Where Are the Friction Points in Your Theatre?

Chaz Coberly • April 21, 2026

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Chaz Coberly, AKT Board President, standing with a blurred stage backdrop, wearing glasses and tan jacket.

There’s a concept I keep coming back to lately—one that’s been reinforced by books like Fanocracy by David Meerman Scott and Reiko Scott, and Fans First by Jesse Cole. At its core, it’s simple: remove friction. Take away the pain points your audience experiences so it’s as easy as possible for them to say “yes” to your organization—and to come back again.


In community theatre, we spend a lot of time thinking about the art (as we should), but for many patrons, the experience starts long before the lights go down. It starts when they buy a ticket, when they walk through the door, and when they try to figure out where to go. Every small moment of confusion or inconvenience becomes a barrier between them and enjoying the work we’ve put so much effort into. The good news is that many of these barriers are fixable—and often simpler to fix than we think.


At Manhattan Arts Center, I ran into one of these friction points almost immediately. We had three different ways to admit people into a show: scanning a QR code from a phone, tearing a physical ticket, or checking season ticket holders off a printed list. From an operations standpoint, it was inefficient (and confusing). From a patron standpoint, it was unclear. There was no single expectation for how entry worked, and internally we didn’t have a clean way to know who had arrived or who we were still waiting on.


So I asked a simple question: why are we doing it this way? That led to another: why don’t all our tickets just have QR codes?


The initial answer was that our printer couldn’t handle it. But instead of stopping there, I kept asking why. It turned out the fix was simply updating the software on our Boca printer. Once that was done, everything shifted. Every ticket—digital or physical—could be scanned the same way. Now we have one system, one expectation, and one process. It’s faster, clearer, and it gives us better information in real time.


The second example is even simpler—and honestly, one we should have addressed sooner: Bathrooms. If you’ve worked front of house for any amount of time, you know this is one of the first questions new patrons ask. It’s a basic human need, and if someone doesn’t know where to go, they’re not fully settled. They’re not comfortable yet, and they’re not ready to engage with the performance.


For a long time, our solution was verbal. Someone would ask, and we’d point them down the hall and to the left. It worked—if someone was there to ask. But that still creates friction. It requires the patron to stop, find someone, and ask a question they may not even want to ask. So we added clear signage in key locations to guide people where they need to go. It’s not flashy, but it removes a barrier and allows patrons to solve the problem on their own.


One more quick example: ticket purchases at the box office. When I first arrived, if someone paid with a credit card, we had to manually type the number into the machine.  With a bit of setup, we connected a Square terminal to our ticketing system so patrons can tap or insert their card like they would anywhere else. It’s a small change, but it speeds up transactions and meets expectations people already have.


That’s really the point of all of this. Most of these fixes are not complicated. They’re the kind of things that seem obvious once you stop and look at them—but they’re easy to miss in the day-to-day hustle. When we remove friction, we’re not just making operations smoother—we’re creating an environment where patrons can relax faster, feel more confident, and focus on why they came in the first place: the art.


You don’t have to fix everything at once. Start small. Fix one thing, then the next.


So here’s the real question: where are the friction points in your organization—and what’s one small change you could make this week to remove one of them?


Chaz Coberly, JD, MFA

President, Association of Kansas Theatre


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