Recollections by Susan Bergomi
Way back in the ‘80s, a couple of members of the society putting on a show would take bookings at home by telephone – with half the seating plan each. Then, in 1992, Anne Everett (GAOS and GEDS) and Carol Hennessy (Little Theater) got together, working from Carol’s house on sales for the GEDS production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle. They called themselves “Theatre In English”, although the name was not mentioned in the programme. Their next show was GAOS’ Salad Days. In the programme, it said:
After which, we never looked back. Our first office was generously lent to us by the printing firm BTL (Below the Line Productions S.A.) in Acacias, just beside the Place de l’Etoile.
On 25 January 1995, Theatre In English became an official association, organised in accordance with the Swiss Civil Code. Its members were GAOS, GEDS and Little Theater – although the latter didn’t continue to exist for very long.
The work was very manual. Seating plans were only on paper and booking was done by phone. Customers couldn’t actually see the plan – they just had to take our word for it. We made a label for each seat for each show and attached these to blank tickets torn from a roll. At the door we had to tear the perforated corner off of each ticket to give to Geneva authorities to count and charge us 13 percent tax – Le Droit des Pauvres – which was imposed on all theatrical and sports events. This tax, originally created in 1845, was stopped in 2000.
Soon we moved from BTL to a rented office also in Acacias, and then to Chemin des Batailles in Vernier where volunteers would continue to take bookings by phone. We left that office in 2017 and once again worked from home taking orders by Skype.
A now-famous gentleman who was a member of GAOS back in the 80s and was in four of our shows (specifically playing Dame Liza in Peter Pan, in 1988) very kindly invented a system, in 1990, which was to help improve our booking work considerably: The World Wide Web. We really only took advantage of it early in the 21st century, when Owen Boyle created a website for TIE which included a booking system based on that used by airlines. This was only used as a back-office “tool”, as was originally our final bookings system – OSConcert – which was installed by John Newsome in 2010. It then became used as a full on-line system for the public in 2011.
It's much more than putting a name on a ticket. The TIE person in charge of a show had quite a lot of work each day. For instance, checking on whether payments had been received from customers who chose to pay by bulletin de versement or e-banking rather than by credit card on-line. Very many people forgot, and reminders had to be sent. Then, for each performance, we had to produce lists of all the seats booked, seating-plans, and tickets for those people who would be picking them up at the theatre. Oh, and people change their minds.
The internet has helped considerably, of course, with publicity. TIE kept a joint mailing list which was used to publicise shows for both societies. For years, this involved supplying the societies with address labels for their “mailing parties” – in order to send out large numbers of printed flyers to hundreds of addresses. Little by little, this has been totally replaced by e-mailing.
Use of the internet system has saved postal fees and office costs of up to SFr 10,000 per year. Thank you Dame Liza – now not only a Dame but also a Knight of the British Empire!
And thanks to ALL the people who have been involved with TIE throughout its 30 years of existence - coming to an end on 31st December 2022. Thanks, also, to those members of GAOS and GEDS who are taking over all the work.
Susan Bergomi
And Now?
GAOS has incorporated the ticketing function into its existing web site / membership management systems. It offers many new services for our audiences, including pre-ordering and paying for drinks, and gift-certificates, as well as ticket verification in the theatre. The new system was launched for A Night at the Musicals, and also worked well for the 3,727 ticket holders for our hugely popular panto Sleeping Beauty.
