If you buy tickets for the next Carrefour international de théâtre, which will be held from May 25 to June 10 in Quebec City, you will have a surprise. This festival of living arts in Quebec is offering “inclusive pricing” this year. It is the spectator who decides, according to the representation and his conscience, if he pays his ticket $47, $33, $17 or $0. The exact opposite, in a way, of the Ticketmaster-style dynamic box office that sent ticket prices for Depeche Mode and The Cure skyrocketing. Counter-example.
“We want to renew our audience. It means attracting people who don’t know the theater, who don’t come to it”, summarized for The duty the director general of the Carrefour international de théâtre, Dominique Violette.
“It means thinking differently and removing barriers. And then, one of those barriers is the price. Hey! our single price before was $55 a ticket. It’s money ! » analysis Mme Violet.
Inspired by the Cercle Molière theater in Winnipeg, fueled by the concept of solidarity pricing that has been experimented up to now especially in food, the Carrefour international de théâtre had to rethink its way of selling tickets from A to Z.
“We have abandoned all the other elements of our traditional pricing, continues the director. Before, we had criteria based on age – cheaper for those under 30 or over 65 – or on the volume of sales – our subscriptions”, which means that a spectator who buys several tickets pays less each of these tickets.
“We decided to simplify the work of the spectator and to give him more freedom. Everyone can compose their subscription, deciding to buy a ticket at $47, one at $33 and another at $17,” for example.
The festival proposes criteria to help the spectator to make his choice. Indeed, one of the challenges of voluntary pricing is that it can be destabilizing “for the customer who does not necessarily know the value of the products he wishes to acquire”, according to the guide Social pricing. An introductioninnovative territories in social and solidarity economy.
Thus, the spectator who has the “feel to take an artistic risk, but not a financial one” is directed towards the $33 ticket, those who have a low income towards the $0 ticket, those who “are sensitive to the financial stakes of performing arts” is geared toward the $47 ticket.
“When people choose their price on the Internet, a window appears, which suggests making a donation. Often people who take the lowest fares add a donation. We see that $0 does not equal $0. There are more subtleties”, specifies Dominique Violette.
On the practical side, it is the fact of having fairly sophisticated ticketing management tools that allows the festival to do this gymnastics without risking its financial health. “Every day, we examine our sales reports, continues M.me Violet. If, for a performance, we see that there are too many $0 tickets out for us to arrive, well, we will stop offering them. »
“We are not going to work at a loss. We are ready to react. So far, sales are following exactly the ratios we had imagined. Another way of saying that there are enough $47 ticket sales to offset the $17 or $0 tickets.
Group rates, on the other hand, continue to be sold “old-fashioned”, also because they often come with “tailor-made services”, whether it be a mediation workshop, a meeting with an artist or a visit backstage.
Are there new spectators who show up, as desired? It is too early to tell. “We already recognize behavior that we attribute to our regulars. But the big challenge, we don’t hide it, is to reach people who don’t know theatre. »
It is not enough that the tickets are affordable; still need to be told. “If I’m not interested in theatre, I won’t be sensitive to the advertisements to go there. This question of marketing and promotion, we still have to think about it, asks Mme Violet. This is the great difficulty. »
“Our dearest wish, concludes the director, is that this experience be positive enough so that we continue to offer solidarity rates in the future. I don’t know of anyone else in Quebec who does that right now. »
What you can pay, what you decide
Since 2026, the feminist theater Imago, from Montreal, which walks from room to room according to the programming or its rentals, has been offering “Pay what you decide” tickets. Those are ” Pay What You Decide ” and no “ Pay What You Can “, specifies the producer Danielle Laurin. It’s a difference for us, to really create an open door, without judgement. »
A specific feature of Imago’s proposal is that the viewer can decide After the spectacle of the amount he will grant for his ticket. For its next year, Imago hopes to increase to 20% solidarity tickets per performance. Currently, availability is one to four solidarity tickets per evening.
The Cercle Molière, in Winnipeg, for its part, set up, last season, its “solidarity pricing”, by letting the spectators choose. Their ticket can be sold for $10, $15, $30 or $40, no questions asked. Cercle Molière has no ticket limit on any of these fares.
A season later, what should it be? “Sometimes confusion,” frankly admits the general and artistic director, Geneviève Pelletier. “Viewers don’t fully understand. And that leads us to an important reflection on the way we solicit people and the message we convey. »
“You have to find a way to say that a $0 ticket isn’t free, because in capitalist logic, for people who don’t know theater codes, it can be understood as a ticket that doesn’t have of value, explains Mr.me Peltier. »
“Our ticket doesn’t cost anything; it is we who remove the economic barrier, but not the value of the ticket, nor that of the show. It implies a relearning of the ways of playing with capitalist norms, a great reflection. »
“It gives a majority of people who go to the higher price scales, continues Mme Pelletier, when we would like to have more spectators in the lower echelons; and people who will take the $15 ticket but add a donation at the end. The average price remains stable, around $30, but with all kinds of variations. It bailed out our entire philanthropic sector, which was already quite developed. That’s super interesting. »
The Cercle Molière knows that it has made offspring: the Théâtre du Nouvel-Ontario in Sudbury and the Nouvelle Scène Gilles-Desjardins in Ottawa are trying the experiment, as is the Carrefour international de théâtre — a first for a festival.
“We are driven by the intention of giving accessibility to our shows in the most concrete and positive way possible”, concludes the director of the Carrefour in her turn. See you at the end of June, therefore, to see the results of this test.