NT 2016

I usually phone NT to book because I make a list of what I want from the booklet. I'm not good at hopping about on pages on a website and on the phone I can ask about different seats.

You still find that possible Rumbledoll? I used to have advance for that reason but increasingly found all the £15 tickets were gone by then and yes I know that is not what membership is supposed to be about but that is why I had it. 

Is 'The Plough and the Stars' in this next booking period?

Interesting, thanks Rumbledoll.

Indeed - personally I love online booking, and the great boon of the digital age for me has been the massive reduction in the need to actually talk to people; but for some people, often older, using tech is not second nature and they want to talk to someone. And in spite of popular opinion here, many older people who would like to go to the theatre aren't rolling in money (eg my mum). Adding an extra couple of quid to the cost of a ticket that already feels like a major cost could easily dissuade a lot of people from buying. 

It just feels mean-spirited; I've really admired the NT previously for not imposing booking fees and compared them very favourably to the SB Centre, Barbican, etc - I think there's no excuse for subsidised orgs to do this, and would make it a condition of Arts Council funding if it were up to me.

I'd have more sympathy if it were genuinely to do with swingeing Govt cuts and not because there's a hole in their finances from not selling many tickets over the past nine months. Arts Council funding is actually pretty secure currently - but it needs to be partnered with decent long-term financial management and getting audiences in.

The concerning thing is if you are, say, a visually impaired person who cannot use computers so rely on the telephone for booking, then it sort of works out that they are directly financially penalising people with a disability. I hope that if there are people affected in this way then they are the sort of person who will kick up a stink, for an individual-basis-fee-waiver if not necessarily a full-on policy change. If the box office don't consider waiving this booking fee for people who really have no choice, then it could prove sticky for the NT in the long run, if one bears accessibility and discrimination issues in mind.

True, true - maybe they should pay double for the ticket, then, and also contribute a bit more tax, the lucky bastards.

Yes, their costs associated with booking are much lower so they can afford a telephone booking surcharge. It's long overdue really.

There is such a thing as a screen reader, you know. Totally blind people can use the Internet too.

In my last job I was responsible for making sure our software could be used by the blind, so I had to sit there with headphones and my monitor switched off navigating my way around. Difficult, but possible. A result of this is that I have no patience for people who think - and I use that word quite inaccurately - that spelling doesn't matter on the Internet. Using a screen reader is no easy task at the best of times, and it's an order of magnitude harder when you have to work back from what you hear to a conjectured spelling and then from that to what the word probably should have been.

The Deep Blue Sea opens on 8th June
The Plough and the Stars opens on 27th July

The starting dates have definitely been available for a little while, I keep a very detailed calendar of plays I'm thinking about booking and I had those dates already in there. End (or pseudo-end) dates would be good though, if anyone has any tips?