Our campaign for cheaper theatre tickets proves a dramatic success. And now the RSC signs up

Three months ago I launched a campaign to encourage more young people to go to the theatre. I said theatre was pricing itself out of the market and producers should offer tickets for selected performances at cinema prices.

The campaign, as it turns out, has rapidly proved to be successful and looks to be bringing in a new audience.

First the producers of the Queen and Madness musicals signed up to the scheme and called it the Lister Experiment, no doubt to shift the blame if they failed to shift tickets. Last Monday nearly 1,000 tickets were sold at £11.50, many of them normally £40, for the Queen musical We Will Rock You.

Last night was the first Lister Experiment evening at the Madness musical Our House, and again large numbers of young people attended on specially priced tickets, some of whom had never been to the theatre before.

Today the experiment takes another leap forward. Productions from the new Royal Shakespeare Company season in London are to be offered under the experiment, with top price seats of £37.50 being offered at £11.50, the price of a cinema ticket in London's Leicester Square.

The Royal Shakespeare Company is the most famous and most acclaimed classical company in the world. Its new season of rarely performed Elizabethan and Jacobean plays at the Gielgud Theatre is one of the most daring ventures ever mounted in London's Shaftesbury Avenue.

Sir Antony Sher, who is starring in the RSC season, said last night: "I really think this is a most tremendous idea. It is particularly so for this season as younger audiences really respond to these plays and did so when we staged them in Stratford. They are the 17th-century Tarantino. They are funny, violent and sexy.

"Ticket prices are prohibitive at theatres and so this is a tremendous scheme. I just can't endorse it enough. The idea that young people can get in at cinema prices is fantastic and they will certainly find it as rewarding as going to the movies."

Thelma Holt is co-producing the RSC's London season with her colleague Bill Kenwright. She said: "This is a long overdue move. Getting the young into theatres is our insurance policy for the future. If they don't come now, they are not going to come when they are 40."

Paul Roberts, who produced the Queen and Madness musicals, confirmed that the experiment was indeed bringing in a new audience.

He said: "We talked to audience members and there were certainly people who had seldom, if ever, been to the theatre before. There was a different feel about the place. I am in no doubt that this has been an experiment worth doing."

Alison McCafferty, a personal assistant from London, booked £11.50 tickets for We Will Rock You for herself and 11 friends, all in their twenties, under the Lister Experiment.

She said: "Basically a lot of my friends wanted to go, but simply couldn't afford £45 and weren't prepared to sit right at the back. This way we could all go together in good seats and we had a fantastic time. For several of them, going to the theatre is a rare experience."

But, while the campaign is having early success, there is clearly still a long way to go to make theatre affordable for young people, and to turn theatre going into the habit that cinema-going already is.

It is not just the price of best seats that is beyond the reach of young (and not so young) audiences. Even the cheapest seats in London's West End can often be as much as £20. Yet seats in the gods have traditionally been the way that teenagers have had their first experience of theatre.

Iain Mackintosh of Theatre Projects Consultants said: "Why not return to the original ratio for these theatres? In 1912, this was more than 10:1 at the Comedy, Garrick and Queen's theatres. At the London Coliseum in 1911 it was 15:1 – 7s6d to 6d.

"Outside London, things were much same. At two theatres, the Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh and the Theatre Royal, Nottingham, which stand today, the spread was 5s to 6d, which is 10:1.

"A price difference of at least 8:1 was the norm across Britain for over 200 years. Today treating people almost equally means charging everyone near top prices."

The RSC isoffering top-price seats at £11.50 for three performances: The Island Princess next Tuesday 10 December, Edward IIIon Tuesday 17 December and Eastward Ho on Monday 23 December. Ring the Gielgud Theatre box office on 0870 890 1105 and quote the Lister Experiment.

Tickets for Our House are being offered at £11.50 under the Lister Experiment next Monday and Tuesday. The box office number at the Cambridge Theatre is 0870 890 1102.

The acid test, of course, is whether the new audience will feel encouraged to make theatre-going a natural choice for an evening's entertainment.

Theatre producers make plenty of noise about wanting to extend the audience base. They choose new writers; they cast stars from television soaps; they allow audiences to bring drinks in with them; they even, in the case of the National Theatre, reconfigure the auditorium in an effort to make it more youth-friendly.

My belief is that there is a simpler answer. High ticket prices, I remain convinced, are the biggest obstacle to young people going to the theatre.

The fact that leading West End producers are coming on board to back the experiment, and even risk short-term losses to bring in a new audience, shows that there is at last a change of thinking in London's theatreland.