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A successful show is nothing without an audience; and Zhou Yurou makes coming to a show easy by creating a smooth ticket-booking experience. The ticketing manager based in London, UK, prices tickets and distributes them far and wide, and has honed this art of sales while working at the Apollo Victoria Theatre—the West End home of Wicked the Musical.
Yurou found her niche after years of exploring theatre. “Nobody wakes up one day and says, ‘I want to be in ticketing’,” she says.
She majored in theatre studies in university and while she enjoyed performance, she was more interested in working behind-the-scenes.
After graduation, she became a theatre manager at the then newly opened Drama Centre at National Library. This new role pushed her to learn about venue operations while working closely with arts companies. But when the offer came to renew her contract, she decided to move across the world to pursue an MA in Theatre Studies at Université Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris.
Two years later, she relocated to London, where she developed her operational skills and business acumen at Apollo Victoria Theatre for 12 years. Now she is the ticketing manager at Cuffe & Taylor, one of UK’s top live music and event promoters and part of Live Nation Entertainment.
Yurou gives us an insider look into the intricacies of ticket management and shares about her unexpected encounter with Jacky Cheung.
Cuffe & Taylor specialises in producing outdoor shows like the Lytham Festival in Lancashire, touring musical acts and theatre productions. I handle the pricing and ticketing for the shows we produce, present and tour, on behalf of the promoters and producers. This involves negotiating with performance venues and ticketing agents to agree on the price and quantity of tickets that will go on sale. I also manage the ticketing inventory and revenue to meet income projections. One of the tours I’m working on is Bluey’s Big Play, which is going on their second UK and Ireland tour.
Yurou with Bluey.
I looked through arts jobs websites and forums. The unanimous advice for newcomers is to volunteer and put yourself out there. So I volunteered for front-of-house and operations roles at a variety of events. It was really interesting because I got to learn how things are done here, met new people and had fun.
Eventually I found an entry-level, front-of-house job at the Apollo Victoria Theatre where Wicked was (and still is!) on, which I thought was a good place to start and see where it could lead to. I was then offered a full-time position at the box office, and just like that, I fell into ticketing, like every other ticketing person. I eventually worked my way up to being the sales and ticketing manager at the theatre.
I was in very public-facing customer service positions, so I had to learn to understand regional accents and language quirks and code-switch quickly to be understood. Facing difficult patrons is normal in customer service, but there was an instance when an angry customer told me to go back to where I came from, which was frustrating. Once, an angry customer even threw money at my team member’s face.
But these incidents have taught me to always have my team’s back when dealing with customers, so that they always feel supported. If we are in the wrong, we will apologise, but we will also call out bad behaviour as that is something we do not tolerate.
It’s rare for people to stay in the same job for 12 years these days. It sounds static but it wasn’t at all. Wicked itself might not have changed much other than a few aesthetic adjustments, but there was constant evolution of ticketing technology, consumer behaviour, industry dynamics, and relationships with partners.
In my time there, we switched ticketing platforms three times and I had to master them all, come up with new processes and train my team. With the different platforms and improved technology, the scope of what we could do expanded as well.
One of the biggest shifts came post-pandemic when we moved from busy in-person ticket sales and collection to online purchases and e-tickets, which fundamentally changed our operations. This raised new challenges of staying relevant and engaging potential customers online. There was also a major focus around accessibility and that required us to align with the company’s broader access policies and membership schemes.
Some of these changes were revolutionary, which made everything much easier and it was great for the consumers. As a sales team, we are always looking for new ways to improve, keep relevant and of course, maximise sales—doesn’t sound very artistic at all, does it! That is the reality of things though: as much as we want to make art, we need to stay on top of the business and commercial side of things.
Yurou at the Olivier Awards for <em>Bluey's Big Play</em>.
I’ve had several fangirl moments, and my biggest surprise encounter was with Jacky Cheung. I was still in a customer-facing role back then and he came to my window to collect his tickets. I didn’t even realise it was him initially as we were so busy and he gave me his name in Cantonese, so it didn’t click until I looked up to hand him his tickets. I basically froze. After that I went to the back office and hyperventilated for like five minutes, with no one to share my excitement with. To everyone else on my team, he was just another random person...but it was Jacky Cheung!
Contributed by:
Rydwan Anwar spent two decades programming theatre and festivals in Singapore. He is now based in Newcastle upon Tyne.
