broadway-tickets

As a student working on academic theatre, I am used to
getting complimentary tickets (comps) for the shows that I work on. Now right
now, that isn’t all that big of a deal, since the shows I am in or working on
at the moment would never cost anyone more than ten dollars or so. So it isn’t
that exciting to be able to give comp tickets to my friends and family.
Someday, though, fingers crossed, I’ll be involved in something with

Broadway-level prices, and giving out comp Broadway tickets will be a treat. Letting
my family bypass all the nonsense of dealing with Broadway ticket brokers,
paying hundreds of dollars to come see a current Broadway shows, will taste
sweet.

You have to wonder, though, how many comp tickets they give
out to people involved in the show. On the one hand, they run for much longer
than shows at regional theatres (and even longer than academic theatre
productions, which only run for a weekend or two), and their primary audiences
aren’t friends and family of those who work on the show. On the other hand,
tickets are pretty expensive, and do they really want to give up a couple
hundred dollars for friends and family of the cast and crew to come see the
show when many of them would probably scratch together enough to come anyway?
So how many comp tickets are you going to get as an actor – two? Four?

Does it change based on what you’ve done for the show? Maybe
I’m biased, but I feel like the playwright, lyricist, composer, or whatever,
should get more comps. Thinking about it, I’m not sure why I think that, other than that if it weren’t for the playwright,
the play wouldn’t be performed at all – you could exchange one actor for
another, though, or one designer for another, and the show would still go on.
As a playwright I would want essentially unlimited comp tickets. Okay, I’m
definitely biased.