Confederation Centre gains from Evangeline all gone
Ticket sales for Anne of Green Gables: The Musical up 20%
Charlottetown's Confederation Centre of the Arts says it ended the last fiscal year with a $400,000 surplus, but a disappointing performance from this summer's second show at the Charlottetown Festival has wiped out those gains.
Chief financial officer Jodi Zver credits the success of the musical Evangeline for putting the centre in the black for the 2013-14 season after at least two years of losses, but she said those gains have been eaten up by poor ticket sales this season for Canada Rocks!
The theatre has seating for more than 1,000, but over 51 shows the Canadian musical revue sold only 15,500 tickets, for an average of about 300 people per show.
"Obviously, we're a little disappointed," Zver told CBC News.
"We don't know why people don't buy our tickets. We do know that, we do post-show surveys, and over 90 per cent of the people who did see the show and filled out a survey after, loved it."
The Charlottetown Festival season was not all bad news. Ticket sales for the festival's headline show, Anne of Green Gables: The Musical, were up by 20 per cent this summer over last, with 27,000 seats filled. The festival's third show in the MacKenzie Theatre, Lennie Gallant's Searching for Abegweit, sold out almost every night.
The Young Company also had record attendance.
Zver said the Centre still has hopes to make up the losses from Canada Rocks! in the next six months. If it doesn't, she said there will be some belt-tightening next year. The centre is not allowed to carry a debt, so it would start with the deficit as the first expenditure of the year.
The Centre will announce next Thursday what shows it plans to stage at the Charlottetown Festival next summer. Zver hinted that Evangeline could be making a reappearance.
For mobile device users: Did you go to see Canada Rocks?