00:00It's the busiest month of the year for Martha Lott.
00:06Her theatre is welcoming audiences for the Adelaide Fringe, but when the festival is
00:12over, filling seats isn't as easy.
00:15We deliberately put our ticket prices down in a small venue like this.
00:21We're not making money.
00:22Holden Street Theatres was forced to drop their ticket prices last year as cost of living
00:28pressures saw audiences dwindle.
00:30The cost of everything goes up and it's a big risk for artists to put on a show.
00:36Quite often they're working for nothing.
00:38A trend which is being felt across theatres in regional South Australia, with a 12% drop
00:44in audiences over the past 12 months.
00:47Unfortunately some cancellations across the year, just because there hasn't been enough
00:51of a ticket purchase ahead of time for that promoter to kind of feel confident.
00:57Last month, Broadway musical Dear Evan Hansen was forced to cancel its Adelaide and Canberra
01:02shows due to lagging ticket sales.
01:05Disappointing but not surprising, certainly speaking to our members and artists here in
01:10South Australia, they're struggling to get their shows up and running.
01:16The state's peak body for artists says several independent venues have recently been forced
01:21to close their doors.
01:23The cost of running a venue is extremely high and obviously they're feeling the impact of
01:29the cost of living crisis and the fact that everything supplies electricity, everything
01:33is more expensive.
01:34But for organisers of Australia's largest arts festival, sales are anything but sluggish.
01:42Ticket sales are up 15% compared to this time last year.
01:46It looks like we're on track to sell a million tickets again and that is the third year in
01:52a row.
01:53It will be pretty incredible.
01:54Success they put down to affordable ticket prices and marketing.
01:59Promising news amid troubling times.
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