Dear All

Welcome to the October edition of Ensemble. I hope you’re all keeping well.

In our industry we rarely celebrate the unseen heroes. However, we are the worker bees who are both passionate about theatre and great work, but also make our industry run smoothly, effectively and profitably through selling and distributing tickets to our life blood – our audiences.

I started off in the box office in the West End in an age of card theatre plans, rooms with books of tickets, multi coloured pencils to denote different prices plus reams and reams of manual returns. About a third of the tickets were distributed through agency sales which were sold on allocation, marked back via trade lines and supported by foot messengers. It sounds and it was Dickensian. But in the years since then we have seen transformational change in the world and of course in London theatre. And I’m proud to say that our London Theatre Direct has been at the forefront of that change.

A few weeks ago, we bid farewell to LTD’s Co-Founders, Francis Hellyer and Emmanuel Ciolfi. In this edition of Ensemble, you can read more about their achievements and see pictures from their fabulous farewell party.

Also this month, with Halloween just around the corner, TE staff tell us about their favourite horror films and you can read all about a hellraising night at New Theatre Cardiff! Plus, we hear from the team at The Chiswick Cinema following their hugely successful film festival, there’s a packed slate of screenings from Trafalgar Releasing to looks forward to and we have some lovely stories from the regional venues.

Finally, we’re keen to expand our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Group and are looking for TE employees from across the Group to get involved.

The EDI group meets once a month on Teams to discuss opportunities, events, initiatives and policies and we’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas.

If you’d like to join the EDI team, please email [email protected]

Until next time, take care of yourselves.
Best wishes
Rosemary