At TKTS, You’re Buying Broadway Tickets from In-the-Know Artists

Meet three Patron Services Reps chasing their theatre dreams, including one who’s currently on Broadway!

Waiting in line at TKTS to buy discount tickets is the show before the show. You get to experience the theatricality of Times Square—where else can you see Elmo hanging out with the Naked Cowboy as Richard Kind strolls by?—while bonding with your fellow Broadway lovers. Friendships and even a romance or two have been sparked at TKTS. And since many Patron Services Reps are professional artists when not on duty (Aaron Sorkin is a TKTS alum!), they’re stars when it comes to answering questions about what to see. No chatbot can do that!

To celebrate our resident theatre experts, we’re sharing mini-profiles of three TKTS Patron Services Reps who are finding success beyond the booth.

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Nicholas Barrón, who’s making his Broadway debut in Ragtime

A musical theatre performer from San Antonio, Texas, Barrón was 15 when he saw his first Broadway show—the gender-swapped revival of Company—just a few days before COVID-19 shut down theatres for 18 months. Post-pandemic, he won a 2022 National High School Musical Theatre Award (aka a Jimmy), moved to NYC a year later to study voice and applied to work at TKTS because he needed flexibility to audition.

“I had stood in that line countless times before getting the job, but I didn’t know how insane it was until I started doing it,” he recalls, citing the unpredictable weather, the crowds and the many hours of standing. “But I got used to it quickly. I love people-watching and I love talking to strangers. One of my favorite things about the job is how often people’s days are made once they get to the front and buy their tickets to exactly what they want. There’s a lot of joy at TKTS.”

While at TKTS, Barrón was invited to attend many shows for free, which he called “a game changer” for him as an actor as well as a Patron Services Rep. “I was able to see so much that I wouldn’t have been able to afford as a college student working a part-time job,” he says. It helped him make informed recommendations to customers and improved his audition skills.

He recalls needing to skip a shift to prepare for his Ragtime callback, and how he texted his supervisor immediately after booking the show, which marks his Broadway debut.

“Everybody was so excited for me,” he recalls about landing a spot in the ensemble as well as understudying the role of Mother’s Younger Brother. “It’s nice to celebrate those kinds of accomplishments with the TKTS staff because they’re all theatre people and they all get it.”

Although he’s currently on hiatus because of his eight show a week schedule, Barrón often swings by the booth to say hello, especially to his sister Olivia, a composer who recently graduated from Berklee College of Music and also works as a Patron Services Rep. And he doesn’t rule out returning to TKTS once Ragtime closes. “I actually think it would be fun!”

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Brendan McCann, a Drama Desk-nominated theatre designer

Brendan McCann loves coming up with over-the-top costumes for any occasion. But when he went as Cynthia Erivo’s bedazzled nail last Halloween, he didn’t realize he would go viral. His photo was even shown to Erivo (who was well aware of McCann’s getup) when she appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers!

“I was really surprised,” he admits. “But they were in the middle of the Wicked: For Good press tour, and the algorithm did the rest.”

Long before McCann started working at the booth, he was friendly with the TKTS staff because he spent years handing out flyers as a show promoter in Times Square. As the pandemic shutdown was lifting, a TKTS manager reached out to him to ask if he would be interested in joining the team.

Working at TKTS supports McCann as he pursues a theatrical design career. He originally trained to be an actor in college but when his mentor, Tony Award winner Michele Pawk, saw some of the costumes he made for fun, she suggested he shift his focus. Over the past decade, he has designed props for several Off-Broadway shows, earning a Drama Desk nomination for his work on Stranger Sings! The Musical Parody. He also worked alongside David Rockwell on the redesign of the recently reopened Laurie Beechman Theatre in the West Bank Cafe.

Even though design is McCann’s passion, he says TKTS “is this other thing that I love to do, and this is the thing that I do to make money! Recently, I did three shows back-to-back, including Messy White Gays and the Grease parody Don’t Vape!  So I was away from the booth for a while. When I came back, all these new Broadway shows had started that were totally off my radar. To me, the thing that’s most valuable about the job is it makes me feel connected to the theatre community and know what people on the street actually think. I use the job as a resource in the other work that I’m doing.”

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Devon Savage, an actor and ticketing manager

Savage was playing a character on The Polar Express Train Ride in New Jersey when a fellow cast member told him about her part-time gig at TKTS. “I love talking about Broadway—I’m a huge theatre nerd,” he says. “I learn so much through seeing shows.” When he heard free tickets were a job perk, “I was like, I have to do this!”

In addition to giving Savage flexibility to audition, he loves working at TKTS because he’s passionate about connecting audiences with shows he thinks they’ll love. “Someone may have no idea what they want to see, but I’ll know a piece of theatre that might speak to a certain identity that they have, or might just be really fun for them and their family,” he says. “I get to help people find what’s right for them.”

Like Barrón and McCann, Savage says seeing shows for free helps him as a Patron Services Rep and as an artist. “It helps me understand what’s going on creatively on Broadway,” he says, recalling that he was able to see the musical Aladdin before attending an audition for the role of the Genie—and getting a callback.

While Savage waits for his big break, he performs in Off-Broadway and regional productions—he particularly loves Shakespeare. Working at TKTS as well as its parent organization, TDF, is supporting him on his artistic journey. “I’ve been able to meet other actors that have become collaborators,” he says about his colleagues, noting one started a play-reading group over Zoom. “We meet like once a month and act out a play. It’s been so fun!”

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TKTS Times Square is located in Duffy Square at 47th Street and Broadway. Buy same-day and next-day matinee tickets up to 50% every day. Visit tdf.org/tkts or download our TKTS app to see what we’re at selling right now.