Troublesome news for the DC-area theater world is now the norm as the current administration continues its purge of the federal labor force. These workers are a core component of the DC economy. They are also an invisible class who, over the past decades, have helped grow the DMV into America’s second-largest theater town. They can be unseen, overlooked, or ignored. Who are they?
They are government civil servants now under assault and losing jobs. The middle-class government workers who live in the area are typically not counted as part of the creative class, yet they are a backbone of the DMV arts scene. They are a key to the area’s vibrant, vital theater community.
At this moment, there appears to be no end in sight to the pain and suffering inflicted upon the area’s civil servant class. With these massive federal job losses, one can expect that the bottom line of area theaters will be affected, too. Why? Because these federal workers and their families will likely not be spending freely on the arts if the choice is also about paying for a mortgage, rent, food, child care, or other needs.
Perhaps DMV arts organizations should consider these civil servants as allies. Perhaps DMV theaters could offer free or discounted tickets to furloughed or fired government workers as a goodwill gesture.
This is not such a wild, fanciful idea. Theater Alliance recently did just that. For its now-closed The Garbologists production, the company offered fired and furloughed federal workers “great theater on us.”
UPDATE: Within hours after this opinion piece was published, Theatre Washington posted a listing of DC-area theaters now offering
Free and Discounted Tickets for Federal Workers.
The DC-area theater community has also done this en masse before: in January 2019, during a federal government shutdown. At that time, DMV theaters wanted to recognize that government employees had helped make the region’s theater community vibrant over the decades as patrons, subscribers, donors, actors, technical artisans, and more. (Here’s a DC Theater Arts news item listing which theaters did what in January 2019: Theaters Offer Discounts to Furloughed Government Employees.)
Civil servants are more than the tourists who may visit the area and perhaps take in a show at a major playhouse. They are not the big donors whose names are inscribed on venue walls or acknowledged in theater programs; they may not be invited to fancy fund-raisers. But they have been there buying tickets and telling their friends about a show, especially for those many suburban theaters that get little or no ink in the now-reduced pages of the Washington Post.
Discounted or free tickets for furloughed or fired federal workers can be seen as a long-term investment in friends, neighbors, and family who have an identity as civil servants — and as an investment in the long-term future of the DC area’s theater community. How else can 75-plus professional stages keep the lights on?
Call it a distinctive way to thank civil servants for their service. Sure, these are difficult times for a theater’s bottom line, but this would be a long-term investment in the continuing life of our theater community. It would be taking care of our own — just a wider sense of who our own are now.
THE THEATRE WASHINGTON STORY:
Free and discounted tickets for federal workers affected by layoffs and furloughs (news story, February 27, 2025)