The Note in Your Hand: Programme Writing That Feels Like a Welcome, Not a Report

At a village hall last month, I watched an entire audience try to decode a programme note. It began, ‘This work interrogates the liminal space between memory and materiality.’ A woman in front of me turned the sheet over, clearly hoping the cast list might explain things. Two of the performers were hovering by the tea urn wearing the particular expression people get when they want the floor to open up and swallow them. I had written the note in twenty minutes the night before. It was accurate. It was also doing the exact opposite of what a programme note should do.

A programme note is not an essay about the work. It is the handshake before the handshake. It is the usher who says ‘you’re in the right place’ before you’ve even found your seat. Get it right, and nobody notices. Get it wrong, and the audience spends the first ten minutes trying to work out whether they’ve misunderstood something, which is a miserable way to begin an evening.

Start with the person holding it

When I write a note now, I picture one person. Not a funding panel, not a reviewer, not my older self hoping to sound clever. Just a person in a coat, holding a slightly damp programme, wondering what they’re about to see and whether there’s an interval.

That person does not need a lecture. They need orientation. They need to know what kind of thing they’re in for, who made it, and whether they should be worried about the bit where the lights go out. They also need to feel that someone has thought about them. That’s the whole job.

The first line should do one job

The first line is a welcome mat. It should invite, not fence. Compare these two openings:

‘This piece explores the fragmented nature of contemporary identity.’

‘Welcome. Over the next hour, three performers will take you through a series of short scenes about the things we carry and the things we leave behind.’

The second one isn’t trying to be clever. It’s trying to be useful. It tells you what you’re about to see without giving away the shop. It sounds like a person, not a prospectus.

I’m not saying every note has to begin with the word ‘welcome’. But the first line should make the reader feel more at ease than they did before they read it. If it makes them feel less at ease, it’s the wrong first line.

Keep it to one side of A5

There is a special kind of hope that leads a person to print a four-page programme for a forty-minute village hall show. I have been that person. I have also been the person standing in the corridor watching everyone fold the four-pager into their coat pocket without reading past the second paragraph.

Aim for one side of A5. Two hundred to three hundred words is plenty for most small-scale shows. If you need more space for credits, content notes, or a running order, that’s fine. But the note itself should be short enough that someone can read it while they’re waiting for the raffle to start.

Short doesn’t mean thin. It means chosen. You are not trying to say everything. You are trying to say the thing that will help.

A shape that works

When I’m stuck, I use a simple shape. It isn’t a formula, but it keeps me from drifting into a school report.

First, a welcome. One or two sentences that set the tone and tell people what they’re about to see. Second, a little context. Where did the work come from? What was the starting point? Keep this human and concrete. ‘I started with a box of my grandmother’s receipts’ is better than ‘the work interrogates inherited economies’. Third, one thing to notice. Give the audience a small door in. It might be a moment to listen for, a visual detail, or the fact that the performers have never done this particular show before. Fourth, a thank-you. Not a long list of every organisation that ever lent you a chair. Just a warm, specific line for the people in the room.

That’s it. Welcome, context, one thing to notice, thanks. It takes twenty minutes and saves the audience twenty minutes of confusion.

Leave out the apology

The one thing I would never include is an apology. Not ‘sorry it’s a bit rough’, not ‘we hope you’ll forgive the lack of a set’, not ‘this is still a work in progress’ unless that is genuinely the point of the evening and the audience has been told in advance.

I understand the impulse. I have written those lines myself. They come from a desire to be honest and a fear of being judged. But an apology before the audience has seen anything asks them to lower their expectations before they’ve had a chance to raise them. It makes the room smaller. It tells people that the people on stage don’t quite believe in the thing they’re about to do.

If something has gone wrong, tell the audience at the right moment, in the right way. Don’t smuggle it into the programme note like a note passed in class.

Read it aloud before you print it

My final check is simple. I read the note out loud, standing up, as if I’m saying it to someone in a queue for the loo. If a sentence makes me sound like a different person, I cut it. If a sentence makes me wince, I cut it. If a sentence is there only because I wanted to prove I’d read something clever, I cut it.

The programme note is part of the show. It’s the first thing many people will read and the last thing they’ll hold on the way home. It doesn’t need to be brilliant. It needs to be warm, clear, and honest enough that the person holding it feels like they’ve been expected. That’s not a lecture. That’s a welcome.