Feb. 22, 2018 – The Providence Newspaper Guild has announced that this year’s Follies, the satirical skit-and-music show the local has been producing since 1974, will be the last, succumbing to declining local membership and increasing costs.
The show had become an annual statewide event featuring original songs and routines lampooning the state’s politics and politicians. Local members appeared on stage in garish costumes, sang off key, and forgot their lines before an audience filled with people they routinely covered — and sometimes embarrassed.
“This was an agonizing decision,” said Local President John Hill. “The Follies has been our trademark. It has been part of our identity and the revenue from it has financed scholarship awards to our members’ children.”
The show began after a brief but bitter strike at the Journal as a way of bringing people together.
But with the contraction of the industry over the last decade, ticket sales declined while costs increased. In the 1990s it was not unusual for the show to sell 1,200 tickets, Hill said, but in the last few years sales fell below 800.
“Any one of those trends alone might have been beatable,” Hill said. “But together they were making each year’s show a heavier and heavier lift.”
“Some decisions you get to make, and others are made for you,” Hill said. “This is one of those.”