Small theatres attract investors, drama chains and customized plays attract attention.

small theater no longer means shabby, & ldquo; decompression comedy & the popularity of small theater drama driven by rdquo; began to attract a lot of investors. How do they recoup their investment?

the attendance of the premiere of "Legend of leftover Girls" on February 12 has not been finally counted.

but that night, Wang Lulu took a look at it and was very satisfied with the dark heads in the small theatre of the Shanghai Grand Theater.

he has worked as a screenwriter for several small theater plays and as a lighting designer in the Legend of leftover Girls. In 2007, he began to cooperate with Shanghai Youyi Culture Brokerage Co., Ltd., after more than a year, the operation of several dramas is quite good, if there is no accident, the two sides will continue to cooperate.

& ldquo; our generation of dramatists are very lucky to catch up with the golden age of small theatres, & rdquo; Wang Lulu said, & the creative environment of ldquo; is much more stable than that of our predecessors. Rdquo; said this largely because he no longer has to worry about investment, because now the drama business is beginning to be targeted by investors.

investor enthusiasm began to heat up at the end of 2007.

in that year, the drama of the same name written by drama director he Nian and well-known screenwriter Ning Weizhuan was a great success, and small theatre plays became popular, and many investors gathered around. After that, the drama creation team can even wait for investors to come to the door and talk about cooperation.

ldquo; Laixiao Factory, a drama troupe in Beijing, rdquo; took the initiative to find the real estate developer Haping, and without much trouble, the latter sold for 1 million yuan. Ha Ping originally planned to invest in the cultural industry, and he was attracted by the concept of ldquo; stress relief drama & rdquo; put forward by Lei Zile. & small theater plays such as ldquo; are cheap, so ticket prices can be booked low and attract audiences. & rdquo; he also provided rehearsal venue fees and office facilities for the Bayi Theater for Xiao Factory, and then set aside a room in his Tianhai Commercial Building as a rehearsal venue for the troupe.

as a result, the drama team of Xiaofeng, whose average age is only 22, has stable financial support and a dedicated rehearsal venue.

the private drama troupe has reached the point where there is no need to find another investment. Since its establishment more than 3 years ago, they have performed more than 2700 performances and done 19 plays. In addition to the first four plays invested by investors, the next more than 10 films are invested by Xiaotang itself. Master Guan Haoyue's expectation now is to find a suitable venture capital and raise funds for listing in the future.

their predecessors were not so lucky when they started their drama career, and they could not even think of investing hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars.

at that time, the concept of & ldquo; Little Theater & rdquo; is not what is now referred to in terms of capacity & ldquo; & rdquo;, but & ldquo; Minority & rdquo; 's & ldquo; small & rdquo;— experimental, avant-garde style, which makes most audiences feel very far away. At that time, the repertoire was basically carried out by directors looking for investment, and most of them were carried out in the form of friendly funding. & ldquo; change-rdquo; is usually the first difficulty facing the crew, and investors often contribute money for the purpose of helping friends or loving the play, and do not expect to make money from it.

think about the situation of Meng Jinghui. He mortgaged his real estate to do a play because there was really no investment in him. At the end of 2006, Wang Lulu and Tang Jian jointly wrote the script of A Chinese Odyssey, directed by Guo Hua, a classmate. & ldquo; We couldn't find any investment. In the end, Guo Hua rehearsed and performed out of his own pocket. & rdquo; Wang Lulu said.

investors today come from a variety of backgrounds. Some of them are professional cultural investment companies that focus on the drama market, such as Yisi and Juntang Culture, which work with Wang Lulu. Although these companies are small in scale, they are quite familiar with small theatre plays and have a good eye. They can estimate the profitability of the repertoire even when they see the script and the cast, and they also have a set of follow-up marketing tools.

another type of investor just wants to test the performance market through relatively low-cost small theaters to see if there is value for further investment in the future. They don't know how to do it themselves, so they just give the money to the producer, who will run it. Fu Ruoyan's Journey to the East, also a post-80s playwright, is invested by Tianhao Ruili Culture Communication Co., Ltd., whose head office is a company involved in real estate, hotel, restaurant entertainment and other fields.

of course, there is no shortage of investors in the market who invest money as soon as they see the market booming and expect to make quick money. They often have high expectations for the profitability of small theatre plays, and they are easy to be fooled by producers when they know nothing about small theatre plays.

& ldquo; if you want to make quick money, investing in small theater plays is not a smart choice. & rdquo; Wang Lulu said. # p# subtitle # e# may not make much money selling tickets at first. Even if a well-performing play invests 250000 to 300000 yuan, the general profit in a round is only about 50, 000 yuan. Moreover, there are not many plays that can make it to the second or third round, and many plays end in silence after only a dozen performances in the first round. This is followed by the withdrawal of impatient investors.

the attendance of the small theatre drama has reached 90%, performing three or four rounds for a full hundred performances-it is satisfactory that mdash; can do this. But there is still a higher level on top of this-mdash; earns a different order of magnitude in 100 performances in small theatres and 100 performances in medium-sized theatres and large theatres.

& ldquo; investors want faster box office receipts; creators want higher recognition for the work itself. The ultimate goal of all people who work in small theatres is to enter the big theater. Two of rdquo; Wang Lulu's masterpieces entered the Central Theatre, which excited him and his investors. Four shows of "Bedlam Flying", which cooperated with Youyi Company, were moved into the Chinese Theater with a capacity of 700 people. "if you don't lie to you, who will you cheat?" "it has been performed for four rounds, two of which were performed in the Central Theater.

if you invest in big theater plays from the beginning, the amount of investment will be about 1 million. It is possible to make tens of millions of dollars if you succeed. "crush on Peach Blossom Garden" and Chen Peisi's "stooge" are examples. In a venue with a rent of 40,000 to 50,000, if you can perform for 6 to 10 performances, there is hope to earn back the cost in the first round. But if the box office is not ideal, the loss is also very serious. Therefore, for most investors, it is more reliable to start with a small theater.

so & ldquo; makes money from small theatres & rdquo; is regarded as a preliminary expectation; & ldquo; evolving theatres and grand theatres & rdquo; are regarded as the ultimate goal. On the journey to this ultimate goal, there are other levels of profitability.

in Wang Lulu's opinion, successful small theatre plays can be repeated after a long period of time, in addition to several rounds. Because the replay no longer needs to buy new costumes and scenery, it saves most of the upfront expenses, so the cost of the replay is lower than the previous performance, which means that the profit is higher.

Opera Xiaotang has developed the model of ldquo; drama chain & rdquo;, which buys and sells works as commodities, and even develops non-local franchisees. Similar to the restaurant chain, the so-called ldquo; drama chain & rdquo; gets the same script, dance beauty, poster, lighting design and so on from the original work. So far they have opened four chain stores in Shanghai, Shenzhen, Yinchuan and Jinan. The franchisee rents a theater in his own location and pays the play Xiaotang according to the standard of 10 yuan per seat per play. If there are 200 seats in the small theatre, then the play will be paid 2000 yuan for one performance, so that the play will receive 300000 yuan for 150 performances a year. Franchisees can choose the best drama run by Xiaotang in Beijing, as long as they copy the works that make a good profit in Beijing to the local area, and the actors are all selected locally.

Drama Xiaotang plans to increase the number of franchisees in drama chains to 10 this year, and their ambitions are more than that-if mdash;“ can reach 24 to 30 stores in the future, the profit model will change again, and it may be possible to make money by issuing alone. & rdquo; Guan Haoyue said.

& ldquo; Leizi laughter Factory & rdquo; took only a year to get its money back, which was a surprise for investors. Put forward by producer Lei Zile and producer Zhang Chengxiaoyong-ldquo; Enterprise Premium customization-rdquo; has become the most powerful money-making tool. To put it bluntly, it is to customize the plot and insert advertisements for some enterprises. They have customized "Love comes and you go" for Kappa and "Bluebird is a must" for Bluebird fitness.

from these two successful attempts, Leizi Le Xiao Factory relies on & ldquo; Premium customization & rdquo; plus enterprise franchise to make each show profitable directly. Ha Ping, an investor, has other plans: his real estate project, Tianhai Commercial Building, is being done at ldquo; siheyuan Hotel & rdquo;, and he plans to have the factory's screenwriter produce a play around Tianhai Commercial Building to make a profit for his two chess pieces.

of course, things are not entirely optimistic. Wang Lulu's attitude towards the popularity of small theatre plays and the influx of investors is quite direct: & ldquo; what we are seeing now is a market with serious bubbles, and fast-making & lsquo; fast food & rsquo; works will disappear as the bubble recedes, and many investors and performing groups will not even have a chance to wait until that day. & rdquo;

small theatre plays have become popular because of a comedy, so works that follow the humorous and hilarious route have been mass-produced in the past two years, including shoddy and vulgar products. During the months from November 2008 to March 2009, more than 80 small theatres were staged in Shanghai alone, which exceeded the output of the whole year before 2007, with mixed quality. In Beijing, commercial drama societies represented by Xiaotang, Lei Zile and Big Cola specialize in comedy, and their ldquo; stress relief drama-rdquo; is also an entertainment product to please the audience. Comedies and suspense dramas are the most popular operas among audiences at present, and almost all troupes are busy around them.

but how long will these styles last? No one has a bottom. When investors who have not yet entered the market are wondering how long the ldquo; drama will be popular & rdquo;, some people in it already understand: the senior audience will not be crazy all the time, investors? Of course not.