Billy Elliot the Forum

What I did not like about attending Billy Elliot The Musical, in several cities, was the lack of young people in the audience. There were very few young adults, and almost no children.

This is a show about and by children. It has the potential to inspire, educate and motivate young people. But almost all in the crowd were senior citizens. If the London version consists of more school and dance youth groups, then the International Tour must have done something wrong. Can anyone comment on whether the Australian and Korean productions had substantial numbers of children in the crowd? If so, why did the tour miss this chance to pass its message on to North American youth? And did the children of Sao Paulo turn out in large numbers?


Senior citizens can provide a strong financial support for any play or musical. But true long term success needs more young adults, parents and children. Hopefully, the production in Netherlands will draw more families and schools.

In the US, I think that marketing to families with children did not pan out because Americans are not happy about exposing their children to "bad" language, which abounds in BETM, even though it was expurgated somewhat on Broadway, and a lot more on the tour. Most US schools would consider the language a negative when deciding to book groups of students to see the show, and this definitely had a detrimental effect on school bookings.

This is not the case in England, and the London production frequently hosts school groups of substantial size despite the rough language.

joninfinity wrote:When the show was here in Seattle, there were several performances where SAG, and TAG (Seattle actors Guild, and Tacoma actors Guild). Brought all their young members and children. I watched and listened to them at intermission and after, and you could see their excitement and inspiration about the production.

I think in some venues, the price might be a prohibitive factor. Too bad, because kids need to be exposed to the performance arts.

That is so sad. Only the children of people in the performing arts were exposed to the excitement and inspiration of Billy Elliot. This should be addressed in future productions.

So what future productions are you thinking about?

There is unlikely to be another tour in the US and Canada on the scale of the one that just wrapped, at least not for a pretty long time, nor is the show likely to come to Broadway again any time soon. The waters have now been tested in Brazil, so perhaps some company might consider launching a more comprehensive tour there, but we will have to see. The Netherlands production seems to be in the "blue sky" phase at the moment, with the promoters trying to figure out if they can find the boys to play Billy. There had been mention of German and Japanese productions, but neither of these has come to fruition at this point.

My experience on both Sydney and Melbourne was that of a lot of younger people attending. From memory (it is now 4 years ago ) there were regularly younger people with their parents. I know of different school groups attending but that was usually the Thursday matinee and I was rarely there.

I agree that it is a great shame that the US Tours had fewer children in attendance than London. But there were several exceptions that I witnessed: Thursday Feb 3rd matinee in Tampa seems to have attracted a lot of school groups (I would estimate there were about 500 school kids at the performance) so clearly they did something to attract school parties that day. There was the memorable evening in West Palm Beach in early March when a flashmob of kids entertained us before the performance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCPhL6370Qo

But, other than those, I did not see anything like the numbers of school age kids as I see in London at the matinees or during school holidays. Whether language is the issue, or money, or it is simply a cultural one, I cannot judge.

The USA needs a children's theater version of Billy Elliot The Musical that will allow more kids to experience and be inspired by this show.

accessmenj wrote:The USA needs a children's theater version of Billy Elliot The Musical that will allow more kids to experience and be inspired by this show.

There is such a script, adapted for the Billy Youth Theatre.

The USA version for kids has to be in American English, have no references that kids would not understand and no bad gestures or language. The evening show needs to start earlier, and have more afternoon shows with giant discounts for children.

The major rolls should be held by touring professionals, with lesser rolls filled by local amateur actors and dance schools("We've only got seven and one half months to rehearse"). It would need supporters like PBS, and have to sell videos to pay for discounted seats. This show can transform the lives of children who see it, but it needs to be re-done for kids. Comments?

That is certainly a different take on the show from the concept that existed with Billy Youth Theatre. I think I like the original concept of BYT better, although if you are looking to create a touring show for kids, this might make some sense.