Little Shop of Horrors and Amateur Theatre Groups - a Precautionary Tale 

Little Shop of Horrors and Amateur Theatre Groups - a Precautionary Tale

Little Shop of Horrors is my favourite musical of all time. There\'s just so much I love about it, so you can imagine how ecstatic I was when the local amateur drama group I grew up performing with announced that it was going to be their next show.

I was given the role of Crystal, the part of Ronette went to someone I had been friends with for a long time, and a newcomer to the society was cast as Chiffon, who is still a close friend of mine today. Not only was it great fun working with those two, but another newcomer was cast as the voice of Audrey II, and since then has proven to be one of the most talented people in our drama group. I also had the pleasure of working with him in a couple of recent pantomimes (a couple of years ago I played Red Riding Hood and he played the wolf, and just last week we were two of the Merry Men in Robin Hood). So not only was Little Shop a really fun show that I took part in with all my old friends, but it was also an experience that allowed me to make some amazing new friends too.

Show week was wonderful too. The audience certainly seemed to enjoy it; they laughed in all the right places, and we got some very positive feedback from them too. We also got a very good review. It was unfortunate, however, that the audience was not as "full" as we had hoped; it was difficult to sell tickets and could have done with a few more people watching us. Besides, the show was a pleasant surprise for some of the audience members. My grandad, for example, didn\'t expect to enjoy the show very much, yet he still talks about it frequently today (three and a half years later). He especially liked the dentist - he was his favourite!

All seems good, doesn\'t it? The show was great fun, the audience loved it, and I made some new friends. What could possibly go wrong?

Unfortunately, Little Shop of Horrors is an incredibly risky show for amateur theatre groups to put on, from a financial point of view. As you can imagine, the props and scenery cost a lot of money. For one thing, we needed to hire four different plant puppets; one small one that sat on a counter, one small one with a fake arm around it (the guy playing Seymour had his real arm inside the puppet to operate it), a larger plant for the rest of the first act, and a giant one that fills up half the stage for the second act. The expenses did not stop there either; most of the set (Mushnik\'s shop) and props also had to be hired, along with some of the costumes. The society spent a large amount of money putting on the show.

Now, investing in making a show great is often worth it; it makes the experience more spectacular and impressive to watch. Besides, tickets to come and see the show aren\'t free - we do charge our audience, so it\'s all good, right? Wrong! While we did have an audience of some sort for every performance, we simply did not sell anywhere near enough tickets to earn back what it cost to put the show on. In fact, by the end of show week, our drama group had ended up with a loss of over £3000.

While Little Shop is a really fun and entertaining show for some of us, it simply does not appeal to a wide audience. For one thing, it is definitely not a family show. Some content is not suitable for young children. Meanwhile, some of the themes in the show do not appeal to a lot of adults, either. The majority of fans of this show appear to be ranging from teenagers to young adults, usually under 40, although if you\'re lucky you can find exceptions (I said it once and I\'ll say it again - my grandad loved it!). Due to the limited audience, it makes it so much more difficult to sell tickets and earn back the money it cost to put on the show.

Seven months later, the society had an emergency meeting; things were looking gloomy and our future was in jeopardy. The committee had been discussing the possibility of shutting down the society completely (partly due to the lack of funds, but also as Little Shop has a small cast we seemed to have very few members at the time). It was a dark time for us, but we plodded on with a variety show, where it became apparent that the society was still full of enthusiastic and loyal members who wanted to keep going for as long as possible. This improved when we began rehearsing for the pantomime later that year, which brought in some more members, not to mention a healthy profit of around £3500, earning back everything that had been lost during Little Shop of Horrors. With a loyal group of people who wanted to continue, and an annual pantomime to keep our funds up, we persevered and are still going strong today. Thank goodness!

We were lucky though. Not every amateur drama group survives after putting on Little Shop of Horrors. In fact, two local groups were actually shut down within a year of doing it. One was purely for financial reasons; they lost so much money that they could not earn it back, and could no longer hire anywhere to rehearse or perform. Another was similar to the problem my own drama group faced, in which they lost a lot of money while also having a lack of members. For a while it looked like we were going to be the third drama group in our area - within a decade - to share this fate.

Little Shop of Horrors is an amazing stage show and also very fun to take part in. Beware of the risks though. If your local drama group wants to do this show, please consider the expenses, limited cast, and limited audience before making any final decisions. Advertise the show as much as you can (and as cheaply as you can!) to try and get as big an audience as possible. Be prepared to make a huge loss, and if this is the case, how will you earn the money back? Social events (like quiz nights) might help you earn a little bit back, but also think about following Little Shop with a financially safer production to put on next (pantomimes are usually good ones for us). If not everyone in the society can take part in Little Shop, or if some members simply do not want to, maybe have something else for them to do in the time being (like a drama festival, or a one act play evening), to prevent them from leaving the society altogether.

I hope that Little Shop of Horrors will continue to be performed by theatre groups (including amateur societies) for many years, but I don\'t want it (or any show for that matter!) to cause drama societies to shut down. Take the risks into consideration and be prepared for insanity to happen... other than that, have fun doing it!