Bums on seats? Of course we want bums on seats! We need the money.

Would that it were as simple as that! How many amateur companies have sold their souls - or at least their futures - to get "bums on seats"?

Sold their souls? their futures? Is this man a total idiot?

It's easy to get bums on seats. You simply do the sort of play that the easiest audience likes. And by "the easiest audience" I mean that audience which has a taste for theatre and the money to indulge it. In other words, middle-aged to elderly ladies (and those husbands they can drag along) who enjoy thrillers, light comedies and sentimental dramas. Produce a diet of these and they'll come. And so loyally will they support you - so long as you keep on giving them what they want - that they'll keep on coming till they die.

The trouble is, that's likely to be comparatively soon in a lot of cases!

To have an aging audience is not a healthy thing for a society. Think of the churches: their congregations reduce after every winter, although their funeral business does pretty well.

But it's not only bad from the audience point of view, it's very dangerous from the acting point of view too. Any actor worth his/her salt likes to be challenged, wants to tackle something demanding, something with a bit of meat to it, and - to stretch the metaphor - asking them to exist on a diet of thrillers, light comedy and sentimental drama is a bit like offering a starving carnivore a bit of salad. It may help to fill the stomach initially but very soon the craving for something more substantial starts making itself felt.

And if your society cannot satisfy that craving, many of your actors will go elsewhere - and they are likely to be, if not the best, at least the actors with the most potential. They are also likely to be the younger generation. And that is another nail in the coffin of your society.

Any bums on seats policy, if it is to be anything but a temporary solution, has got to be long term. You've got to attract the younger generation of actors and audience, otherwise you will end up - as, I regret to say, many amateur operatic societies have - with a group dominated by an aging clique who will insist on doing the sort of sow which they wanted to do in their younger days, thirty or more years ago. I remember one society some years back doing Miller's "All My Sons" with a teenager being played by a 53 year old. Why? First, because he had wanted to play the part for years, and, second, because they didn't have anyone the right age, or even close to it.

Sad, or what?

The writer of this is commonly know as Grumpy Old G*t! Take my word for it, he is a very experienced professional in the theatre world.