The Theatre No One Wants to Fill Anymore
by Cormac · 12 July 2026 · Society & Current Affairs
Cormac has run a small independent Dublin theatre for eleven years, surviving recessions and a pandemic, but now faces a subtler threat: audiences book tickets at the last minute because apps keep all options perpetually open, turning a night at the theatre into just one of many interchangeable choices. He responds by ending every performance with an unscripted onstage conversation, insisting that real human risk and presence cannot be replaced by an algorithm.
Cormac has run a small independent theatre in Dublin for eleven years, a hundred-twenty seats, one that's survived three recessions, a pandemic, and several changes of landlord, and he admits openly that he no longer knows how it would survive a fourth. Not from lack of money alone — that too, but mainly from a shift he never anticipated: people now book tickets hours, sometimes minutes, before a show instead of weeks ahead, because they want to keep every option open.
Cormac used to be able to plan, from advance sales three weeks out, how many extras he'd need, how much more advertising was worth buying. Now he often doesn't know until two hours before curtain whether the house will be half-full or sold out, because people have delegated their evenings to an app that shows them five options at once and lets them decide at the last possible moment. That sounds like a small change. For a theatre his size, it means every single week is a financial blind flight.
What preoccupies him most isn't the uncertainty itself but what it reveals about people's relationship with culture: a night at the theatre used to be an appointment with yourself, something you planned for. Now it's one of ten options for a Thursday evening, on equal footing with a restaurant, a film at home, nothing at all.
Cormac has started ending every performance with a short, unannounced conversation with the audience, right there on stage, unrehearsed. "I don't want them to consume a product and leave," he says. "I want them to remember that real people risked something for them in a real room. No app can replace that — not yet, I hope."
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