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Box Office Politics - Martin Duffield

Martin Duffield
Box Office Manager

Usually when I turn up with the blog mic, the Traverse team stampede for the hills. But not Martin Duffield, the fearless box office manager. Hardly surprising - his job is all about communication, whether it's on the phone, online or (lawdsakes!) face to face. So dress rehearsal day finds us blinking in the unaccustomed sunlight after a day spent underground...

Martin: My job is to sell the shows to the public. It starts with the three season brochures we do a year. There's always a core audience who will book as soon as the brochure comes out, particularly for the Traverse productions, so we always get a guaranteed audience for previews and opening nights, because they get a cheaper deal, and the chance to see something before it takes off. And there's always that hope they'll get the next big theatre hit. After that, it's a case of actually working out what the show's about, and how we can sell it to people.

The Traverse has been going for 43 years now. Is there a definable Traverse audience?
The Traverse started as a private club, to get round the licensing laws, and we've still got a number of those people coming on a regular basis, so they'll be in on opening night, during the previews, and they're usually fairly cool. They're now in their sixties, but they still like what we do, and we see them week in, week out, so it's all good fun.

So... the mysterious box office... who are you? What do you do?
There's about six of us on the team altogether. There's a couple of permanent staff and the rest are casuals - many theatre students, people with an interest in theatre. Particularly with the Traverse show, we won't read it before it starts, because we're trying to get across that this is a completely new piece if theatre, so we can't answer questions because we haven't seen it. We've got an idea of what it's going to be like from what Marketing have provided, but it's trying to get the idea that this is a brand new play, that it hasn't existed before, that it's the first time it's going to be performed. We'll then make a point of seeing the dress rehearsal, and the previews, so that we can all work out what it looks like as well. That's the other big thing - what's on the page isn't necessarily what you see, and that's what you're selling - the entire thing, the visual aspects of the art form. And it helps build up a sense of excitement about it - that yes, you are seeing this for the first time. Never been done anywhere else before. And in your case, it's a new playwright, so that's exciting.

Hairiest moment on the job?
Blimey! Mine tend to be a bit more frequent. It's when you suddenly discover you've got a bigger set than you were anticipating, and you've got to lose twenty seats. And do some very fast shuffling and getting people into other performances. That doesn't happen too often, but it does happen. The rest is Fringe time, where you've got an absolute rave hit, and you've sold out. It's trying to deal with the returns queue, and trying to keep as many people as happy as possible. So a bit of juggling at times...

You clearly love your job. What's the attraction?
An enormous amount of it is talking to the public. Particularly here, we've all got a fairly vested interest in what we're doing. We're all involved in the process in some way, shape or form. And I like what we do. It's fun to sell it to people. It's about people going on a night out. They're going out for fun, they're going out for something that's going to make them think or that they're going to enjoy, and it's being part of that process. With the box office particularly, you have time to talk to them as well - whereas once they're in, they come in, take their seats and that's it. They talk to the people at the bar very briefly to order drinks, but we have time to chat to them, work out what they want to see, what they're looking for.

[For Traverse Booking info, click here.]

posted by Jules Horne @ 5/05/2006 05:50:00 PM