Ticket Disaster

Well.

What a kerfuffle.

It’s safe to say that the Citizen Ticket website has not been able to handle the spike in traffic generated by people wanting tickets. Obviously this is hugely frustrating for all concerned. I know a good number of you have spent a good whack of time trying to buy tickets, I myself have spent a good whack of time setting the shows up and the people at Citizen Ticket have spent a good whack of time trying to alter their systems in order to fix it all.

So firstly, there are still lots and lots of tickets available. Obviously, I’m as frustrated by people not being able to buy those tickets as the people who are currently unable to buy the tickets but to clarify, this problem has not been caused by the capping of ticket numbers – there are plenty of tickets available, there’s nearly 1000 a day, for a week and there are still plenty available – it has been caused by the ticketing site being unable to handle the traffic, crashing in a variety of ways and meaning that people have been unable to access the tickets.

There's been some quite spicy nuggets of criticism heading my way, to be honest. So, to clarify, the idea of capping the ticket numbers is not contrayism designed to serve my ego or make any of you jump through hoops, or apparently, in one remarkable case to lose a job. The idea is to create a model for raising money and making work that is both exciting and sustainable. . It’s genuinely not meant to irritate you. The idea is to create a way of releasing work on a fairly regular basis over the coming months that is flexible and sustainable and robust enough to consistently support a couple of charities with something close to a steady and reliable income. Also the cap will change according to the event,  there could be late night work in progress stuff for a hundred people or a more substantial run of something finished or, indeed a one off show with a large capacity but the whole point is that it can and will be repeated.

Also, crucially, these capped shows aren’t the only way that things will be released, they’ll be on Vimeo and Bandcamp as well, like the other stuff already on my website.

These Gregory Church screenings are meant to be an exciting bit of fun.

Obviously today has been the opposite of that for most people involved.

So.

This is what we’re going to do.

1 -  The shows have come off sale on the Citizen Ticket site.

2 – Those of you who managed to buy tickets will still have those tickets to the shows you booked for.

3 – I will set the shows up on a different ticketing platform over the next 36 hours

4 – I will send another email on Sunday with the details of how to buy tickets.

5 -  The shows will go ahead as planned.

I hope that’s clear.

Sorry again for all the wasted time and frustrated desire and for inadvertently ruining your Friday. I’ll be in touch on Sunday with more details but now I need to get back to the edit of the film.

I’m currently trying to colour match some footage of me stuttering spectacularly.

Remarkable stuff.