In the 16th century, it was a lot easier to get people to show up at the theater.

Leave us now and come again tomorrow.

That free beer in the courtyard.

These days, though, not so much.

From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited. I'm Michael Whitmore, the Folgers director.

Marketing Shakespeare's plays and putting bodies into theater seats to watch them today,

you have to fight with people working long hours, the cost of parking and

babysitters, competition from binge watching TV or just sitting home and staring at your phone.

Compare that with Shakespeare's Day. What did they have? The plague? It's nothing in comparison.

To be serious, though, there are special challenges for the people in charge of marketing and promotion at America's Shakespeare

festivals and theaters. And because Shakespeare still lives, to a large extent, on stage,

we thought it was important and that it might be helpful to have some of them in to talk about those challenges and how they meet them.

We reached out to the marketing directors at several Shakespeare theaters and festivals and invited in three who agreed to talk to us.

Katie Percowski, Director of Marketing at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Montgomery, Alabama, Jeff Ficus,

who is Communications Director at the Seattle Shakespeare Company, and Emma Corey, Director of Marketing

and Communications at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival in Garrison, New York.

All three are part of the Folgers Theatre Partnership Program.

We call this podcast, and yes, it is a quotation from Shakespeare,

There is the Playhouse Now, There Must You Sit.

Katie, Jeff, and Emma are interviewed by Barbara Bogave.

Well, Katie, the idea for this podcast came out of a conversation you had with our producer about how so many Shakespeare theaters seem to be doing non-Shakespeare plays. And you folks at the

Alabama Shakespeare Festival have the Glass Menagerie and Annie in your current season. So what's

...