In the past, we’ve selected one or two shows annually to receive a 10 a.m. weekday matinee. Generally, we’ve pitched these performances as field trips for English and drama classes, selecting “classics” or musicals we knew would be a hit with teachers and students.
We tried something new this year: every single production got a 10 a.m. matinee. We were fairly certain, based on past experience, that Our Town and Xanadu — a classic taught in many schools and a high-energy musical, respectively — would be popular with schools. The question was, would teachers also bring classes to see John Proctor Is the Villain or Unfinished Women Cry in No Man’s Land While a Bird Dies in a Gilded Cage? Both are less well-known works with difficult subject matter.
We were thrilled schools embraced all four shows. Two teachers shared plans to compare and contrast John Proctor with its inspiration, Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Meanwhile, for many students in the group who saw Unfinished Women, it was a first live theater experience, and the difficult circumstances of the play’s characters proved resonant for them.
Senior citizens also like the 10 a.m. time slot. The Hadley Council on Aging has years of consistent attendance, and members attended every one of the matinees this year (and they’ve already booked for next year!). One COA group member was delighted to recognize that an actor she’d enjoyed in one show was part of stage management on the next show. Other seniors not affiliated with the COA attended matinees as well (we always sold a few tickets via a waitlist).
In the end, the John Proctor and Our Town 10 a.m. matinees both sold out easily. Unfinished Women was about 3/4 sold, with some walk-up traffic, and Xanadu had over 300 in the audience, a very robust number for the Rand.
We were happy with the results of our experiment, so we’re repeating it in 2025-2026. With 2 shows in the Rand, we hope to be able to draw in even more community members!
Running a weekday matinee requires extra coordination in terms of staffing the crews and securing the actors, with class conflicts, early call times, and other logistical challenges. Matinees require complicated billing and bookkeeping as we deal with schools and community organizations. Every matinee offered to schools also requires additional educational materials from the dramaturgs (offered, as always, for free to the attendees) as well as a post-show Q&A to help students process the event. The Q&A for Unfinished Women, for example, was crucial to help student work through their reactions to the show, which deals with unwed mothers who have experienced sexual assault and abuse, as well as blackface and racism, not to mention a character’s onstage death.
It’s work worth doing. Theater students have told us that for many of them, these matinees are a gateway experience that helps them discover theater in general, and UMass Theater in particular. We know it mattered this year, because we heard students’ responses to the shows during the Q&As, and teachers reported back to us afterward as well — see the thoughtful and enthusiastic quotes from students at the top of the page!