Image source @ Visual China
Wen 丨 Rhino Entertainment, Author 丨 Fat Department, Editor 丨 Xia Tian
At the beginning of this year, the first issue of the word-of-mouth variety show "Drama New Life" asked several theater people was: "Can you make money simply by relying on drama?" "It drew a lot of bitter water from a few people.
Among them, Liu Xiaoye, 43, has only more than 20,000 savings, And Liu Xiaoyi just moved his studio from Beijing's North Fifth Ring Road to Yanqing at the beginning of the year, and finally said a sentence of "can earn" quite reluctantly; the only time Liu Tianqi felt that he made money was last year when he took 200,000 yuan as a youth competition at the Wuzhen Theater Festival.
Half a year after the end of the first season of the variety show, the 8th Wuzhen Drama Festival was ticketed, and all the plays were sold out half an hour after ticketing.
This kind of prosperity that seems to have "made money" is to some extent blessed by the "New Life of Drama" out of the circle. Among the 24 invited plays that have been invoiced online, including "About Planet 23", "The Story of the Chicken Farm", "Heart", "Reflection", and "Brazil", five dramas from variety shows, which are also the first batch of plays to be sold out. Including Lai Shengchuan's "Once Upon a Time", Meng Jinghui's "The Red and the Black", And "Sunrise", which Venus directed for the first time, ticket sales are basically seconds.
Behind this kind of out-of-the-loop, the ticket price of this year's Wuzhen Drama Festival has quietly increased. According to observations, this year, only three dramas from colleges and universities such as Chinese opera and shanghai opera are sold at a ticket price of 80 yuan, and the lowest price of the six dramas with higher popularity is more than 480 yuan, and the lowest price of 8 dramas is 380 yuan; of which "Once Upon a Time" has a minimum price of 580 yuan and a maximum price of 2680 yuan, which is about twice the price of the head theater in Beijing, Shanghai and other cities.
A number of regular visitors to the Wuzhen Theatre Festival told Rhino Jun that they were not sure whether to participate this year. First, because the minimum price of the plays you want to see is also high, the low-priced tickets in previous years are generally 180-280 yuan; second, this year, affected by the epidemic, there are no overseas theater troupes participating in the first year of the Wuzhen Drama Festival, and only if the cadres are screened by video, some theater lovers feel regretful.
After skipping the stall for a year due to the epidemic, the 8th Wuzhen Drama Festival seems to show the improvement of the market. But why did the Wuzhen Theatre Festival choose to raise prices this year, and is this prosperity universal to the industry? The theatre industry may not be in a position to get excited.
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A ticket is hard to find VS the rise in ticket prices, the joy and worry behind the Wuzhen mania
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Since 2013, Wuzhen has become a utopia in the hearts of many theater people and theater fans. During the 2019 Drama Festival, Wuzhen has received hundreds of thousands of tourists. And this year, this heat has ushered in another wave of rise.
A few minutes after the tickets of the Wuzhen Drama Festival, various ticket requests can already be seen on social platforms such as Weibo, Douban, and WeChat Circle of Friends. In fact, at the beginning of the fifth Wuzhen Drama Festival, there has been a "second space" for ticketing, but this year's popularity is still unexpected by the psychological expectations that many people have raised.
Previously recorded in Wuzhen, "Drama New Life" was scored 9.3 points on Douban by 32,000 people. When the last three plays of the variety show were solicited online, Huang Lei revealed in the program that the number of applicants nationwide was as high as thousands, and he had to let the three dramas perform twice. This seems to have become a kind of rehearsal for the current popularity of the Wuzhen Drama Festival.
But it also needs to be seen that there are some operational problems behind the audience's difficulty in obtaining a ticket. Many netizens who could not ask for tickets pointed out that a key reason for the sale of tickets is that there are too many scalpers. Half an hour after the ticket is issued, on the idle fish, you can already see the transfer information of hot tickets such as "Once Upon a Time", "Red and Black", most of them are written "price private chat", some public ticket prices have a certain float, and the two tickets have a price of 680 yuan for the "Red and Black" list price single 1080 yuan.
In addition, in the past few years, there have been many voices that have said that the purchase of transfer tickets has been deceived, and events such as not being able to contact the ticket issuer after placing an order, and finding that it is an expired ticket of the previous day after temporary purchase of tickets have occurred from time to time.
Another consequence of the current heat is the rise in ticket prices.
What needs to be seen is that some of the higher ticket prices also have consideration for theater operations. For example, Lai Shengchuan's "Once Upon a Time" has a performance time of 390 minutes, while the venue Wuzhen Internet International Convention and Exhibition Center Hall 3 accommodates an audience of 938 people, which is slightly smaller than the general large theater, so its ticket price of 580 yuan -2680 yuan can also be explained. Of course, the price is still slightly higher than the normal performance, before Lai Shengchuan's 8-hour "Dream like a Dream" the general ticket price range was between 180-1880.
But most of the shows are still slightly more expensive. For example, "Red and Black" and "Sunrise" staged by Wuzhen Grand Theater have a ticket price of 480-1280 yuan; several "Drama New Life" plays except for "Reflection" without seats in the Water Theater are priced at 480 yuan, and the performance time is about 30 minutes. "I want to see everything when I see the repertoire, and how can I want to see the ticket price." Similar complaints are not in the minority on social platforms.
In "Drama New Life", several dramatists have also exchanged the problem of theater ticket prices, the price of a performance is higher than the movie has become the reason why many people are difficult to enter the pit, and when selling tickets on the spot, it is also helpless for passers-by to turn around and leave, so it is necessary for everyone to understand the theater ticket price. However, the current price increase makes it difficult for many old drama fans to accept, "the head drama will basically tour, and the ticket price will be cheaper when the time comes, and it is not so difficult to grab, so it is better to wait." A regular visitor to the Wuzhen Theater Festival said to Rhino Jun.
<h2>Does drama make money? It will take time</h2>
The popularity of the Wuzhen Drama Festival may not represent the general situation of the industry.
During the recording of "Drama New Life", guest Ding Yiteng took a leave of absence to perform in Suzhou, and he was surprised to find that the performance was actually full; in early March this year, his "New West Chamber" was performed at the Beijing Gulou West Theater, and the series of performances were all sold out. Similar feelings have also been involved in several dramatists, and in the third episode of the second season of the "Deyun Dou Laughing Society" that is being updated, Liu Xiaoye also starred as the only guest.
But what needs to be considered is that the so-called "drama can make money" and someone in the industry makes money are two different things. When more "Liu Xiaoye" who has been in the industry for 20 years only has 20,000 deposits, a Liu Xiaoye out of the circle does not mean to solve the problem.
In fact, the theater industry has a clear two-eight effect, and the well-known head theater producers can still achieve profitability. As of the beginning of 2020, there are 15 happy twist theaters in the industry leader Happy Twist, and leading dramatists such as Lai Shengchuan and Meng Jinghui have also had their own theaters.
The head dramatist realizes income, one is from a relatively stable performance income, generally able to maintain a high attendance rate, the second is that compared with the general drama people, they can achieve more performances, and the more performances, the lower the cost; the third is to achieve income through sponsorship fees, advertising fees, etc. If you have your own theater, in addition to leaving a headache for general theater people, the government subsidy is also quite considerable after the annual performance reaches a certain number of performances.
The problem is that a significant percentage of theater people cannot support themselves by their own work. After the theater, producer, and performer have divided the accounts of the three parties, the industry performance generally needs to achieve a return rate of about 70%, which is especially difficult for the waist and tail performers. This leads to the income of dramatists can not go up, most of the time can only take 50 yuan rehearsal fee, many theater people need to rely on translation, training and other means to obtain more sources of income.
In addition, if the theater operation does not get government subsidies, the pressure to survive is also relatively large. According to the statistics of Zhiyan Consulting in 2019, there were 977 theaters in the country, down 13.54% year-on-year; while the number of cinemas in the same period was 12408, an increase of 14.52% year-on-year.
Making the industry big is the key.
A positive thing is that the public's awareness and consumption awareness of offline performances are improving. According to the data jointly released by Damai and Lighthouse Professional Edition, the box office of Chinese performances exceeded 20 billion yuan in 2019, with an annual growth rate of 7.29%, exceeding the growth rate of the film market; of which the theater performance revenue was 8.403 billion yuan, up 5.55% year-on-year. After the epidemic improved last year, the number of tickets purchased in October has recovered to more than 70%.
In this sense, the promotion of "New Life of Drama" to public perception is of positive significance. Huang Lei once told the media: "'Crush on Peach Blossom Garden' has been performed for about 600 times in 15 years, and according to the average theater of 1200 people, 720,000 people have seen it, which is already astronomical in the theater industry. On the first day of "The Story of the Chicken Farm", tens of millions of people watched it. ”
In addition, the continuous regulation of the market is also expected to alleviate market pain points such as scalper tickets. On August 19, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism issued and implemented the "Performance Ticketing Service and Technical Specifications", which is the first industry standard in the field of performance ticketing in China; on September 13, the "National Performance Ticketing Information Collection and Service Platform" launched by the China Performance Industry Association was officially launched, which has also become an important data source for industry supervision.
The current performance industry is emerging from the impact of the epidemic. On March 12 this year, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism issued the news that "for theaters in low-risk areas of the epidemic, the attendance rate is no longer uniformly restricted", triggering a collective "carnival" of theater people, and the "75% attendance rate" restriction that has lasted for a long time has been broken. Although there are still iterations, the industry can still operate normally under normal circumstances.
If you want to "make money from drama", it is unrealistic to rely on a "New Life of Drama" to completely overturn, and the Wuzhen Theater Festival can only be said to be an independent phenomenon. The industry to further expand the market, cultivate low-level users, solve industry problems, and explore richer revenue channels are the keys to opening up revenue for the industry.
For example, since last year, many theaters have explored new online models, Guangzhou Grand Theatre has practiced Tencent Video to do cloud screenings, and Shanghai Wenguang has joined hands with Tmall to explore the integration of content and goods, and these activities even exceed the benefits brought by the performances.
And these still need time to accumulate and explore. Attracting the audience into the theater requires more good content and more "New Life of Drama".