Adelaide Festival beats 2021 box office target with $3.7 million take
This year’s Adelaide Festival has defied the impact of COVID to beat its box office target by nearly a million dollars.
Adelaide Festival
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The Adelaide Festival has surpassed its ticket sales target of $2.8 million to achieve a total box office income of more than $3.7 million, despite COVID restrictions.
The figure includes umbrella events, except for WOMADelaide, featured in the Festival’s program which continues until Sunday.
As of Friday morning, 60,958 tickets had been sold, including 8000 to interstate buyers.
Artistic directors Rachel Healy and Neil Armfield said there were “countless had-to-be-there moments” at this year’s event.
“The relief and wonder at being able to gather together to experience memorable, thrilling live performing arts was as much in evidence for the performers as it was for the capacity audiences,” they said in a joint statement.
More than 160,800 people attended Festival events, including a total of around 19,000 at WOMADelaide on the long weekend.
While venue capacities were capped at 50-75 per cent, 233 of the 333 individual Festival performances, or 70 per cent, sold out.
Ms Healy said the number of tickets sold was only 25 per cent less than last year – roughly the same as the reduction in venue capacity.
Sellout shows including The Pulse, The Boy Who Talked to Dogs, the 1:1 Concerts, live streamed theatre work Eugene Onegin and several UKARIA chamber music sessions.
Festival executive director Elaine Chia said this year’s event required a “leap of faith” from everyone involved.
“Not only have we surpassed our box office target in the most trying of times, but attendance across the festival was incredible,” Ms Chia said.
“Our interstate visitors remained steadfast and responses from audiences have been phenomenal.”
There were still several Festival shows and events to run during the final weekend, including the Ngarku’adlu picnic and dinner, Australian Dance Theatre’s Supernature, and closing choral performance A Child of Our Time.
This year’s Adelaide Fringe continues to run for another week, until March 21.
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