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Free Theater Nights Draw Crowds
Promotional scheme attracts new audiences across the nation
wlc235@nyu.eduWith the Internet and iTunes competing for Americans’ entertainment time, and theater attendance falling after 9/11, a national theater organization a few years ago dreamed up a novel promotional scheme.
“We wanted something that would be as galvanizing as the “Got Milk?” campaign,” said Brad Erickson, a participant, who directs a theater promotion group in San Francisco .
Theatre Communications Group, a national organization that promotes not-for-profit theater, developed a Free Night of Theatre. For one night each October, theaters across the country would stage performances for free.
Goal: to counter the belief that all theater is expensive, and to entice audiences into learning about new or different types of theater.
Free Night is on October 18th in 2007, though a few theaters run it on different nights. Some 750 theaters across the nation plan to give away more than 70,000 free tickets, organizers said.
The program was launched in Austin, Philadelphia and San Francisco in 2005, and has now includes eight more cites and five states: Seattle, Sacramento, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Cleveland, Boston, Washington, DC and Lexington, KY, plus Connecticut, Oregon, New Jersey, North Carolina and Wisconsin. Ironically, New York City, the nation’s theater capital and Theatre Communications’ home base, hasn’t yet participated, though it may in 2008.
Free tickets are on offer at the Theatre Communications Group website, at www.tcg.org, or at the box offices and websites of participating theaters.
“I think people have this perceived notion of price, sort of theater as elitism,” said Theater Communications spokesman Phillip Matthews. Free Night aims to show prospective theatergoers that they can see Broadway-quality performances locally for as little as $25, he said.
The project had its naysayers.
“We knew if we couldn’t give away tickets we were in trouble,” said Terry Milner, executive director of the North Carolina Theatre Conference. “We needed to find out where theater was in the public consciousness.”
He was pleasantly surprised: demand in North Carolina was huge. In October 2006, 12 North Carolina theaters gave away 1,361 tickets.
“We knew we were taking a gamble,” said Erickson, executive director of Theatre Bay Area, an organization of San Francisco theaters. “We knew there were skeptics.”
But in San Francisco, too, demand was overwhelming; it slowed web servers. Theaters around San Francisco gave away more than 8,000 tickets for 140 performances. The funders were tears (of happiness), Erickson said.
Free Night of Theatre is also meant to show the diversity of performances.
“We’re trying to expand people’s theater experiences,” Matthews said. “We’re trying to get them to try new things, and explore what else their community might have to offer.”
Some 75 percent of Free Night audience members surveyed in 2006 said they attended a new theater.
Perhaps the happiest outcome was the return rate: one third of the attendees in 2005 bought a ticket later that season.
“There was a whole debate in the field about whether the concept of offering a free ticket devalues theater, devalues the experience, or does it present something new to folks, that they then follow through and come back again,” Matthews said. “I don’t think anyone really anticipated it catching on as much as it has.”
Sidebar:
What: Free Night of Theatre
When: October 18, 2007
Where: Participating theaters in Austin, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, Sacramento, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Washington, DC., Cleveland, Boston, and Lexington, KY; plus across Connecticut, Oregon, New Jersey, North Carolina and Wisconsin.
How to Get Tickets: www.tdg.org, or at participating theaters