POPULAR THEATER, WHEALTY PEOPLE

By: Juan Carlos Gómez

The Iberoamerican Theater Festival is the center of culture for all people in the country especially for people in Bogota. This event is a good tool because it is a way to teach world culture and the history of the all participating countries in the festival through the theater.

In contrast to this, the principal objective is that people enjoy the festival, but not all of people are important to the festival because most of these performances have a high price. Therefore just wealthy people have possibility to enjoy the festival, though that was changing because with the last and new festivals the number of the free performances is rising.

Talking about free performances is necessary because the biggest and most special performances are free. These performances are the opening ceremony and the last show or the end of the festival, on the other hand, the most famous and important performances of the festival and in the world have a price and these performances are located in the best areas of the city, for that reason wealthy people have a better opportunity to enjoy the festival, and not only for this reason, the ticket price is important too because it is in the highest category of all festival. The cheapest ticket is kind of 25 US dollars and this price is unavailable for people with medium or lower resources.

The festival has about 150 street performances, all the street performances are free, but these are around the thirty percent of all of it. Though this fact is good for the festival, it should be better. As a matter of fact, the festival has most of the tickets in a good price but that is not enough for the resources of most of the people of the city and the country, maybe it is cheaper for the visitors of other countries. But the most important objective is including local people in all events.

Marketing has an important place in the festival because all events have advertising; and in this way the organization shows the nature of festival, profits, but what is the destiny of these profits? Maybe it can be a resource for help and subsidy some expensive performances. The festival needs to think about changing the general business point of view and it tries to make a unique interesting world festival, and better, maybe free.

For these reasons, this festival should be for all people in the city without giving importance to the financial resources, maybe the national government, the local government or just the sponsors need to give a subsidy or compensation for the expensive tickets; and for all people without the minimum resources to pay these events. The best opportunity is to change the festival focus and give a turn vision to transform in a free festival because the objective of this is to give a new idea, know the world and culture and that should be for all people.