Ticket prices

One of the things I've never liked about live theater is its expense. Even when I was playwright in residence twenty years ago and prices were a lot lower than today, they still were too high for most of my "starving writer" friends. The folks I hung with couldn't afford to see my work.

This comes to mind today because I was looking at ticket prices for the much heralded Long Day's Journey Into Night with Wm Hurt, which opens here in August, and man, even seats in the second balcony start at fifty bucks. Now going to L.A. to see my favorite opera is one thing ... but I doubt if I'll spend my limited income on this play. I'd rather see the Jack Lemmon production from TV's past anyway. Maybe I'll do that instead. Or just reread the script, producing it in my head.

When Chateau de Mort opened almost 30 years ago at one hundred dollars a ticket, it was almost embarrassing. Nobody I knew could afford it. It sold out in a snap, so the market is there. But it doesn't include "my kind of folks." Here I was feeling like a spy at my own play.