'', 1889 At a
theatre,
opera, or
ballet performance, they are usually given at the door in the
United States, while they are usually sold in the
United Kingdom. The
Broadway programme makes its money from selling advertisements. A programme company pays the theatre for the rights to produce the production’s programmes, which is contrary to common belief that the theatre pays the programme company. The programme generally contains photos of the production, a cast list, biographies of the actors and production staff involved, the name of the theatre, background information, and can contain advertisements. For example, the programme for the original production of
Man of La Mancha contained articles by the staff about how the production was created. The first theatre programmes were issued in the mid-nineteenth century in magazine format. The original theatre programme first appeared in the 18th century. The early playbills were basic, with only enough pages to list the cast members and information on the play's locale and scenes. There were usually only four pages: the cover advertised the show, a back page displayed the theatre layout, and the two interior pages listed all the credits. Not all early programmes were printed, but written by hand and cut and pasted together from the letters of other printed documents. The latter was especially done by theatre entrepreneur Sarah Baker, who owned several theatres in Kent, during the late 18th century. In early British theatre, the cast was very important. Audiences were very familiar with leading actors and a particular player could draw a larger crowd. The programme was a kind of contract between the theatre and the audience, because if an audience paid to see a particular actor and they were not presented with him, there was the immediate risk of crowd hissing, orange throwing, or even rioting. This sometimes resulted in property damage and physical assault. By 1884, advertisements had become a standard feature in playbills. Beginning in
New York City, the first company to specialize in printing theatrical programmes was founded by an
Ohio business man,
Frank Vance Strauss. By 1911, the company was called the
Strauss Magazine Theatre Program. This corporation was the early foundation for the modern day magazine,
Playbill. During
World War II, British theatre programmes underwent a dramatic change as the government placed restrictions over paper use. The programme turned back into a single sheet of paper folded over once to efficiently create four available pages for text. Not until the 1970s were photo printed programmes available and widely distributed at British theatres. The American Playbill did not suffer as severely during the second World War and was still published at a regular rate. ==Sporting events==