The newly reopened Arena Stage is offering half-price tickets to Metro riders all season long in an effort to promote mass transit use among its patrons.
Beginning on Monday, riders who present their SmarTrip cards or Metro fare cards at the Arena Stage box office after 12 p.m. can buy half-price tickets to that week’s performances.
A limited number of tickets are available each week and customers are limited to two tickets each, according to Julia Suszynski, the theater’s publicist.
“This is just a way for us to encourage patrons to ride Metro,” Suszynski said, adding the theater hopes to continue the promotion beyond the first season, which ends in mid-June.
The Arena Stage debuted its new $135 million building in the Southwest Waterfront neighborhood this weekend with the musical “Oklahoma!” Tickets for the play range from $75 for a weekday matinee to $105 for a weekend show.
Metro has coordinated promotions with other businesses to encourage ridership, including offering prizes to SmarTrip users at Washington Nationals games.
The theater’s Metro stop, Waterfront-SEU on the Green Line, is one of the lesser used stations and averages 3,974 passengers per day. By comparison Metro’s busiest stop, the Red Line’s Union Station, averages 32,745 people each day.
However with the Arena Stage’s return to Southwest after a three-year absence and the growing development in the area, use of the station is expected to increase. The theater averaged a little under 200,000 in annual attendance in recent years and with the new facility officials predict 250,000 people will see a play there this season.
Parking at the theater’s underground garage is $20 for non-season-ticket holders and $10 for an off-site public parking garage.
