The NoHo Arts District has about 20 theaters in roughly a square mile, and many have fewer than 100 seats. To ensure they fill these seats, they put on a range of shows, including many hybrid options, which bring two different types of audiences together through one door.
Mixed Forms on Small Stages
The most well-known is the jukebox musical, which is something that many people already know. It takes songs that people know and writes a story around them. Because of this, the end result is a musical as well as a story, which draws various audiences.
Cabaret-comedy does the same but in a very different way. The performer is half comedian and half singer. As a result, those who like musicals and those who like comedy shows are both attracted to coming here.
Then there are immersive theaters, which put the audience inside a set instead of in front of it. It’s a more interactive style of theater, where the audience is within the set or at least part of it.
Zombie Joe’s Underground has built its reputation on immersive theater sets, and the El Portal, which opened as a vaudeville house in October 1926, runs a 360-set main stage alongside a 96-seat forum, giving them the option to choose the right rooms for the right show.
Reasons Two Audiences Beat One
A hybrid show brings two sets of fans, two ways to describe it, and two reasons to come back. It’s also more efficient to market, as seats tend to fill quicker. Having two potential audiences who’ll visit naturally fills up seats faster than just advertising to a single audience.
From a theater standpoint, filling these seats up quicker means more guest variety. Therefore, they’re able to redo the same show several times before those who revisit get tickets for the next available date.
Hybrids Outside the Theater
The hybrid angle that NoHo offers with their performance isn’t anything new. In fact, we’ve seen it in business, sports, and more. The reason is that it brings two audiences together, potentially increasing engagement or customers for that specific hybrid that they’ve created.
The gastropub, for example, combines both a pub and a restaurant. It therefore attracts two types of customers: those who enjoy an easy-going pub and those who enjoy a quality restaurant experience.
More recently, padel has become extremely popular in the UK, US, and Europe. Padel, though its own sport, is a cross between tennis and squash. Both sports were already popular in these locations, and padel connected both audiences together, which may just be why it has risen in popularity so fast.
Gaming does this all the time as well. Slingo slot games merge slots and bingo together. It uses slot mechanics to fill in a bingo sheet, thus catering to two audiences: bingo and slot fans. This has allowed the gaming category to be engaged with by fans of both game types.
As you can see, three very different industries have all followed this hybrid model. They’ve brought one thing to two audiences, and all have been a success.
Hybrids work because they take two things that are already working and put them together. Whatever these two things are – either Cabaret-comedy, padel, or a gastropub – both sides already had established fans; someone just put them together to cater to two different audiences at once.
Want to know more about NoHo’s oldest theatre? Things You Probably Didn’t Know About El Portal Theatre.