Paper Memories: My Event Programs of 2025
A look back at events I saw this year and the free booklets that accompanied them
I’ve written before about my idolatry of the event program.
The best I’m able to explain it is this: It feels like a thing that I’m allowed to simply keep and enjoy for the rest of my life. I second-guess the environmental impact and understand it is a want, not a need. And I fully understand that I can’t take it with me.
But that, I think, is precisely why I value the event program so much. I can’t take it with me, so I enjoy it now. And I do. On days where I’m lazily milling about my apartment, I often find myself randomly opening a binder from years ago and reliving what’s inside.
Over time I’ve gotten more careful about actually protecting the programs. The archivist in me believes I’m doing the right thing, although the environmentalist in me wants the archivist to STFU. Programs are encased in sealed plastic sleeves, sometimes kept flat with acid free cardstock, and given a sticker where I write the date, time, people I was with, and sometimes other information. The image at the top of this post shows my 2025 archives. The stickers are usually on the back, but one of them is visible on the small Arsenic & Old Lace program in the second row on the left.
A Look at the Data
All said, I saved 34 programs—just shy of three per month. Here’s the full comma-separated list, arranged chronologically in the order I attended them:
Sunset Blvd., A Guide for the Homesick, Gypsy, Oh Mary!, Moby-Dick, Death Becomes Her, Arsenic & Old Lace, Operation Mincemeat, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum [Map], Buena Vista Social Club, Salome, All the Beauty in the World, The Last Five Years, Antony and Cleopatra, Cabaret, Swan Lake, Woolf Works, Sylvia, Boop! The Musical, The Metropolitan Museum of Art [Map], Stranger Things: The First Shadow, Storm King Art Center [Map & Information], Heathers The Musical, Legally Blonde, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Turandot, Mexodus, La Fille du Régiment, Romy & Michele The Musical, The Metropolitan Museum of Art [Map], Arabella, The Queen of Versailles, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Chisholm Trail Music Academy Piano Recital
There’s a clear sample bias. For the 11 Broadway shows and 7 operas, a Playbill was shoved into my hand as I went to my seat. That’s over half of my programs.
The “other half,” however, form a semi-random sampling of art exhibits and non-Broadway shows, including a few outside of the state of New York altogether. Perhaps because of the attachment I feel to these little booklets, if there’s just an open box of programs to take from, I’m less likely to take it these days. I have enough stuff. But then sometimes they show up unexpectedly in a shopping bag or are handed to me by a friendly guide or ugh I just really, really liked the show and wanted a memento. When that happens, I stick to a rule that I made myself all the way back in high school: If it comes home with me, I keep it.
A few high-level percentages across the data:
13 of the programs (38%) were via lottery or rush options. Note another baked-in bias here: Shows with lottery or rush options almost always have programs given to you as you’re seated.
8 of the programs (24%) were for events that I went to alone. This is a slight increase from my numbers in 2023, although that data accounted for all events, even ones without programs.
29 of the 34 programs (85%) were for events in Manhattan. Two were in Brooklyn (Arsenic & Old Lace, Legally Blonde), and three were outside NYC (Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Storm King Art Center, Chisholm Trail Music Academy Piano Recital).
12 of the programs (35%) were from the Metropolitan Opera House, which is by far the most represented venue and where I saw operas and ballets in 2025. The only other venues where I saw even two shows were Broadway’s St. James Theatre (Sunset Blvd., The Queen of Versailles) and the Off-Broadway DR2 Theatre (A Guide for the Homesick, All the Beauty in the World). I also saw two shows at New World Stages, but they were for different theaters inside the larger venue.
14 of the programs (41%) were for musical theater. That tracks.
My Favorites
In assembling this post I got to relive a year’s worth of events. Some of the programs made my heart skip a beat. These were the shows for which I’m grateful to have a physical relic:
Woolf Works: I’ve written about this ballet before in the context of the music’s composer Max Richter. This was now my second time seeing it, and I was so grateful that my friend A. and I had seats right up against pit with the score melting us in place.
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee: My first exposure to this show was in the pit band playing the keyboard part in a 2010 regional production. The music has since gotten all tangled up in my DNA with hooks randomly playing in the decade and a half since and when I least expect it. The pitch-perfect current Off-Broadway production is still one of my top theater recommendations at the moment.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay: I have written about opera many times, including a recent reflection of events that commented on this Met Opera production in particular. I first fell in love with the novel that the work was based on. Seeing a version of it performed live felt cathartic.
Chisholm Trail Music Academy Piano Recital: The “oddball” programs will forever be my favorites. There are scant other examples of this handout in existence, as my brother only made about a half dozen copies for the attendees of a cheekily-named concert of piano music at his and his wife’s home.
Looking Through the Programs
Seeing and touching the programs is more than remembering the actors or singers. Sometimes I’m thrust back to memories of whom I was with and what was happening around me. I get the same feelings looking through programs from previous years, too, although I lose faith in the accuracy of my memories the further back I go.
Arsenic & Old Lace: This show was a Brooklyn College performance of the 1939 play by Joseph Kesselring, famed for its 1944 film adaptation. I spotted Shaina Taub in the audience. I felt starstruck and didn’t want to bother her!
Casa Susanna: For museums and art exhibits, the “program” is usually a map or information guide and may not indicate many specific exhibits or artworks. I definitely remember one exhibit from one of The Met visits, however: Casa Susanna, a collection of photos found in a 2004 flea market that showed cross-dressers who met in NYC and the Catskill Mountains through the 1960s. I fantasized about being at that flea market.
Arabella: When I go to a show—like, do all the things: shower, shave, put on a nice outfit, drink a coffee early enough so I’m fully awake but not so late that I spend all of Act 1 waiting to pee, I am in it. I am in it for good. At that point, Act 1 of a show might be cringe, but hey, maybe Act 2 will reveal a shimmer of genius. And Arabella was truly, truly beautiful and yes for sure genius but after Act 1 and a 30-minute intermission and then Act 2 of the century-old German language lyric comedy opera and then during another 30-minute intermission, while I was waiting for Act 3 to start, I realized what I really wanted was an empanada and to go home, so I did that.
Boop! The Musical: I had been waiting for a lottery win to see Boop! for a while, and then a closing date was announced and time was running out. So full price, here we come. I ended up seeing the show’s penultimate performance. I loved the show and wished it had lasted longer.
Missing Programs
Not every event has a program. (Or sometimes it does, but I don’t come home with one.) In fact, considering the wide range of what might count as an event, most events don’t have a program. When a friend invites me over for game night, I don’t expect to be greeted with professionally printed pamphlet listing the order of events for the evening.1
When there’s no program, I take solace in the environmental win. I experienced the event, and it lives on in my memory. Nothing more. There’s a little bit of a loss to be grieved too, I think. Twenty years from now, God willing that I’m still around to browse old binders of event programs and with the space to house them, not every event will be there.
Most art exhibits that I’ve been to don’t have physical programs. This year I loved my time at the Blue Star Arts Complex in San Antonio, Texas, for instance, but didn’t take home any program commemorating the visit. Yet as with many paperless events, my phone camera provided documentation. I ended up snapping a photo of an artist’s site wunmor.win, whose imaginative Jhonen Vasquez-esque pictures and sculptures almost had me coming home with a 3-D printed monster riding a skateboard. I would also be remiss in not mentioning my brother’s photography, which was on display elsewhere in the complex.
A few additional 2025 trips and memories that may one day slip through the cracks:
During an overnight jaunt through Long Island, my husband and I went to the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, New York. I did take home paper ephemera, funny enough. They had an Inciardi Prints vending machine, and I pulled the Oyster, shown earlier in the post.
On a cold December afternoon, my friend N. and I visited a Destiny Mata photography exhibit (continuing through January 4 and included in my January 2026 Blankman List). We spotted complimentary programs, but I chose to have one less thing in my home.
This year I volunteered with the Prospect Park Alliance and the Brooklyn Book Bodega, and while I have no programs to show for it, I did sometimes take home a book or two while volunteering for the latter organization. (With their blessing!)
I was admittedly bummed that the Off-Broadway performance of Jaime Allan’s Amaze didn’t have a program. Nor did the other magic show I saw in 2025, Hayden Childress’ Urban Illusions, although that one came with a souvenir Polaroid.
I saw my favorite baseball team the Baltimore Orioles play twice this year, once in Baltimore and once in New York. I came back with zero programs, zero tickets, and total memories of one win. (Given their below-500 performance last season, I’ll take it.)
Measure a Year in Playbills
One of my favorite statistics about my 2025 event programs is that 4 of them (12%) were for events where I spent time with someone who was traveling from outside of NYC to visit me: Woolf Works, Cabaret, Operation Mincemeat, and Swan Lake. All said, not counting my husband, who was by far my most frequent companion, these programs represent time spent with 13 friends and family members, plus occasionally their friends and family members. I am grateful to have that many people in my life who will share their time with me.
As I get older, this program hoarding can start to look like a life progress bar. I don’t actually need space for a million binders with climate controlled storage units and an itemized database. I need space for, let’s say, 80 binders and we’re doing real good? My 2025 binder is complete. Nothing else will ever get added to it, and the next binder begins.
For me, while I’m still around to enjoy it, these binders are a lifetime of family, friendships, life-changing works of art, hot messes to which I bore witness, and of course—my favorite part—worlds where people regularly broke out in song and dance.
Though credit belongs where credit is due, and my brother did exactly that for an informal home concert among friends.