playbill
Americannoun
noun
-
a poster or bill advertising a play
-
the programme of a play
Etymology
Origin of playbill
Explanation
The little booklet you get when you go to the theater is called a playbill. A playbill usually includes a list of the cast and production crew. You can also call a playbill a program. At most theaters in the U.S., playbills are handed out to everyone in the audience as they enter. If you attend a Broadway play, you'll get a thick playbill with a lot of information about the play, the actors, and the venue—as well as a lot of advertising. A community theater or school production usually provides smaller, simpler playbills.
Vocabulary lists containing playbill
To All the Boys I've Loved Before
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Theater - Introductory
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Theater - Middle School
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Some of the sentences that adorn them are barely legible because of the fabric’s creases, but one of them, a quote from a playbill interview with Castellucci, describes Huppert as “the synecdoche of theater.”
From New York Times ● Mar. 6, 2024
Growing up, I don’t have a memory of knowing what a gay person looked like, except my parents saw “La Cage aux Folles,” and I think I saw a picture for that on the playbill.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 2, 2020
But “Anatomy of a Suicide” isn’t the kind of show you can see then cavalierly head out for drinks, recycling your playbill along the way.
From New York Times ● Feb. 18, 2020
At the end of Part 1 of the program at Carnegie Hall, they performed composer Mykola Leontovych’s arrangement of a traditional Ukrainian song the playbill called “Shtshedryk.”
From Slate ● Dec. 19, 2019
She keeps the playbill in a binder at home, with the programs from the sixty-plus New York shows she has seen since.
From "Drama High" by Michael Sokolove
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
