Get Your Free Theater

...and music and dance. Free Night of Theater returns to North Texas for the fourth year; sign-up begins today.

by Mark Lowry
published Friday, September 9, 2011

The annual Free Night of Theater is back in North Texas for a fourth year, and tickets are up for grabs beginning at 10 a.m. Friday, Sept. 9. It's run a little differently this year, though. You have two weeks to log in at the Free Night Dallas site, and then you select up to five shows you want to see in October. The window to enter is Sept. 9-23.

You'll be notified of the tickets you win in the lottery-style system. The available tickets will be randomly distributed based on the patrons' selections and ticket availability, allowing each patron to win as many as five different pairs of tickets.

Free Night of Theater is presented by the Office of Cultural Affairs, in conjunction with Theatre Communications Group.

"We’re excited to be able to offer this opportunity to Dallas audiences for the fourth year in a row," said Maria Munoz-Blanco, Director of the Office of Cultural Affairs, in a news release. "This program continues to be a tremendous opportunity for performing arts groups to connect with new audience members and develop the kind of lasting relationships that are the foundation of a healthy cultural community.

Terence McFarland, CEO of LA Stage Alliance, which came up with this new Enter-to-Win system, added, "It's inspiring to our Alliance members that the ideas developed by our community can have a significant impact in many of our sister regions. Through the Enter-to-Win system, patrons can have a more expansive set of options, and arts organizations will be able to start building relationships with many more patrons than they could before. Our research and reporting partnerships should help move the organization/audience relationship forward in a great new way."

This year the participating organizations also include dance, music and opera organizations. We'll update this list below as we find out what's on the table. As for now, the participating groups (and the shows) include:

Contemporary Ballet Dallas — Danse Macabre

Contemporary Theatre of Dallas — Bad Dates

Dallas Asian American Youth Orchestra

Dallas Black Dance Theatre — DanceAfrica Festival at the Majestic Theatre

Dallas Children's Theater — Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Dallas Opera — A family friendly one-act opera (Oct. 30)

Dallas Symphony Orchestra — various concerts and events

Dallas Theater Center — The Tempest

Dallas Wind Symphony — Hymn to a Blue Hour (Oct. 18 at the Meyerson Symphony Center)

Garland Civic Theatre — Pillow Talk

Jubilee Theatre — Topdog/Underdog

Kitchen Dog Theater — In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play