£8.50 youth tickets at Chichester Festival Theatre

What prevents many young people from attending the theatre regularly? I consider the cost of attending shows to be a big factor. It is usually cheaper to see something at the cinema than seeing a professional theatre production. Particularly musical theatre can be a very expensive viewing experience. Chichester Festival Theatre encourages young theatre-goers to see more shows by putting aside a certain number of seats for every performance of every show, and selling these to young people aged between 16 and 25 for £8.50 each. This scheme has recently been relaunched as 'Prologue' and requires the young person to sign up to the scheme (the sign-up is free). The seats are of course not the best in the house being side view but they are certainly not the worst ones either, and with the incredibly high quality of CFT productions in general, the seats are fantastic value. 

I have taken advantage of the £8.50 tickets on a number of occasions during my time at Chichester university. As far as musicals go, I saw Guys and Dolls, Gypsy and A Damsel in Distress. The former two ended up transferring to the West End after their respective runs in Chichester. I also saw the plays The Rehearsal and most recently, in February, Single Spies. My next Prologue show will be the new musical version of Travels with My Aunt in May which will be my end of semester treat. The production was otherwise sold out by the time the Prologue tickets were released a month before the opening so I rushed to book mine. I will definitely also book to see one of my favourite shows, Half A Sixpence, which will be on at CFT in the summer. 

More information available on the CFT website: