of cooperation with theaters and theaters around the world. At the end of the year, "Preliminary Evidence" once again became a fire that ignited the theater circle, this work scored 9.5 on Douban, and also caused many netizens to "press the head Amway" on social media, entering 2023, the popularity of "Preliminary Evidence" is not reduced, some netizens said on Weibo, "What is the situation, the first time I saw it was actually sold out".
Not only "Awakening Lion" and "New Scene", but also the Wuzhen Theater Festival has allowed the outside world to see the real reaction of the consumer side.
At the end of November, Wuzhen was already full of winter, and the development of the epidemic was erratic, but it still could not stop the enthusiasm of theater fans. On the day of the opening of the Wuzhen Drama Festival, which was postponed for a month, "can't grab tickets" became the biggest cry of theater fans, on social media, many theater fans "asked for tickets", and Shi Hang also continued the practice of asking for tickets for many years, pinning on Weibo, saying that "asking for tickets, exchanging tickets, contacting, and asking for help will remain at the top until the end of the festival."
According to Zhejiang Daily, the tickets for the Wuzhen Drama Festival were all sold out in half an hour, and the data report released by the Wuzhen Drama Festival also showed that the fastest single play sold out in only 7.07 seconds, the highest peak number of participants reached 150,000 people per minute, and the number of participants in the whole online ticket purchase reached more than 260,000.
Wuzhen Drama Festival data war report
Behind the 7.07-second fastest ticket sales record of Wuzhen Drama Festival, of course, there are the brand characteristics of Wuzhen Theater Festival, in the streets of Wuzhen can not only meet artists, but also have close contact with improvisational theater, installation art, puppet theater, etc., immersion in the fun that theater brings to every theater lover is by no means comparable to a play.
However, it also shows that the domestic drama market still has huge consumption potential waiting to be released, and the methodology model of "drama+" can still be copied, precipitated, and reused more.
In 2023, the drama will surely resonate
In fact, not only the consumer side still has the motivation to "buy, buy, buy", from the supply side, whether it is creators, investors or large companies, their performance also brings more new confidence to the theater market in the new year.
Looking at the financing events in the drama market in 2022, according to incomplete statistics from Next Entertainment Observation, both Yanjia Culture, an immersive offline new entertainment service provider, received strategic investment from Infumeixun, and online ticket search and booking platform SeatGeek also received a $238 million Series E financing led by Accel Partners in September. This shows that the value of the offline performance market is still seen by the market, and it also allows practitioners of offline performances to breathe.
Jack Groetzinger, co-founder and CEO of SeatGeek, believes that the pandemic has fundamentally reshaped the way people think about how they want to spend their precious time outdoors, saying after securing funding: "This new funding allows us to increase our support for our customers because we all want to make this stagnant industry better." ”
In fact, the number of financing in the theater market this year is not much, which is also closely related to the financing fundamentals of the entertainment industry.
According to the "2022 China Cultural Industry Investment and Financing Report" recently released by the Cultural and Creative Finance Research Center of the National Institute of Financial Research of Tsinghua University, from January to November 2022, the overall financing number and financing amount of the cultural industry investment and financing market decreased by 50.1% and 82.5% respectively year-on-year. The number of financing events in the private equity market and the M&A market decreased by 42.1% and 36.3%, respectively, compared with the same period in 2021.
From the creative side, creators have continued to work hard during the epidemic and created many high-quality new works. As early as 2021, of course, Damai has paid attention to the script problem, of course, Li Jing, the director of the play, once told Next Entertainment Observation (ID: yiyuguancha) that one of the problems faced by the Chinese musical theater industry is the lack of professional creative talents and good scripts.
In 2021, Damai "Of course there is a play" launched the "New Musical Incubation Program Fly Plan" and "1+1 Young Directors Drama Manufacturing Program" to incubate new works from 0 to 1, and after the launch of the drama "Mixed, Folded or Salad" in that year, Barley's "Of course there is a play" "Tannin" in 2022 has once again attracted public attention, and is also the "protagonist" behind the 7.07-second sell-out news of the Wuzhen Drama Festival.
From the perspective of performing arts companies, Songcheng Performing Arts is used as an entrance to spy on the offline performing arts market, and its Q3 performance in 2022 is higher than expected. According to the financial report, in 2022Q3, Songcheng Performing Arts achieved operating income of 276 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 1.66%, but the net profit attributable to the parent increased by more than 93% year-on-year, achieving a net profit attributable to the parent of 105 million yuan, and a net profit attributable to the parent after deduction of 125 million yuan, also an increase of 140.16% year-on-year. According to CSC Investment Research Report, Songcheng Performing Arts Q3 revenue decreased slightly year-on-year, but the profit improved significantly, and the net profit attributable to the parent in a single quarter was 105 million yuan, the second highest quarterly performance since the epidemic in 2020, second only to 246 million yuan in 2021Q2, mainly due to the company's Q3 performance performance gradually recovered and ushered in growth, which was significantly reversed compared with the closure of most scenic spots in the first half of the year.
Song Cheng Performing Arts 2022 Q3 financial report
The most exciting thing for fans is probably the announcement of the national tour of the Chinese edition of "Phantom of the Opera" on the penultimate day of 2022. On December 30, it was officially announced that the Chinese version of "Phantom of the Opera" will premiere at the Shanghai Grand Theatre on May 3, 2023, and will start a national tour. According to public information, the three actors Ayunga, Liu Lingfei and He Liangchen will become the first phantoms on the Chinese version of the stage. This undoubtedly brings new vitality to the theater market in 2023.
In 2023, under the continuous improvement of epidemic prevention policies, the continuous upward trend of the macroeconomy, and the continuous increase of favorable policies, both theater practitioners and fans will have more confidence, and the drama market in 2023 will be better.
In the future, there will not only be a Chinese version of "Phantom of the Opera" in China, but also with the return of imported foreign plays, domestic and foreign theater market exchanges will become increasingly frequent.
A still from "Phantom of the Opera"
In fact, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism also issued the "Guidelines for Epidemic Prevention of Performance Venues" in December, proposing that "in principle, there will be no restrictions on the proportion of consumers received by theaters and other performance venues", and with the rising willingness of residents to consume in 2023 and the continuous efforts of policies, the box office of the theater market will continue to recover.
In addition, as mentioned above, during the "stay-at-home" period of the epidemic, new plays created by creators have entered the rehearsal and entry stage, whether they are small-cost or large-scale productions, will continue to emerge and bring prosperity to the market.
Theater practitioners and theater fans have been waiting for too long, and 2023 has also been given too much expectations, I hope that all "thoughts and memories" will have an echo in 2023.
*Zewei and Lele are pseudonyms