Playbills are a staple of the Broadway experience — a handy guide to a show’s cast and creative team and, for many, a treasured memento.
The publication has been much in the news lately. As part of a new contract just agreed to by the Broadway League and Actors’ Equity Association, productions will no longer be obligated to include “stuffers” — inserts inside Playbills — listing the names of understudies and other cast changes. Instead, they can create a web page, accessible via QR code, to house that information.
Playbills are not an industrywide given. Some local theaters have programs printed by other companies, and some are digital-only. In London’s West End, programs are not standard or free — they are bigger and fancier and available for sale alongside other merch. As part of union talks this year on Broadway, the League floated allowing fully digital Playbills, but that idea went nowhere.
Our readers have some questions about Playbills. Here are some answers.
Q: In the spirit of resource sustainability, I would like to know if it’s best to leave my unwanted Playbill at the theater. Because of their coating, I assume they are not recyclable, but are they reusable? Does the theater try to distribute them to other patrons?
I ran your questions by Molly Braverman, director of the Broadway Green Alliance, which is a nonprofit that seeks to reduce waste in the theater industry.
“Playbills are one of the most visible forms of waste in the theater, so we get asked about them a lot,” she told me. “They’re not necessarily the biggest form of environmental harm that theater does, but every patron gets them and has to think about what to do with them. So it’s a great question, and it’s a hard question, because there is no one answer — all of our recycling systems are different.”
Braverman said she checked with the Natural Resources Defense Council, which advises her organization, and confirmed that Playbills are recyclable, even with their glossy cover paper.
As for reuse, the answer, sorry to say, varies by venue.
“Do they get reused? Universally, of course not,” Braverman said. “We’ve been told by some ushers and theater operators that reusing can be complex and challenging because of how patrons use Playbills — bending pages, putting gum inside them and overall sanitary challenges. But I can’t speak to the practice of each theater, and there are plenty of examples of Off Broadway and regional houses that do make a concerted effort to reuse.”
The Shubert Organization, the largest operator of Broadway theaters with 17 of the 41 houses, said some ushers reuse Playbills left behind by patrons, but only if they are in perfect condition; otherwise used Playbills are recycled. The Nederlander Organization, which has nine Broadway houses, said it recycles any programs left behind in its theaters and works with Playbill to try to reduce excess printing. ATG Entertainment, Broadway’s third largest theater owner, did not respond to requests for comment.
Q: Why are Playbills are always yellow?
The reader is referring to the stripe across the top of most Playbill covers. For this one, I turned to Alex Birsh, the chief operating officer and senior vice president of Playbill; he is the third generation of his family with a leadership role at the publication, which his grandfather acquired in the 1970s.
Birsh said his grandfather and his colleagues had experimented with different hues when they were trying to choose a banner color for Playbill in 1973. “When an ink specialist came in to help with the decision, my grandfather asked, ‘What’s the cheapest color to use in bulk?’ And the answer: ‘Yellow.’ And that, if you can believe it, is the main reason they moved to yellow.”
Birsh added: “In retrospect, my grandfather’s addendum to that story was if it was a darker color that would be hard to see in a theater, they would’ve chosen a different color. But it was a happy circumstance that the brightest color was also the most affordable.”