Broadway Lottery and Standing Room Tickets

Broadway, it is the Great White Way and dream for many actors. We strive to be in a show and live the life. If we get that job we will work and work hard 6 days a week, 8 shows a week, and finally get that one night off and what do we do? Go see a show to support a friend or colleague. But will we buy a full priced ticket at the box office? Highly unlikely, though we have weekly paychecks, living in NYC is expensive  and actors salaries are still on the lower end of the scale. It is common to see actors in standing room only or lottery lines to try to win or get extremely discounted tickets to see a show. This brings me to my topic for the day.

Are the current practices for lottery and standing room tickets successful or need to be adapted?

There are a number of websites such as Playbill that list the current policies for any given theatre, which is very helpful for those trying to get all information at once. The issues I have are that there is no consistency among the theaters. Prices range from $20 to $40, either students or non-students, cash or card and so on. Yes I understand that prices may be different due to theater size and production value and I respect this is a business but I wonder if there is a way to make an across the board student or actor price and way to get the tickets that works well from the audience perspective.

The Lottery process itself I don't feel can be changed as far as how tickets are drawn. From most theaters I have been to the process is the same. Names are put in for about an hour, after the hour names are called and you can choose 1 or 2 tickets and when they are gone they are gone, pretty straight forward. I think I have more of an issue with standing room  policies. To those of you who don't know, this is really what it means, you stand during the whole show, for a fraction of the price and possible partial view. Case in point the standing room for Jersey Boys means you will not see the top half of the stage and set because the balcony is in your line of sight. But these sell regardless because for $25, its easy for a 24 year old to stand up and watch something they have been wanting to see. My beef is that the box office knows how many tickets are available before they open so once the line is set, count the number of tickets and let all the rest go home, or rush to try to get tickets to another show.  I say this as a former box office employee, so I am not tyring to be one sided.  It has happened to be 5 times where I am next in line and then they are sold out and I have missed the opportunity to see another show. Most recently that happened at Book of Mormon last month. You can imagine my sense of being disturbed but I took a breath, walked to TKTS and saw Sister Act, so not a total loss cause you doesn't love a bunch of singing nuns with sequin lame? I know I do!

I don't know what theaters can do to change or adapt policies, but maybe as said before we can try to figure out how to tweak. Case in pont, in one of my previous blogs I mentioned how Godspell uses an Ipad to fill out your name for the lottery. I love the forward thinking, however it cause the line to be longer (maybe because now many people due to their age don't know how to use them) but possibly a few more might help. Regardless, this small tweak I have remembered and feel this is how success is made; by making bold moves. I guarantee you other young theatre goers will remember that Godspell uses Ipads and even if they don't win the lottery, may go back to buy a ticket just cause it was on their radar.


Food for thought
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