I recently read this blog by Tommy Griffin and it got me thinking about community. I have never moved abroad and I don’t feel a connection to my homeland in the way that I think some do. I don’t feel defined by where I grew up like Tommy says he does because he is Irish, but I have moved cities a few times and I have experienced loneliness, getting to know a new place for the first time, and the anxiety of being new and needing to make new friends. Like many.

Theatre is a community – the people who make up the production including the acting company and the production team, the theatre staff and also the audience. Theatre is people. And, for me, there is just something about sitting in an auditorium full of people who love theatre and watching a show that makes me feel like I belong. I like the idea of shared experience; we are all responding to a live performance together and this makes me feel like a small piece of something bigger.

I don’t always feel in the mood to watch theatre. But even then I feel like I can still take something away from the experience. I was feeling exhausted when I went to see The Weir last Monday but as I had made sure that I could get discounted tickets (using Barclays Front Row) and I really wanted to go to the Donmar having never been there before (criminal, I know), I thought I had better go. It was an incredibly professional production and it has since received brilliant reviews but I, for some reason, didn’t feel much affection for the show at all. Not because I think it was bad or anything, it just didn’t excite my imagination. But, as I relaxed in my seat and let the show play before me, I felt relaxed. I felt part of a community of theatregoers.

There can be something really nice about being in an intimate space too. I watched Dissolve at the New Diaroma Theatre last month and at the end they dropped little bits of paper down into the audience, each with a childhood memory written on it, and it was so sweet to see peoples faces around me smiling at what was written on the papers and then afterwards hearing people talk about their own memories. We all went through the experience of the production together and it felt like we all had something in common because of it.

I have recently found out that I now have to move house and I feel a bit anxious because I know it will shake things up in my life a bit. But sometimes change is good and it forces you to meet new people and experience new things. When I first moved to London, I found so many different communities to be a part of, and I discovered so many theatres, and I know there is still a lot out there for me yet to enjoy.

Image: Crowd

Katey Warran

Katey is Marketing and Communications Officer of A Younger Theatre and is Marketing Officer at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre. She does freelance marketing including working for the New Actors Company, loves all things digital and has a passion for Applied and Community Theatre. Katey also has an interest in philosophy, enjoys singing and country music, and is a tea addict.

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Theatre tickets are expensive so we’ve drawn up a guide on how to get cheap theatre tickets in London. Whether you’re looking for discounted ticket outlets, schemes for young people, or just cheap tickets themselves, follow our guide to get the best and easy cheap theatre tickets. Be sure to check the A Younger Theatre opportunities list for discounted tickets and competitions.

Preview Tickets

Theatres offer cheaper tickets for preview performances ahead of a show opening. Preview lengths differ from West End to smaller fringe venues but as a general rule you can expect the first two to three days to be previews. Preview tickets can go pretty quick so it is best to book when new seasons or shows are first announced.

Make sure that you sign up to either the theatre’s mailing list, or follow them on social networks to know when tickets get released to be able to grab your cheap preview tickets.

Day Tickets

You don’t always have to book ahead. Turning up at the box office on the day can also buy you a ticket. Theatres in the West End often hold back on average 10-20 seats in prime locations such as the front of the stalls for day seat bookers. These are often sold at a reduced day rate. If a show is sold out day tickets are a great way for getting your hands on those must have tickets.

Hot Tip: The Royal Court Theatre has standing tickets available each day for 10p an hour before performances in the Jerwood Theatre downstairs.

Under 26 Schemes

There are lots of ticket schemes for under 26s to get reduced and free tickets. Take a look at these options:

Breeze - Regents Park  Open Air Theatre – £10 tickets
BUSH CONNECT – Bush Theatre – £10-12 tickets
Entry Pass – National Theatre – £5 tickets
FreeB – Barbican Centre – free tickets
Hampstead Theatre – Under 26s – £10-15 tickets
Mousetrap Theatre – 15-23 – £5-10 tickets
Ovalhouse Theatre – Under 26 – £10 tickets
Rumour - Watford Palace Theatre – £5 tickets
Theatre Fix – 16-26s – £5-12 tickets
Under 25′s Club – Old Vic Theatre – £12 tickets
Unicorn Theatre – Under 21 – £10 tickets
Young Vic Theatre – Under 25 – £1o tickets

Student Tickets

If you’re a student, be sure to have a look at some of the venues offering ticket deals for students:

Arcola Theatre – Discounted tickets for students
Battersea Arts Centre – £8 tickets
Gate Theatre - £15 tickets for all performances
Hampstead Theatre – £10-15 tickets
Pleasance Theatre – Discounted tickets for students
Sadler’s Wells Theatre – £8 tickets for all performances
Southbank Centre – 50% off tickets
Student Standby – Royal Opera House – £10 tickets
The Place – Discounted tickets
Young Vic Theatre – £10 tickets

Under 30 Schemes

If you’re slightly older then fear not, these schemes are for under 30s:

Access All Arias – English National Opera – £10-30 tickets
Almeida Theatre - £16 tickets each Monday
Finborough Theatre – £6 tickets during the first week
Masterclass – Free-£3 tickets and workshops

Pay What You Can

Some theatres offer tickets on a Pay What You Can basis. Generally these can’t be booked in advance and are only available in person at the box office.

Arcola Theatre – Available each Tuesday. Pay on the door.
Old Red Lion Theatre – Available each Tuesday. Pay on the door.
Theatre503 – Available each Sunday. You can pay in advance online or by phone, or on the door.

Other Cheap Tickets

Not all schemes require you be of a certain age, so here is the rest of them:

Blue Elephant Theatre – Southwark Residents can claim discounted tickets.
Free First Night – Lyric Hammersmith – Free tickets if you live or work in Hammersmith and Fulham
Friday Fives – Little Angel Theatre – £5 tickets for shows at 5pm on each Friday.
Get Into London Theatre – West End – 75,000 discounted tickets for shows in the West End. On sale in December each year.
Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre – £5 tickets in ‘the yard’
Islington Firsts – Almedia Theatre – £20 tickets for residents/business in Islington.
Kids Week – West End – If you have children be sure to check out Kids Week. FREE children tickets to West End.
Old Red Lion Theatre – £10 Sunday tickets
Opera Undressed – English National Opera – £25 tickets on special ‘undress’ evenings.
Royal Court Theatre – All Monday tickets £10.
Southwark Playhouse – Pay-As-You-Go tickets, £10 tickets.
TKTS Booth – Discounted tickets in the heart of the West End
Theatre503 – 2-for-1 tickets for residents of SW11
Theatre in the Pound – £1 tickets for Cockpit Theatre’s monthly scratch night

Theatre Clubs

Subscription theatre clubs are given free tickets to give to their members. Some services are free but most you have to pay for. There are certain restrictions to using these services, such as not being able to talk about it. It’s secret, shh…

Audience Club – Offering complimentary tickets (with a small admin fee) for shows in the West End and on the Fringe.
PlayByPlay – £75 registration fee and then £1-3 administration fee per tickes for shows in the West End and on the Fringe.
My BoxOffice – Free to join for tickets in the West End and on the Fringe. Defined by artform. Small admin fee per ticket booked.
WhatsOnStage – Membership with WhatsOnStage Theatre Club, for free and discounted tickets. Membership fees apply.

Equity / BECTU

If you work in the theatre industry and are a member of Equity or BECTU then you may be able to claim a discount on theatre tickets. Check with individual box offices to find out if you are eligible  and don’t forget, if you’re self employed, you can also claim the tickets back as an expense for your work.

Jake Orr

Jake is the Artistic Director and Founder of A Younger Theatre. He is a freelance writer and blogger, a theatre marketer and a digital producer. He is also Co-Curator of Dialogue.

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This morning, the Royal Court Theatre announced Open Court, its summer festival (10 June – 20 July) of plays, ideas and events chosen and suggested by a group of over 140 writers.

As well as being the first project of its kind for the Royal Court, it is also the first programme to be led by the theatre’s newly-appointed Artistic Director Vicky Featherstone, who took over from Dominic Cooke earlier this month and whose first full season of plays starts in September 2013. Featherstone began this morning’s press briefing with a few words about her artistic vision, not just – as she was keen to stress – for the landmark building on Sloane Square, but for the community of writers that makes the Royal Court what it is. She said: “the new vision for the Royal Court is that the writers are going to lead the way – so nothing ‘s changing.”

But if the principles are long-standing, Featherstone – with her self-professed dislike of routine – will be doing all she can to keep them fresh. As her vision for Open Court unfurled, the sheer scale of the project became apparent; half as much would have been impressive. It includes Caryl Churchill’s suggestion of a weekly rep of six new plays in the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs in six weeks, with one company; Surprise Theatre (a hugely exciting sounding project about which not much could be said!) in the Jerwood Theatre Upstairs; and Playwright @ Your Table – a suggestion from the Royal Court Writers Tutor Leo Butler which will see playwrights such as Moira Buffini, Caryl Churchill, Simon Stephens, Roy Williams and many more, read their own plays aloud, to small audiences of five or six people in secret locations around the building.

That there were so many writers gathered at this morning’s press briefing is a testimony to Featherstone’s commitment to placing writers at the heart of the theatre’s programming. David Edridge, whose career has so far spanned three artistic directorships at the Royal Court, spoke about writers growing most when they get “outside the garret and think of theatre in a holistic way”, for instance by painting the set or making the tea. This collaborative spirit is what Open Court is all about.

Next up was Anthony Neilson, who will be working with six writers over the festival to explore collaboration through his unique devising style. He spoke elegantly about what he sees as the need for theatre to adapt: “The world is changing and I don’t think that theatre is changing fast enough to keep up with it […] It seems to me that new writers are being rewarded for writing like old writers.”

Other projects include a theatrical treasure hunt with headphones, a soap opera written by Royal Court playwrights (to be  performed in nightly five-minute episodes at the Bussey Building in Peckham) and The Big Idea – Friday night events exploring the big themes of sex, age and death through plays and talks. There’ll also be a series of events and verbatim reports, called The Big Idea: PIIGS, which will focus on those countries in the EU hit hardest by austerity (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain). Plus, a writers’ group for the over 80s and a week of plays, workshops and special events curated by young playwrights aged 8-11.

As she hands over the keys of the Royal Court to its writers for this six-week festival, Featherstone explains that she hopes the events will be taken “in the spirit in which they are meant, which is playful, serious, open, honest and ambitious.”

There’s certainly no questioning the ambitiousness of Open Court. “It’s a huge unknown,” says Featherstone, “That’s why I’m calling it a summer fling.”

Becky Brewis

Becky Brewis is Commissioning Editor of AYT. She is a freelance writer and editor and has written for Huffington Post UK and IdeasTap and reviews theatre for Broadway World and One Stop Arts. Sub-editing includes IdeasTap, Nick Hern Books and fashion and art magazines Nowness and Wonderland. She has worked for theatres and arts organisations including the Finborough, the Pleasance, the Southbank Centre, Cecil Sharp House and the Barbican Centre.

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Under the title of London, Simon Stephens’s short solo pieces T5 and Seawall are placed side-by-side in a Paines Plough, Live Theatre and Salisbury Playhouse production currently on a national tour. Whereas T5 takes us inside the mind of a woman who imagines travelling to Heathrow Terminal 5 rather than collecting her child from school, Seawall shocks with its description of a family vacation ending in a terrible accident. The pieces are delivered as successive monologues. T5 is shown in full theatrical glory, with a pristine set by Hannah Clark and inventive lighting by Malcolm Rippeth invoking an airport hotel room. This differs starkly from Seawall, where stage managers dismantle the set, leaving a black void where Alex (Cary Crankson) delivers Seawall directly to the audience.

We experience T5 through headphones; Stephens’s play becoming an internal monologue for actor Abby Ford as she moves about a hotel room, preparing to leave, stopping, dreaming and then returning to lying on the bed. The use of headphones brings about an intimacy between audience, actor and the text, with every conflicting thought whispered into our ears. However, it also leaves the piece lacking a certain climactic build in dialogue, for any raised voice becomes deafening to the audience. Perrin’s decision to internalise the piece through headphones is bold, yet T5 lacks the gutsy quality so often present in Stephens’s work, leaving the use of headphones feeling almost gimmicky.

In contrast to T5‘s highly polished design and delivery, Seawall is stripped back to basics: storytelling between actor and audience. In the performance I saw, I found it difficult to fully appreciate the transformation between the two pieces and the intensity Crankson built to deliver the punch of Seawall. This was largely due to a forced interval between the two pieces, with Crankson stopped before he began his monologue due to a member of the audience falling ill. The flow of the pieces was cut, and Crankson struggled to regain focus from an audience who had just spent a noisy 20 minutes in their seats or in the bar. While both the Brighton Dome and Paines Plough team handled the situation swiftly and professionally, it did jar the evening’s performance, ultimately making it difficult for the audience to sink back into the work and to give Crankson the attention he deserved.

Perrin’s direction of Seawall allows Crankson to work with the audience, taking them into Stephens’s writing and delivering a blow that is meant to knock the wind out of you. Crankson, with his laddish charm and thick voice, is well suited to the character of Alex, a young father who travels with his wife and child to visit his father-in-law abroad. Swimming at sea, Alex learns of the dramatic drop that happens at the sea wall, where the seabed plummets suddenly, a metaphor for the lurching drop of the stomach as Stephens coaxes out the monologue that ends in tragedy. Like any solo performance, the first few minutes are key in enticing the audience into the character’s world. Crankson achieved this, but didn’t quite manage to undo the damage done by the forced interval. Stephens’s text can only go so far, and Seawall ultimately missed the heartbreak it could have achieved.

Whilst I wasn’t won over by Perrin’s choice of direction for Stephens’s plays, the coupling of the plays does work, the contrasting approaches pulling the work in directions I wouldn’t have associated with the writing. If all our directors ever did was recreate plays as written on the page, we might as well assign the playwrights to direct their work, so Perrin should be celebrated for taking a bold risk with Stephens’s phenomenal writing. If anything, London is an experiment in theatrical form and delivery. Paines Plough might have missed the mark slightly, but at least it’s willing to do that in the first place. Directors, take note.

London is on a national tour until 24 November, including Live Theatre, Newcastle; Tron Theatre, Glasgow; and Manchester Royal Exchange. For more information and to book tickets, see the Paines Plough website.

Jake Orr

Jake is the Artistic Director and Founder of A Younger Theatre. He is a freelance writer and blogger, a theatre marketer and a digital producer. He is also Co-Curator of Dialogue.

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