Charlottetown Festival is closing the curtain on paper programs
CBC
P.E.I.'s oldest theatre festival is trying something new this summer.
Theatre-goers at The Charlottetown Festival at the Confederation Centre of the Arts won't get physical programs they can take home as souvenirs. Instead, patrons will use a QR code that will bring them to an online program.
It's a change that the Confederation Centre's marketing director said was overdue.
"We've been really looking at ways to reduce waste and introduce green initiatives here at the centre for many years now, and this was always one that we were considering," Andrew Sprague said.
"This year, we decided to move ahead and go to an all-digital program."
The centre would print as many as 35,000 programs to cover all its productions each season.
Last year, organizers started to pilot digital programs, offering the audience both a paper program and the one accessible by the QR code for the months of July and August. In September, they did digital only.
During that pilot, patrons downloaded about 15,000 digital programs.
That didn't reduce the number of paper programs out the door: All 35,000 programs were still used, indicating a continuing interest in paper copies.
But Sprague said it also shows something else.
"It also indicates that a very high percentage of those programs are ending up in the waste somewhere, either here at the centre in our own trash cans as people are leaving the centre, or when they take them home and decide that they don't have much use for them at home and they end up in the trash there."
Ticket buyers get their first chance to download the digital program through a link in the pre-show email from the Centre. Upon entering the lobby, patrons can also download the program from a QR code.
Additionally, that code is on the backs of half the seats in the theatre, and projected on the screen while people wait for the show to start. Staff will be available to help anyone having trouble accessing the link.
The Charlottetown Festival isn't the only Canadian theatrical event moving in this direction.
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