Why Solo Seats Should Be Encouraged at the Theatre | Ep 119

And today , because we're back with this new kind of era we were already in a new era anyway , but it's kind of a more defined new era where we are looking at our first topical topic , topical topic of this podcast , and for these episodes I'm going to be doing live research as and when things go .

So , basically , when I'm in a PSHE classroom , kids ask me questions and I answer the best I can , to the best of my knowledge of being fair , of giving both sides . I had to defend Nigel Farage the other day . You may or may not approve of that . The child had misinterpreted what I said anyway , but I actually delivered a very down the middle .

I just said that I didn't like americans coming for nigel farage because , whether you agree with him or not , I think he's good at his job . And and also , leave our politics alone . That's our politics . Leave us alone , leave us be .

And so I found myself defending , as it were , nigel farage , um , and you might think he's a , a total idiot or just you know , does things wrong , but I think it's a bit like . You cannot deny that Taylor Swift is a great marketer because look at what she's built . No , no , you can't it objectively .

You can't , you could not like her songs and you might hate her as a person , which I'm hoping you that is , not you guys as listeners , because I quite like her , but I think I appreciate her more in the , the artistry and the entrepreneurship .

And the same goes for Farage like objectively , if you look at him presenting very good , very clever at what he does , and you can't overlook that for views that you might not agree with .

And so this is the tone of the podcast , um , in this sense , and when kids ask me questions and I can't answer , I have to look them up sometimes , and so that will be the same for these episodes . If you hear tapping in the background , I'm not going to edit it out . I don't have time for that .

We're making this podcast very simple for me to do , otherwise I just can't do it . Time . Time is of the essence , guys , but we are going to jump to a daily mail article that I saw . No , was it daily mail ? Oh no , I take it all back . Oh , it wasn't . I think it was . I think rightly so .

I believe it was the stage uk , um , put out an article stage . Okay , if you don't know what the stage is , the stage is , uh , well , it used to be a print media . I actually don't think it should .

It is anymore , um , but the stage is a newspaper or a media forum for all things theater and they get all of the stuff we're talking backstage you can on stage , like it's just very much . They post jobs , uh , musical theaters , west end broadway oh , you name it , it's there off off . What do you call it ? When it off off ?

Breast end fringe stuff , you know all of that kind of stuff . They never fringe one of their West End Broadway , you name it , it's there Off off . What do you call it ? Off off ? West End Fringe stuff , you know all of that kind of stuff . Edinburgh Fringe is one of their favourite times and I can't read the article because it's paywalled .

But the headline was enough to get my attention and thought this is something that we've got to talk about because this bugs me . And the headline it's an article written by Kate Maltby , and she is the chair of the Critics Circle drama section and she wrote this and the headline is Adopting a no-seat-should-be-left-lonely policy stigmatises solo theatre going .

So according to that title sounds like she's presenting the same argument that I would be looking at as well . So I believe this has come about because at the theatre , you can not book something usually if it leaves a single seat . Have you ever had that ?

Whether it's a Taylor Swift concert , whether it's going to see a theatre show or just at your local comedy gig , sometimes the booking systems do not let you leave a single seat .

Now I for one , as someone that would advocate that you go and do things on your own , whether you're in a relationship or not , would advocate going to do things on your own and absolutely getting a single seat . So I really want to see mrs doubtfire the musical . Don't know if anyone's seen it yet , but I it's coming off in april .

Guys , we're running out of time . Mom was meant to take me at christmas , or she said she was going and she changed her mind about what she wanted to do , and that's fine . But now my plan to see mrs doubtfire , you know , didn't happen and I didn't know . I've only got to april . It's february now .

To sort it out , however , I've kind of discovered a hack not hack , but I'm not paying the prices right . Theater is expensive as it is .

It always has been , and I've always been the kind of person that I will try and go and I'll try and pay , but if I can go for free or go for cheaper than I will because I'm not made of money , um and so if I can go , I'll go cheaper . So we went to see Benjamin Butter the other day because there had been a oh like a see it in 2025 deal .

I can't think what . It was much better phrase than that but there were some offers on and we got these fantastic seats that were normally 90 pounds for 60 .

And even 60 is still quite a lot , but I think if I'm paying 30 and I'm at the top and I can't even see the stage or there's some pillar in my way , that's frustrating as it is , and so I don't go that often . But for Mrs Doubtfire , there is an offer on at the moment .

Basically , it seems quite consistent that if you go onto the , I think it's the official London theatre . Let's have a look . Official London theatre . It's the official London theatre . Let's have a look . Official London theatre . It's orange . I always know that . I know if I'm on the right one . Oh yeah , I think it's . I think it's that official . Oh see it .

Live in 2025 was what their little clever thing was called . So it's definitely them . If you go to on the day and I'll do it now just to test the theory what day are we on a Saturday ? I that you're hearing on a Thursday , but you could be listening anytime . Mrs Outfire , discount available . Go to it For today .

Tickets from £28 , because if you can prepare yourself to buy the on-the-day tickets event not found , oh , because it's just about to start I can't do 2.30 . If you're prepared to go on the day look , you can't look , but you can listen . £98 tickets are now £58 , and £85 50 tickets are £48 .

And with the £58 ones , you can sit in the stalls or the Royal Circle , or for the red ones , which are the £48 ones , you can sit in the Royal Circle . That's quite decent seats . If you do this on any other days , you can actually get ones even cheaper , for about £38 , and they are £50 tickets , and I think a couple of them were in stalls .

I looked last night , on Friday night as me and mum were waiting for Benjamin Button . I was doing that and at the time , and even now that I'm looking this , if you wanted to go and see this tonight for £58 , there are 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 . In the stalls there are nine single seats that you could take .

Those seats are truly otherwise redundant . I mean , there's plenty of others actually in duos , trios etc . But we are the best candidates to fill those seats because there's no one else and you know you can't guarantee some rows . I don't , and I'm not going to sit there and count could take you on , but some rows we've worked in theory before .

Some rows have odd numbers and some rows have even numbers .

So somewhere along the line you need groups of odds and even so it's not like you can even just say you must buy in pairs , because what happens when you , when you have three people , when it's a single parent and two kids that they're taking along , or if it's a two parent group plus a child , or just three friends that want to go ?

So it brought this to my attention because she is right . It is an opinion piece . It says there that it would stigmatize solo theater , and I'm not saying that I think that it's huge , that this is a massive industry , but I just think we could be doing things that encourage solo people to go anyway , like putting discounts on those teats and you can go .

Oh , the theater will lose out , that's what the theater's gonna think about . But you get one more person in there and they know their averages per customer . Put one more person there . You've sold the seat for less , maybe because it was on its own .

But you know , ultimately I , I don't care if I sit on my own or go with someone else to mrs doubtfire , I just want a cheaper seat than what you're selling , because I , I'm , I , I'm , no , I'm not paying . I'm not paying 98 pounds , I'm not paying 85 pound 50 , I'm not paying 43 pounds to be at the back of the royal circle like I'm not .

So you , you're not getting me in that theatre unless it's cheaper . Anyway . Theatre's a lot of money at the moment and Cosi lives , it's putting us all out . We don't want to force people up into buying an extra seat when they don't need it , because Cosi lives , no one has , no one has , oh , not , no one . But many of us don't have that .

Flexibility like 43 pounds is enough . Leave us be . And actually you know it happens wherever you go . I go out for a meal on my own and I stop a restaurant not having a table for two unless they've got a little you know bar where you can just sit on your own . But most places don't have that and there's nothing wrong with that .

Yes , of course it's better value for money for them , but you as the business owner have to account for that .

In terms of whether it's a hotel room and you'd have single occupancy discounts , okay , sure , if they have booked a double room , then they're taken away from a couple using that at the full rate if you have done a discount , but also they're not taking the breakfast that was probably thrown in .

And it's difficult when it comes to things like hotels because a lot of discussion has always been whether it's the in-person events I used to run or within the group chats online the frustration over the cost of not being able to split the price of a hotel room or being charged as much as two people using the room .

And unfortunately , I actually can't side with as much on that side because if you want the double bed , you're wasting a space . So I can understand why a business is saying well , you're having the same space as two people , therefore you do have to pay for those two people , maybe minus breakfast if that's such a thing .

But you know , some rooms don't come with any breakfast so it's the same rate anyway . So kind of I get that from a business perspective .

They've had to put the same floor print in and then even down to if you go to , okay , well , I'll take a single room , the frustration that it's not half , but at the same time you're still , even if the room is half , purely just because the bed . I mean , is the room really half ? Probably not , because you've got the side table .

You can have cut the other side table out , the desk area or , you know , dressing table a bit . If it's got it , that's there regardless . Maybe you've got a sofa and chair , just like in a double room , and then the big one . I always think you've got probably got and chair just like in a double room , and then the big one .

I always think you've probably got the en suite . So as much as yes , there's only one less person sleeping in it . The floor space is probably not half . It's still got the same , probably size bathroom , and so really can we reasonably expect them to halve the price of that ? Not really .

I think that the kind of two thirds , three-quarters is always going to apply there . I do think I do think the old uh 25 discount for single person living is a little bit . Are we sure about that ? Because I can tell you now , my waist is significantly less than people that have got two , three , four , five people like .

The interesting part around here where I live is that there are three blocks of houses and each house is split into four and so that constitutes a house . That's hence why this is upstairs . Downstairs is my bedroom and bathroom . I live in it as a one , next door living as one . The people behind me live in it as a one .

Next door live in it as one , the people behind me live in it as a one , and diagonally opposite is a two right . But each house , subject to assuming that they're worth the same amount of money , has the same council tax . The three of us get a discount . Now , in theory , I don't know of anyone that pushes to having three people in these houses .

There was one group that did . It was a couple and they had a son , and then they were pregnant again and had another one , and that's when they moved out . But I mean , even a couple and a son in a space like this is pretty insane , and sure a small child doesn't count , um , but like , what facilities do I use ? Comparably that the ?

You know , the one we see the most on council tax is bins . So I think the argument

back . If I have to be objective and not biased in my approach , I think the justification would be think of all the services that you use , and you know you use . You use the streets and the lights in town . You know you can't really you say it like that , but do you know ?

I mean you think about what council tax actually pays for , certainly not just the bins , although it is the main one we see , and the 25 probably just does reflect the recycling and the bins situation , as opposed to thinking of all the things that the council pay for , like the parks and keeping the high street looking nice , parking , maybe a reasonable price .

I imagine they make money from their parking rather than get it from council tax . But you know it all feeds in and so this is what I mean in terms of .

I will always be balanced , but you'll always hear a little bit of what I'm thinking and the frustration in that , but I think if they're going to bring in policies I don't know if um kate maltby has written this because there is talk of no seat should be left lonely policies , or if she's just noticed that within you know , when you're trying to book you're not

able to um it it really does just . It really is going to push solo theatre goers and solo anything goers out of the realm . The part that I loved the most was going and doing those things on my own and pushing myself out of my comfort zone .

Doing that and and getting to experience things without feeling like I had to be with people , because I love going to see things , I love just booking things , and it's really hard to get people to commit when there's money and time involved , and that only becomes more and more of a problem when your friends get busier or when they move further away and then

when they have babies themselves , like that . That's madly huge . You can't even cost wise . Can they even afford it right now ? Time wise , who's gonna have the baby ? Are they gonna be okay to want to leave the baby ? All those kind of things .

It just becomes so much harder and I think I would have done half the things that I've done if I didn't get , if I couldn't do them alone , if I had to book with someone else when I went to Tomorrowland , the best dance music festival that there is I mean it's the one I've been to , so obviously the best .

I was questioning there because there's one in Las Vegas that sounds to be very good . I think it's Las Vegas . Anyway , you know I had the . I went and did that on my own and was bundled with 90 odd other people from various countries and the accommodation I had was not split between two . Other people were in pairs .

They'd come along in pairs and they were part of this hundred or so of us in pairs , but they got to split and they had it a bit cheaper . I can't deny them that because they're sharing the one space . I had two beds . I kept all my stuff on the other bed and I slept in the other bed .

You know it wasn't half as hot , I imagine , as it would have been for those two sharing , because it was like little tenty things . They were great because they had like wooden bits and it was very fancy , had the same charge points that they had and they had everything else .

They got a ticket each , but when they divided the total cost of it all by two , it was cheap . Mine was about three grand and I think theirs was about two and a half , and those numbers are going to shock everybody .

Yes , I paid three grand for it , and let me just clear that up , because I have no shame in paying three grand and pounds to go to that . It was something like that . I don't even remember the figure now . Um , I had the house deposit , had come back from the house that I sold with my ex and I'd put a fair chunk in it .

We'd made a fair bit on it , I think we probably I probably doubled what I put into it . I guess I've never really sat and thought about that .

Um , so I had a big chunk of money in my account and I was wary enough to keep hold of the majority of it , because , I mean , when you've got a big chunk of cash , it's very easy to think well , I will just spend it on everything .

And I did invest in a few things , um , mini courses , courses it was the start of everything bought books quite easily , but I certainly didn't dig into it very much at all , bar this one expense and it's something I'd said I'd wanted to go to when I've been in the relationship paid for it .

Stood in a tube because I didn't want to come off the tube to tap out , but stood at the tube at the top and came up to get signal to get the ticket and it was the only ticket I could get hold of . I was like I want to go .

It got delayed by two years because of covid and I thankfully kept enough of my deposit oh , sorry , enough of the big chunk to then put a deposit down on this place , phew , and pay the fees that go with everything that goes with buying a house . So that was my only big splurge and other than my wedding , I've never had . I've never had a big splurge .

And buying this place I've never had a big splurge like that . Otherwise , never in my life . I've not even , oh , I've bought a car , but it's on finance , so you don't really feel that most of the time .

So , yeah , if I hadn't been able to go and do that , I'd never been able to do that and that's one of the best experiences of my life , I think when I did the New Year's Eve single girls club . We just had different tiers , but you paid for your bed and it purely was the bed that made the difference in terms of did you have a duo room ?

Did you have one of the beds in a room of five and if so , was it a single bed or was it one of the bunk beds ? You know just simply for purely the comfort level of that , and that it gave people choices , but everything else was shared and therefore there was no difference in that there . So it was just an interesting one .

I mean , it would be a shame to stop anybody going to the cinema on their own , to theatre , to comedy gigs . Apart from which , I wonder what percentage of tickets build that up anyway , what percentage of solos fill stuff ? And actually , is there a way to connect form an agency of , you know , single tickets purely , purely for solo theater goers ?

Or , you know , actually advertising them out and saying we've got a few like the mrs doubtfire situation , like they've got on the day tickets . They're selling them off cheap . But actually , what if there was this just solo outlet , that something specially made for people that like to do things solo because they don't have to be single in that regard .

But you go on the solo theater girls websitecom and they tell you all of the solo seats that have been left and yeah , it's sold at a discount because it's probably not going to sell otherwise . You've got a funny configured theater .

That's got one , you know , and there's a I'm just looking at this book in here so there's a two one side and then there's two , four , six , eight . Yeah , like that row couldn't not have had a single seat in it unless you had a trio come in . Impossible , couldn't be done . And it's interesting .

They've got , obviously , agents selling those seats and that's why I think those solo seats have probably appeared , because the agents have got the whole row and so they have to deal with the single seats .

They've probably you know what I have no idea if this is true or not , but they've probably given the rows that have a dodgy number of seats like that , because you normally do go in twos .

But I mean , it could be anything , though it's so random , but they probably give the odd rows to the other agents agents you see this on there because you'll be like a whole row hasn't been booked .

Um , they probably block that off for the various different agencies that there are that you can buy tickets through , to make it their problem to deal with the solo ticket and whether they accept it or not , because I guess I don't know how it works in terms of do they have to reserve them all ? Do they only pay if it sells ? I don't know .

I I don't know how it works , it's just interesting . So what do you think ? What do we think about the idea that you can't book a ticket here because it would leave one on its own ? Is that a good thing ? Should it encourage people to buy the extra ticket ? Or should it just be allowed ? Like , should it only be ?

I don't think we should stop solo people buying solo ticket . Should it only be ? I don't think we should stop solo people buying solo ticket . But is there , should it be , that you can only choose those seats if there's no other way to get , because sometimes you just want those seats ? I was just thinking could you do it on tier ?

But like I'm a stalls kind of gal , I like to be in the stall . I'm a stalls kind of gal , I like to be in the stall .

So if someone said to me oh well , we have three seats available in the Royal Circle and you have to take those because your stalls booking would leave one when you've actually got a chance to book in and it doesn't leave a one , I'd be like I don't want the tickets .

Then Don't force me to sit in the Royal Circle , I mean , unless I really want to see it , obviously . But Then I'd be like , well , what if a three comes along after me and wants those three and leaves a one on its own ? Then they'd be like , well , there'd be no option , then they'd have to sit there . Well , that's annoying then , isn't it ?

So I don't think you can do that , but it just got me , and I agree it would stigmatize solo theater going , which I think is so valuable , to building your sense of you , to giving you experiences and not letting you miss out just because your friends aren't around , because you haven't got a partner to default lean onto .

And also , not everyone can afford it right now , and you might have got a treat for your Christmas or birthday present or just done really well at work or got a promotion . You want to treat yourself and you can't pay for two tickets . You know that's a bit far-fetched .

You want to treat yourself to one ticket and other people can't do it , and that's okay , but let me have the one ticket and don't stop other people from booking just because it leaves one there . If you've got thoughts on this , drop me a DM or maybe there'll be a Facebook group . We'll work that out to give your thoughts . Until next time , keep sparkling .