Ticket sales at the Performance Network Theater (PNT) are up 42 percent so far this year, thanks to an $18,000 marketing campaign funded by the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation. Ad agency Perich & Partners reworked PNT’s graphic identity on posters and billboards, and a professional mailing list manager “helped us reach out to about 20,000 new patrons,” says executive director Carla Milarch.
Enthusiastic audiences also helped sales: The Drowsy Chaperone, a spoof of Broadway musicals; The War Since Eve, an original comedy by Kim Carney about a feminist’s insensitivity to her own daughters; and The Piano Lesson, August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama of an African American family in conflict over the relative value of its past and its future, all were held over at least an extra week. The plays might have run even longer if other productions hadn’t been scheduled to move in. Next up: Circle Mirror Transformation (see Events).
