I know that “Playbill” is a monthly magazine, but it has also served as the program for every Broadway show I’ve ever been to. So how does this work? The cover and several of the inside pages, in the middle of the magazine, are devoted to the play or musical where you receive the issue. Is there an edition with the cover and corresponding inside pages produced each month for each Broadway show where the magazine is distributed?
Pretty much. There’s also a general edition for the public that I’ve seen on newstands.
The actual information about the play is pretty easy to handle separately, even before computers: there were only a handful of changes to that from month to month. It was also set up so that it fit on the same number of pages for each play.
Thus, each magazine had three parts: the cover (individualized for the play – this would only change if the star on the cover left, and many plays didn’t show any of the actors there), the wraparound material (general articles on the theater that changed each month), and the play information (relatively stable, but it changed as people joined or left the cast).
Wow, I had no idea Playbill was actually a monthly magazine, I guess because I only ever read the parts about the play in question.