Behind the Philly boom of Pay-What-You-Can theater tickets

Theatre Philadelphia, the city’s hub for theatrical programming and host of the Barrymore Awards, hosts the annual Philly Theatre Week (PTW), a 10-day festival aimed at providing accessible tickets and reaching new audiences. Participating theaters provide a portion or, in some cases all, of their tickets at a PWYC rate.

Reaching new audiences

“The main goals of Philly Theatre Week have been to provide an accessible way to spread the word to new audiences and to allow audiences to take a chance on a new company, a new play, a new work, or a new activity like going to the theater in general, while helping to eliminate some of the financial barriers than can feel like a risk for audiences try out new things,” explained CJ Higgins, director of programming and operations at Theatre Philadelphia.

Some larger institutions join PTW by registering whatever show they have running during the festival and offering only a portion of their seats at a PWYC rate. But many smaller, independent theater companies produce shows specifically around PTW and offer all of the tickets under the model.

The challenges of PWYC

At PTW, audiences can truly pay zero dollars to see a live performance with a participating theater. While PWYC tickets can create many advantages for audience members with otherwise low resources, the model can be difficult for theater companies who are already stretched thin.

“The cheaper the ticket, the more likely the audience member is to no show,” Higgins said. “If you don’t pay for the ticket, then it doesn’t really feel like a big deal if you ultimately don’t attend.” Higgins urges paying and non-paying audience members to contact the box office if they don’t plan on attending, as the theater may be able to resell or reseat the ticket.

Overall, Theatre Philadelphia reports that 75 percent of member companies who participate in the festival report an increase in new audience members. These results, however, do not always mean an increase in direct artist profits.

“Artists with money tend to know people with money and artists who don’t tend to know people who don’t,” said Nick Jonczak, a founding producer of the Cannonball Festival (a hub of the Philadelphia Fringe Festival), which been operating under a PWYC ticketing model since its inception in 2021. “A challenge that I have seen with this model is that it actually reinforces a lot of the same stratification of people in economic situations. It helps audiences. It does not help artists.”

Testing ticket tiers

Cannonball’s PWYC model offers audiences the ability to pay on a sliding scale, starting with a $5 tier and raising in increments of five. But after a couple of years of producing, Cannonball eliminated its $10 tier.

“We made a gamble that when we eliminated the $10 level that audiences would opt up to $15 rather than down to $5,” said Jonczak. “That’s exactly what happened. Our average ticket price went up when we eliminated the $10 level.” Jonczak believes that this is due to the average audience member’s interest in supporting emerging artists’ careers, as many Cannonball performers are in the midst of developing new work.

Cannonball also offers a $35 tier “date night” ticket, where you’re paired with another ticket-holder to attend the show together. The festival provides dates with a goodie bag, free drink tickets, and some ice-breaker questions.

“It curates a little bit of a blind date experience,” Jonczak explained. “There are people that I know that are still friends with those people and have actually dated that person for a while. It’s not explicitly meant to be a romantic experience but we don’t stop you if it goes that way!”

Cannonball also offers a $50 “supporter” level ticket. While the name gives the impression that this ticket is a premium tier in order to offer the company additional patron support, Jonczak thinks otherwise.

Tickets versus donations

“What I would say about both the blind date and supporter level tickets is that, to me, there isn’t this sense of people ‘paying it forward’ because the reality is there is no ticket price level that we could set that is actually reflective of the amount of money that it takes to produce the thing they’re watching,” explained Jonczak.

“The current culture around Pay-What-You-Can and Pay-What-You-Decide models is that the audience views it as a donation that they are making,” Higgins said. “They have to decide how much they give and consider what their relationship is with the art that they’ve experienced … I think that’s worth considering in the language and how we approach it.”

For producing festivals, where ticket revenue does not feed back into operating costs but is often split with performing companies, it becomes important to communicate the reality of how patrons can most effectively support future work.

TJ Alladin, head of development and operations at the Cannonball Festival, is very conscious of how producers should be creating the distinction between a donation and a PWYC ticket.

“I know versions of the Pay-What-You-Can model that emphasize support or a donation but I would like to encourage ticket sales for the performance, for the production, for whatever this event is. That’s how it works in almost every other sector,” said Alladin. He advocates a dynamic in which donations are separate from the point of sale for a show, whether that donation is in the form of time, money, taking a survey, or something else.

Paying it forward

Other festivals, however, have baked this “pay it forward” culture into their ticketing strategies. Variety Pack, a new comedy festival hosted in the Bluver Theatre at the Drake, has recently offered a “Got You” ticket, offering audiences the opportunity to buy an anonymous $15 ticket.

“It is a one-to-one subsidized ticket from one audience member to another. It is a ticket you buy for a stranger who you will never meet,” explained Chaz T. Martin, the festival’s founding producer. “Fifteen dollars starts to approach a price point that could actually be prohibitive for some people, and so I wanted to make sure that cost is never the reason that somebody cannot come and see an hour-long dumb comedy show. That’s ridiculous.”

The festival introduced the Got You ticket in its second iteration in January 2026 and found that interest in Got You tickets outstripped interest in the traditional ones. This allows the festival to reinvest the surplus into their operations budget.

A membership model

Variety Pack has also developed a membership called the Ten Dollar Club. Members pay an annual fee of $60 to receive special perks like first access, one-dollar beers, and exclusive club merch. Only 50 members are accepted at a time, offering some exclusivity.

“Once you pay the annual fee, every ticket to a Variety Pack show is always $10, no questions asked,” said Martin. “We will honor that until the day Variety Pack dies. Or you, whichever one comes first.”

This membership model, when married to the Got You ticket, offers audiences the ability to interact with the productions at the level best suited for them, rewarding ongoing audience members for their continued investment. All of these models require investment, attention, and understanding from audiences. Festival producers must continue to consider how to communicate their needs to audiences.

“We’re going to have to help each other”

Higgins recalled a curtain speech that Bearded Ladies Cabaret artistic director Rose Jarboe made after a performance. “[She] made a very compelling pre-show curtain announcement regarding the fact that they were collecting donations at the end of the show,” said Higgins. “And she spoke about the fact that [the] theater climate is especially difficult for marginalized performers and marginalized companies right now. I saw so many people making donations after the show. I think the impulse is there for audiences and we’re realizing that the government isn’t going to help us so we’re going to have to help each other.”

PWYC models are not one-size-fits-all. While some companies install these models to eliminate access barriers, others want to bring new audiences into the room and convert them to long-time patrons, who may later pay at higher tiers. These nuances may lead to different pricing and messaging, but the end result is the same: more people are able to see live theater, and more performances have full audiences. For festivals presenting new work, there is no greater hope than that.

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