Америкалық театр журналы "Playbill" тарихы

Monthly theatre magazine published in the United States
the theater magazine

Playbill is an American monthly magazine for theatergoers. Although there is a subscription issue available for home delivery, most copies of Playbill are printed for particular productions and distributed at the door as the show's program. Playbill was first printed in 1884 for a single theater on 21st Street in New York City. The magazine is now used at nearly every Broadway theatre as well as many Off Broadway productions. Outside New York City, Playbill is used at theaters throughout the United States. as of September 2012, its circulation was 4,073,680.

What is known today as Playbill started in 1884, when Frank Vance Strauss founded the New York Theatre Program Corporation specializing in printing theater programs. Strauss reimagined the concept of a theater program, making advertisements a standard feature and thus transforming what was then a leaflet into a fully designed magazine. The new format proved popular with theatergoers, who started to collect playbills as souvenirs;

In 1918, Frank Vance Strauss sold the company to his nephew, Richard M. Huber. From 1918 onward, the company started printing playbills for all of Broadway and, by 1924, was printing 16,000,000 programs for over 60 theaters. The 1920s also saw attempts to introduce consistency in the design with the covers of the magazines featuring artwork representing the theater, which would stay the same from show to show.

Playbill launched Playbill Online in January 1994. The free website offers news about the theater industry, focusing on New York shows but including regional theater, touring, and international stage happenings. It is read by show fans and theater practitioners, and is updated regularly. It also offers discounts on tickets and dining for its members. In 2000, Playbill added www. playbillstore. com, an online shopping store offering official Playbill merchandise and merchandise from most current Broadway and touring productions. In 2006, Playbill released its first records on Playbill Records, an imprint of SonyBMG. Releases included Brian Stokes Mitchell's eponymous solo album and two compilations of show tunes entitled Scene Stealers, The Men and Scene Stealers, The Women. Playbill Radio, a 24 hour Broadway themed internet radio station featuring news, podcasts, and a musical library of over 20,000 titles, premiered in 2007. In 2011, Playbill launched Playbill Vault, a comprehensive online database of Broadway history. Playbill Vault provides records of Broadway productions from 1930 to the present. Information on the website includes original and current casts, actor head shots, production credits, Playbill cover images, scanned Playbill Who's Who pages, production photos, and videos. In 2012, Playbill launched Playbill Memory Bank, a website that allowed theater goers to track their memories of their theater attendances by entering dates they attended a show, along with information like ticket scans. The site provided information about cast members, including which performer had each particular role, for roles that may have had several replacements over the life of the show. Playbill Memory Bank shut down December 31, 2016. Playbill launched its first app, called Playbill Passport, on January 4, 2016. In 2021, Playbill added a "post the pay" rule to their job site after a campaign by On Our Team and Costume Professionals for Wage Equity called for an increased pay transparency and equity in the theater industry.

For decades, Playbill concentrated on Broadway and Off Broadway theaters, while Stagebill focused on concerts, opera, and dance in venues such as Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall. To increase revenue, Stagebill entered Playbills turf. The truce was first breached in 1995, when The Public Theater quietly defected to Stagebill, and more noisily in 1997, when Disney contracted Stagebill for its musical The Lion King at its newly reopened New Amsterdam Theatre. The main point of contention in the latter case was control over advertising content: Playbill is distributed free to theaters, relying on advertising revenue that is completely under its authority, whereas Disney, per company policy, required a program without cigarette or liquor ads. In response to Stagebill's upstart incursion, Playbill began to produce Showbill, a sister publication that conformed to Disney's advertising requirements for all publications distributed in its properties. Now with an alternative, Disney switched from Stagebill to Showbill for The Lion King late in its run at the New Amsterdam. (When the musical moved to the Minskoff Theatre, which Disney does not own, it was obligated to use Playbill, as are Disney productions at other theaters. Additionally, Playbill responded further by producing publications for classic arts venues, aggressively courting many venues that were once Stagebill clients. In the spring of 2002, Playbill signed a contract with Carnegie Hall; this milestone was bookended by the earlier acquisition of the valuable Metropolitan Opera program and the ensuing contract with the New York Philharmonic—both tenants of Stagebill's erstwhile stronghold Lincoln Center.

Playbill is a founding member of the Museum of Broadway.