Images courtesy of the Shakespeare Theater Company
Shakespeare Theater Company’s annual free production is adding an online lottery for tickets this year. Or more accurately – and perhaps unfortunately – almost completely replacing the in-person pursuit of tickets. That’s a big winner for everyone who gets to enter the online lottery rather than wait in record-setting temperatures, but maybe not the most accessible to the area’s disadvantaged.
Perhaps that’s a non-issue; I don’t have any statistics on who goes to free-for-all and it might be that the less internet-soaked among us are mostly served by the STC’s excellent Students for Shakespeare program. Anyone else can still line up thirty minutes before the show to pick up unclaimed will-call seats, a number that I suspect will be larger than it was when folks had to stand outside and sweat for their spot.
The rest of us can go to the lottery page anytime between midnight and 1pm before the next showing (or the prior day for matinees) and enter for our shot. Winning gets you 2 tickets which you need to grab at least a half hour before showtime.
I highly encourage you to go – I really enjoyed this production during the regular season and expect this re-staging to be equally good.
Well I used to say something in my profile about not quite being a “tinker, tailor, soldier, or spy” but Tom stole that for our about us page, so I guess I’ll have to find another way to express that I am a man of many interests.
Hmm, guess I just did.
My tastes run the gamut from sophomoric to Shakespeare and in my “professional” life I’ve sold things, served beer, written software, and carried heavy objects… sometimes at the same place. It’s that range of loves and activities that makes it so easy for me to love DC – we’ve got it all.
This makes me sad. . . one of the things that I loved about free for all was that as a student I had time, but not money–so for me, spending saturday afternoon waiting in line with a group of friends was fun and meant that we got AWESOME seats that we never could afford during the regular season. Obviously, we can still get seats, but they might not be as guaranteed great as they were last summer.
Also, does this mean that if I have friends coming in from out of town, we might potentially not get seats at all? I wish that they split the theater in half or something, because some of us are willing to sacrifice time and a little discomfort to know that we would get a seat.
(however: I am so excited about 12th night. I loved it when I saw it during the regular season)
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