At the Helsinki City Theatre, the amazing spring season and also the autumn look promising
The Helsinki City Theatre had a total of 144,830 spectators during the spring 2019 season. This was an increase of almost 30 per cent compared to the previous spring. The audience was particularly interested in the musical Kinky Boots, Tahto , which tells the story of skier Aino-Kaisa Saarinen, and Fingerpori, which is based on the popular comic.
HKT’s biggest success was the musical Kinky Boots on the big stage, where it was seen by a total of 54,004 spectators in the spring’s sold-out performances. The farce Comeback (6,881 viewers) received the most viewers on the Arena stage, and on the small stage, the audience was particularly interested in Tahto (8,788 viewers), which tells the story of skier Aino-Kaisa Saarinen.
In the programme of the Swedish-language Lilla Teatern, Ens lite lugn i huset (4,452 viewers) became the favourite, and in Studio Pasila, Fingerpori, based on Pertti Jarla’s comic strip, received the highest audience figures (7,314 viewers).
Helsinki City Theatre’s dance group Helsinki Dance Company’s Bonfire: Wandering Bands of Storytelling Sapiens received 1,586 viewers.
HKT’s performances were also seen outside the company’s own house. The record-breaking popular Stones in the Pocket , which has been performed to full houses since 2002, visited nine cities with 16 performances during the spring.
In addition, more than 8,000 theatre friends took part in behind-the-scenes tours, workshops, artist meetings and other audience outreach events during the spring. During the spring, the City Theatre had 23 different productions in its repertoire, and a total of 413 performances were seen.
The number of spectators also increased when looking at the entire performance year. During the autumn of 2018 and spring of 2019, the City Theatre had 293,739 spectators, while in the previous season of 2017–2018 the number of spectators was 278,751.
The autumn 2019 programme has also been of interest to the public, and the advance booking situation in the corresponding period last year has increased by more than 40 per cent. A total of 57,600 tickets have been sold and reserved for the autumn performances. A year ago, the pre-booking situation for the autumn was 37,000 tickets.
“28,000 tickets have already been reserved for this autumn’s Disney musical The Little Mermaid , while last year’s pre-sale of Kinky Boots , which was not so well known in advance, was only 11,500 in the spring, and its popularity only started to rise with the performances,” says theatre director Kari Arffman.
Helsinki City Theatre ticket office, First Line 2, Mon-Fri 9 a.m. to 5.30 p.m., Eläintarhantie 5 Sat 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and one hour before the performance and Lippupiste Mon-Sat 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., Sun 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., tel. 0600 900 900 (2 €/min + local network charge)
www.hkt.fi
Press photos can be found in the image bank and press releases in the newsroom.
Further information, media ticket reservations and interview requests: Helsinki City Theatre, Kaisa Pelkonen, Communications Officer , kaisa.pelkonen@hkt.fi, 040 552 3788
Helsinki City Theatre, Ensi linja 2, 00530 Helsinki