Small Theaters Join in Discount Plan

Fifteen small theater companies are joining forces to offer subscription passes good for seven admissions to productions by any of the participating companies.

The project is called Play7. For $77, each subscriber will receive seven admissions, valid for 380 days from the date of purchase. The tickets can be used in configurations ranging from solo admissions at seven different plays to seven admissions to the same performance of the same play.

Organizer Jonathan Winn predicts that more than 40 productions will be eligible in any given 380-day period. Ticket prices at most of the participating theaters normally begin at about $15.

Winn, an actor affiliated with Circle X Theatre Company and an ad agency employee in his day job, got the idea from a similar service in Vancouver, See Seven. He proposed an L.A. venture at a May conference organized by Theatre LA, the service and advocacy organization for local theaters, and began enlisting member theaters.

Participating companies must be “independent,” he said, defining it as “producing for the play’s sake, not as an industry showcase or for religious or other reasons.”

The companies that accepted the initial invitation all operate out of sub-100-seat venues, usually in the geographical swath from East L.A. to West Hollywood, including Circle X, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Evidence Room, Greenway Arts Alliance, Lodestone Theatre, Met Theatre, Open Fist, Robey Theatre, Sacred Fools, Theatre of Note and Zoo District. Farther afield, the group also includes Pasadena’s Furious Theatre, the Westside’s Padua Playwrights, Ziggurat Theatre and Taper, Too, a project of the Mark Taper Forum that will use the Ivy Substation in Culver City beginning next year.

Actors’ Gang, Fountain Theatre and Bilingual Foundation of the Arts declined invitations to participate, Winn said.

Use of the tickets is subject to availability, so reservations are recommended but not required. The passes can be redeemed only at the box office. “I want it to be as easy as going to the movies,” Winn said.

The project isn’t unprecedented on its home ground. In 1985-88, five prominent 99-seat companies combined to offer the L.A. Theatre Pass. Each subscriber was required to use one ticket at each participating theater in a year.

Ron Sossi, whose Odyssey Theatre was one of the Theatre Pass participants, applauded the idea of Play7 but not the ability of subscribers to use all of their tickets at one show. “You’re giving discount tickets to hits,” he said.

The See Seven program in Vancouver, which was modeled after a Toronto program, changed its rules this year to limit the seating of pass holders at a performance to about 15% of the house, said Tammy Isaacson, one of the program’s founders. She said that pass holders tended to come on the already busy weekends, especially the last weekend of a run. But she said that, overall, the program has “improved the health of the participating companies remarkably.”

In 1992 Theatre LA offered a Sampler Series, which included six tickets to specific shows at three larger theaters and three sub-100-seaters, for $66. It died after only one year. “Getting people to drive all over L.A. was the biggest problem,” said Tom Mitze, who was president of the Theatre LA board then. But that may not affect the more geographically concentrated Play7 theaters.

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Play7 tickets will be available beginning Oct. 28. For information, e-mail jonathan@play7.com.