Each year at Midtown, the theatre department puts on several productions — ranging from plays and musicals to student-directed one-acts — most recently the spring musical, “Mean Girls.” As of the 2025-2026 school year, the department has had to raise ticket prices and reduce the budget.
Prior to this season, ticket prices for plays and musicals were $8 for students and $10 for adults. Now, mainstage show tickets are $10 for students and $15 for adults. This raise was not for financial gain, but rather to support the department’s success given the circumstances of inflation and the fact that they pay for their own sets, costumes and resources.
“We haven’t raised our prices before this in like a long time and with inflation it just doesn’t make sense for us to keep the same prices,” Drama Club President senior Zoe Diamond-Wilding said. “The materials for our shows, specifically wood, is getting really expensive. Also, I think last year we were not as within our budget as we needed to be. It was just a natural time to transition to having more expensive tickets. Compared to a lot of other high schools, our ticket prices have been lower for a while, so now it’s more comparable.”
Midtown theatre teacher Brooke Collins also said that the rise aligned with the need for resources, especially considering the technical aspects of Midtown shows.
“It was just inflation across the board and the cost of materials,” Collins said. “We needed to finally raise tickets, but we had been talking about it for several years as we watched prices increase. This year it felt like it was now unsustainable and we would start to see us dip into our reserves more and more.”
There was some initial nervousness with the rise in prices, but it has done little to impact the high audience rates at the majority of performances, according to Diamond-Wilding.
“I thought it might make smaller crowds, but I don’t think it has,” Diamond-Wilding said. “For ‘Mean Girls,’ we were selling more tickets than we normally do. It was really full all of the nights. I don’t think people are deterred by the higher prices because it’s only a few dollars difference anyways.”
Along with the raised ticket prices, the theatre department has decided to reduce costs on producing “Midbills,” the programs provided at the productions.
“In the shows, people were initially worried because the plan was to have little quarter sheets of paper or half sheets of paper that would just have QR codes to access the information,” Diamond-Wilding said. “Once we figured it out so that we would have just a single piece of paper folded over, it’s basically the same thing as the Midbills before, and people are still able to keep it and put it on their walls or get their fellow cast members to sign it.”
The department has also been encouraging actors to bring in their own costumes, but the increased funds provide leeway for freedom with resources, according to Collins.
“For ‘Mean Girls,’ we ordered the pink shoes that Cady has to wear, and we ordered the Halloween costumes and a few more specialty items that the show required,” Collins said. “The increase in ticket prices certainly added money to the reserve store so we felt like we could do that. With [‘The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane’, produced in the fall], we ordered all of the white shirts and white pants, so it was nice to have the funds to do that. The rest of those costumes were actually pulled from our costume storage. Another great use of our funds is when we can save something we do, like putting stock scenery back into our scenic storage and we put stock costume items or unique costume items into costume storage.”
With this new financial strategy and the benefit of increased funding from ticket prices, Collins says the Midtown drama program is better suited for continued productions in the future.
“Thank you to everyone who came out to support and know that we’re good stewards of your money,” Collins said. “We’re keeping it in reserves so that we can keep going and putting on the best shows we can at Midtown.”
