I love free things. But sometimes “free” carries a hidden price tag, and then it’s not generally worth it.
If you can get tickets to The Public Theater’s Shakespeare In The Park series, held in New York City’s Central Park for a few weeks every summer, you’re in for a treat. The Public Theater produces great shows, populates them with first-tier stars, and yes, the tickets are free. Seriously. People like Anne Hathaway, Jesse L. Martin, Sam Waterston, Andre Braugher, and even Al Pacino do these shows for free, so regular New Yorkers can spend an evening under the stars watching great theater at the best price of all. It’s spectacular, and it keeps Shakespeare alive. I applaud The Public Theater, The City of New York, and these great talents.
Except you can’t get tickets.
OK, actually, that’s false. You can get tickets, because the Public Theater gives them away each day for that evening’s performance; all you have to do is wait on line. Yes, the lines are long, so you need to really, really want to go, but anyone can get tickets to Shakespeare in The Park. And if that was the end of the story there’d be no story.
But here’s how it works:
Tickets are handed out each day at 1 PM. In the case of a popular show, such as this summer’s The Merchant of Venice, you’re free to get on line at 6AM when Central Park opens, and maybe you’ll get to see Mr. Pacino that evening. I say “maybe” because when I got to Central Park at 6:10 AM yesterday morning there was a line so long that upon doing some quick math and having a conversation with a very pleasant, helpful, and honest Public Theater employee it became apparent that I was there too late.
Trust me for a moment now; this isn’t a sour grapes story, and the ten minutes isn’t the issue, either.
I’m not talking merely about a line of people. The hundreds of New Yorkers who were there before me had … been there. And given the number of them that were sleeping on inflated air mattresses in a calm, perfectly organized line ten minutes after it became legal to be in Central Park I can’t believe they hadn’t been there over night.
Again . . . that’s not the story.
Police in New York City are way overworked, and while I’m sure people get thrown out of Central Park for being there between 1 AM and 6 AM, and even ticketed for violating the park curfew, I’m guessing that it’s mostly about protecting the people rather than the park, so when hundreds of people line up for their Shakespeare In The Park Tickets and create an essentially self-protecting group doing no harm and no mischief, it’s likely that the police just . . . leave them alone.
But The Public Theater states very clearly that they escort whatever number of people have gathered by 6AM outside a specific Central Park entrance to the theater site and build the line then. And I simply refuse to believe that the calm, beautifully-organized, bed-and-cooler-wielding group of 900 people that I encountered at 6:10 AM had all gotten there, arranged their belongings and in many cases fallen asleep in the ten minutes prior to my arrival.
In other words, The Public Theater’s method of providing what is ostensibly some of the most amazing customer service you’ve ever seen—and for free—is a lie. What I saw yesterday at 6:10 AM simply could not have gotten there in ten minutes.
Let’s assume that the Public Theater’s goals are to help maintain public safety and reduce their own liability. They could use words like “it’s illegal to be in Central Park before 6 AM, so please don’t do that”. Instead they point out that people really shouldn’t be lined up on the streets of Manhattan overnight at the entrance they’ve specified as the escort point, then they wink when people get there as early at 8PM the previous night. But it’s OK because those people aren’t in Central Park and it’s technically only loitering, not trespassing, to be on the street overnight.
Oh yeah . . . and they pretend they don’t know about the people who are actually camped out in the Central Park.
Let me repeat, this is not a sour grapes story. I’m talking about customer service as a smoke screen, and the need for real business change when your customer service strategy is built on a lie. Lip-service customer service may work for a short time, but it’s a mistake.
By the way: you don’t have to wait on line for your tickets to Shakespeare In The Park. Instead, you can enter a lottery each day. The Public Theater doesn’t say how many tickets are available or guess at what your odds of winning are, but they do give away tickets that way each day, too.
Or at least they claim they do.
You forgot to mention that depending where you are in line, even if you don’t get tickets, you can get a band/identifier to stand in the Standby Line.
LOTS of people who are in the standby line (which probably starts forming around 3 or so, depending on day, weather) do get tickets. Is it any more fun to stand in the heat, etc. in the daytime? Not so much.
The virtual lottery does work. I personally won tickets and I NEVER NEVER NEVER win anything. I also know people who have gotten tickets this way.
And I know there must be some issue with how they give out tickets because on any given night, there are STILL empty seats (people get two tickets; the second person often doesn’t show up and the greedy/thoughtless person with ticket does NOT hand them in so someone else…in the standby line…can use them! Ugh)
And you’re correct, people do get there way before 6 a.m. But what DOES work about the self-policing is that people don’t let people in line who haven’t actually been waiting. So those people who got the tickets? They waited for them.
And the fact that you are told by the CS folks when you won’t be getting them? That’s a big help, too.
Lots of places don’t let you know when it’s clear you won’t get a ticket and you remain in line for hours and hours and hours for nothing.
Personally, I think they should just sell, online, reasonably priced tickets. That way, you either get them, or you don’t (a crapshoot, but better than standing in line all day!)
And make it so you simply cannot resell them. (There are ways and they have cracked down on scalpers who stand in line and use Craigslist to sell the tickets, which is really irksome.)
It’s not perfect by a long shot, but there was no way everyone who ever wanted to get in was gonna have that happen anyway.
FYI: I think it may not be sour grapes on your part, but you’re complaining about something that people willingly go along with (those in line). Don’t blame the CS people.
Jeannette, thanks for taking the time to compose such a detailed response!
I have nothing to disagree with . . . nothing. I DO however need to clarify something:
I think the Public Theater employees are doing a great job handling what is surely a difficult task running Shakespeare in The Park (especially this year; the Pacino/Merchant of Venice angle has to be killing them), and I believe I said as much in the post.
My issue isn’t with the Public Theater employees or the work they are doing, but with the Public Theater itself; as I said, if they simply said “it’s illegal to be in the park between 1 AM and 6 AM” there’d be no issue. Instead, they pretend they don’t know that anybody’s in there, tell people to line up on Central Park West (a questionable piece of advice), escort them in, and place them . . . at the end of an already-queued line. My issue with the way the Public Theater handles Shakespeare in the Park is that they are telling a story that they know isn’t true, passively encouraging the formation of a line in a “less illegal” place, and then giving the people in that line . . . a guided tour to the bad seats. All in the interest of appearing to be caring and engaged.
That’s all I meant. And I am REALLY happy to hear from someone who’s actually won that ticket lottery!
Last weekend, I arrived at 81st St and Central Park West at exactly 6 a.m. via taxi to get tickets to Merchant of Venice, and I can testify that there was a line stretching 2 blocks, up to 83rd St. The moment I stepped out of the cab, I heard the security man say: “Get your stuff together, folks, we’re going for a little walk.” The people at the front of the line did have tents and inflatable mattresses, but they were OUTSIDE THE PARK UNTIL 6 A.M. It’s not a lie. From 81st and Central Park West, it’s about a four-minute walk to the Delacorte theater. After I waited for hundreds people to pass by before joining the back of the line, I arrived at my place near the “Rock of Hope” by about 6:10 a.m. So I hate to bust your theory, but when you arrived at 6:10 a.m., you likely got there just after the line outside the park had reformed inside the park. Yes, many of those people had been waiting there all night (one man near the front told me he’d been there since 9:30 p.m. the previous night). But there’s no rule against waiting outside the park.
As for me, I did not receive tickets at 1 p.m., despite my place ahead of the “Rock of Hope,” but I was one of the last to receive a voucher. The Public Theater people told me that so far this year, everyone with a voucher who came back to the park at 6:30 p.m. had received standby tickets, and sure enough, I did get in. It was an all-day ordeal, but well worth it to see Al Pacino live. My advice is to get there by 6 a.m., or just stay home. If you’re even 10 minutes late, you have very little chance of getting in to a popular show.
Greg, I like your story better than Jeannette’s but they conflict, you know?
I appreciate you weighing in. I gotta say, though, that the number of people I saw at 6:10 would have stretched a whole lot further than two blocks had they been lined up on Central Park West. That doesn’t necessarily mean anything (too many variables), but I think you get my point re: crowd sizes, statistics, etc.
A couple of things:
First, I’m not kidding when I say that at 6:10 AM there were more than a few Shakespeare in The Park/ Al Pacino / Merchant of Venice fans on their air mattresses ASLEEP. Now seriously, do you think they got marched inside, organized nicely, rearranged themselves, AND FELL ASLEEP all in ten minutes? And I don’t mean one or two, by the way.
Second: While I know the NYPD has better things to do than disrupt or break up the line on Central Park West when people queue up for their Shakespeare in The Park tickets, technically they could do so; those people are loitering. Does the Public Theater have a cozy relationship with the police on this? Sure, of course. Does it matter, really? Nah; that kind of things gets ignored all the time. BUT IT’S ILLEGAL. So why not also allow the people to line up IN the park? Same police force, by the way; it’s not like there’s a special Park Police with different policies.
Listen, I don’t know the answer. And I’m seriously not picking on the Public Theater / Shakespeare in The Park people so much as I was making a point about business practice for the many thousands of people who read this blog. I simply believe that in that context the Public Theater would have done better to just say “stay out of the park until 6AM”. The elaborate story they’ve constructed does more harm than good from a customer service perspective.