Saturday, two or three weeks back, was an interesting 24 hours in the life of Sammy's Entertainment Venue.
At midnight, we had 400 in attendance at the Veils, with An Emerald City & Knives at Noon.
By 3am we had cleaned the venue and set up for the next day, hosting children's birthday parties from 11am, with a range of inflatable games that we have installed on site this year.
We hosted numerous groups until 5.30pm, when we once again cleared the venue and arranged temporary seating for a free circus show, with acrobats and jugglers among the stunning performances that took the stage for the next few hours. Finally, at the conclusion of this free show for the public, we cleared the seating and had the games back out for our Sunday morning activity centre bookings.
This was our 135th show, including theatrical performances, sport, and numerous youth events, since February last year.
We are nearing 50,000 customers per annum (current patronage at the Regent Theatre) and set to hit well in excess of that in 2010.
On that same Saturday, I was also very interested to read in the Otago Daily Times, of plans for a new theatre being rejected, and critics accusing the Dunedin City Council of not considering Sammy's for the said 800-seat theatre.
In defence of the council, a group of council representatives did make a site visit to Sammy's earlier this year.
They were briefed on current uses of this venue (live music performances and an inflatable activity centre).
I also informed them of our 718-person capacity and of our desire to retain a flat floor for the current businesses that we operate from Sammy's.
Since we took over the management of Sammys in February 2008 we have used the venue primarily for live music performance.
We have hosted scores of bands and DJs from around the world in the short time that we have been in operation. Dunedin has been very receptive to our acts.
We have also supported theatre, hosting award-winning cabaret shows at both the 2008 and 2009 Fringe Festivals.
With the help of the DCC and the Dunedin Centre we installed enough temporary seating for 500 and sold out the final show in the season of Fuse Productions' Heavenly Burlesque.
Right now Sammy's is one of the few Dunedin music venues still operational, with tough times closing the doors on other venues such as the Empire, Arc, and Backstage.
We have also made a commitment to offering a safe place for Dunedin youth to meet and socialise, with lots of awesome inflatable games, a sound system and a halfpipe! We have worked closely with Licensing and Public Health South to safely host high school formal afterparties, and the DCC has sponsored numerous alcohol-free youth events through the Youth Action Committee.
Sammy's is operating a successful entertainment venue without permanent seating.
In fact we don't often need seating for our current business operations.
More often than not our patrons prefer to stand, or dance, or even bounce.
We will continue to offer our venue to local and touring acts and look to work those in with our inflatable game activity centre schedule.
We are in discussions with shows during the Fringe Festival in April and the Festival of the Arts in October, and some of these will demand increased seating, but it is imperative for our current business operations that we retain the potential to have an empty large flat floor.
We are open to the idea of theatre, and welcome touring artists but a permanent sloped floor (and permanent seating) would inhibit both of our regular trades.
However, we do reckon it would be great to create a temporary tiered seating arrangement for Sammy's.
We admire and share Peter Entwisle's passion for the old buildings of Dunedin - as expressed in the Artbeat column - and intend on doing our best to preserve what we believe to be an important asset to Dunedin.
We welcome discussions with parties looking to improve the facilities at Sammy's. But Dunedin needs an entertainment venue capable of hosting the youth (and adults young and old) of this town, and one capable of hosting live music.
Our customers indicate a demand that compares to that of both sport and theatre, yet the idea of converting Sammy's into a permanent 800-seat theatre would seem to ignore this.
Sam Carroll is an owner-manager of Bigups, the present tenant of Sammy's.
