Roy Alexander Weise: 'I would halve show budgets for more accessible ticket prices'

Manchester Royal Exchange’s co-artistic director Roy Alexander Weise has said he would cut his production budget in half to allow more money to be spent on audience development.

Weise said he would rather shows cost less and fewer people saw them, than exclude certain audiences due to high ticket prices.

The director was speaking in conversation with audience development expert Donna Walker-Kuhne, as part of a webinar discussing actions organisations can take in the wake of events surrounding the killing of George Floyd in the US.

He said: "Money tells such an interesting story, finances and budgets tell such an interesting story.

"I look at some of our budgets with regards to audience development and we have spent maybe 100 times over that amount on a single piece of set for a show.

"And then you wonder why people are mad. And then you wonder why artists kick up a stink when they come to work in your spaces and bare their soles, and make the work, and don’t see people that look like them in the auditoriums. It’s soul destroying sometimes."