The Public Theater announced on Thursday that it would distribute free tickets, by lottery, to the first performance of every main stage show during its 2014-2015 season. The free tickets, a program being started with the help of TodayTix, a theater ticket app, will be handed out both through a mobile lottery, which will begin a week before each preview performance, and through lotteries to be held in the lobby of the Public, at Astor Place and Lafayette Street.
“Joe Papp founded the Public Theater on the principle that great theater should be accessible to everyone,” Merritt Baer, a co-founder of TodayTix, said in a statement. Oskar Eustis, the Public Theater’s artistic director, added: “We have been doing free theater in Central Park for more than half a century. This is a delightful, long overdue extension of the idea to our downtown shows.”
The number of free tickets being made available was not announced. A spokeswoman for the theater said the number would vary from performance to performance, depending on the size of the theater involved. The program, called “Free for All,” will include preview performances of “The Fortress of Solitude” on Sept. 30; “Father Comes Home From The Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3)” on Oct. 14; “Straight White Men,” on Nov. 7; “Hamilton,” on Jan. 20; “The Total Bent,”on March 3; and “Toast,” on April 3.
Earlier this week TodayTix announced a separate mobile lottery, for $20 day-of tickets to the new Broadway revival of “On the Town,” which opens Oct. 16 at the Lyric Theater on West 42nd Street. The lotteries for both the Public Theater and the Broadway tickets can be entered through the app, which is available free through Apple’s App Store, the Google Play store or the Amazon’s App Store.
