Thoughts on Tours

Let’s take a moment to look at the many positives of touring productions:
1. They’re so many people’s first experience of the wonderful world of theatre (Mine was Dr Doolittle at the Bristol Hippodrome in 1999).
2. They give people who possibly can’t get to London the chance to experience the magic of big productions such as Wicked, Kinky Boots and Les Miserables to name but a few.
3. They give life to a range of smaller shows which may not survive a full West End run.
4. If a show has closed in the West End it gives the production that final push for sales whilst bringing joy to fans all across the country.
5. The touring industry provides jobs to hundreds of hard working people. From the actors, to the front of house at each venue to the back stage crews to the bands, the list is almost endless.

However every few years we seem to see the same shows returning to regional theatres on their second, third, fourth ect tours. Every time you pick up one of your local theatres brochure you can almost guarantee you’ll see an advert for shows like Hairspray, Blood Brothers, The Sound of Music or perhaps Grease. Of course these kind of shows are all incredible and always offer audiences a thoroughly enjoyable evening, but I’ve been recently wondering if it’s just me who’s getting bored of seeing the same shows returning every few years? We’re now in mind-set where if you miss a show you can confidently say “it doesn’t matter, I’ll catch it when it comes back next year”.
I can’t help but wonder if new productions of the same shows are perhaps damaging smaller shows which are brand new?

We all know that going to the theatre is an expensive hobby. Due to this many regional audience members will not go to the theatre often, and so would rather go and see something they know they love and enjoy instead of taking a chance on a new show. Is this trend of producing the same shows over and over again an easy way for producers and companies to make money?

Am I reading too much into this? Is this just the fun of touring productions? Big name shows or 80’s movie adaptations are always going to be a firm favourites and maybe I should just be grateful for the fact people are still supporting the industry. After all as I said earlier, these tours are providing hundreds of jobs and are bringing joy to theatres all across the country. It also gives new actors every year the chance to star in the shows which perhaps made them fall in love with acting in the first place.

This post is basically me just thinking out loud, and I’m not even completely sure where I stand on this topic. I would love to hear others opinions as everything written in this post has come from conversations with friends, family and other audience members which I’ve gotten into conversations with.

I ran a poll on Twitter earlier today asking if people are “bored of seeing the same shows on tour every few years?”
73% of the people replied “Yes! Give us new shows!”
27% of the people replied “No! I love touring shows!”

Images courtesy of Google Images.