In the Spotlight: Illuminate Your Evening

5/12/2011

Theatrical Playbills: Event Programs for Every Performance

The big night is here! It’s the opening performance. Your troop is performing a brand new play, and the theater is packed. You peek out from behind the curtain. There is a kind of buzz in the audience. Folks are finding their seats and leafing through their event pamphlets, which were printed up especially for this event.

Everyone Please Take a Bow

You know when it’s over, this performance will be the talk of the local theater set. You’ll find reviews online and in the local press, so you want to make sure everyone involved is properly acknowledged. A custom event program allows you to do this. Here you can give credit where credit is due, listing all of your actors, designers, stagehands and anyone else involved in your production in a format that is easy for bloggers and reporters to take with them.

Not only do your cast and crew benefit by getting their names and biographies out there, the event program can be useful further along in their careers. Cast and crew can add the custom brochure to their portfolios, proving they were in the production. It’s a permanent record of a fleeting moment in history.

Tell me a Story

For anything you stage, the event brochure is the perfect place to share information about the play or performance itself. You can use space in the program to showcase the author and the idea. What inspired the play? Is there a synopsis?

Additionally, it is often helpful for the audience to have a general idea of the movement of the play. How many acts are there? When can they expect an intermission? This helps your audience keep track of where they are in the evening.

A Stellar Performance

When your non-profit theater group puts on a performance, a custom printed pamphlet helps you communicate your organization’s information with the audience. You can tell them how long your organization has existed and share your mission. You can use this space to solicit donations and provide contact information to do so.

The event program becomes an important marketing tool for this purpose. The audience can find information about the organization side by side with information about the play they just saw and enjoyed. When they bring the pamphlet home with them, audience members may return to it again to illicit a memory of the play. They may want to donate to the organization that made it possible and the event brochure provides them with all they need to do so.

Sponsor, sponsor, sponsors

One important function of a custom event program is that it leave you space to highlight your sponsors. Acknowledge the folks that made it all possible. Include their logos and contact information, so that patrons will associate them with your play. When you include sponsors in your event brochure, you provide them with some free advertising space and acknowledge their important role in your organization. Seeing the generosity of your corporate donors displayed in their programs, patrons may also find themselves more generous with donations.