NEW YORK, NY.- On a 91-degree day in June, a group of 20- and 30-somethings in sundresses and Bermuda shorts was navigating a dimly lit cocktail lounge whose air-conditioning was on the fritz.

It didn’t matter: Cocktails with names like the Ghost Writer were flowing, and patrons were posing in front of a velvet emerald curtain, holding “Team Daisy” and “Team Gatsby” hand fans emblazoned with the faces of Eva Noblezada and Jeremy Jordan, the stars of the Broadway musical “The Great Gatsby.”

Flickering candles adorned tables at the side of the room, where people colored in silhouettes of the character Myrtle Wilson, a social climber in the musical, and filled out trivia sheets with questions like “Is Gatsby in East or West Egg?” Silver gift bags filled with miniature bottles of Champagne and “Old Sport” stickers sat on a table by the door.

“We are in the Gatsby era,” said Francis Dominic, 31, a lifestyle and travel influencer, alluding to the Broadway musical and “Gatsby,” another high-profile stage adaptation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel that last week ended its run at American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is also aiming for Broadway.

Dominic was among about 40 TikTok, Instagram, social platform X and YouTube creators who had gathered at the Rickey lounge inside the Dream Midtown hotel to celebrate the release of the “Great Gatsby” cast album, which would begin streaming the next day.

The invite-only affair was part of the production’s effort — and the theater industry’s at large — to attract a younger and more diverse audience in a crowded field of shows as ticket sales continue to lag behind pre-pandemic levels.

An acclaimed revival of Stephen Sondheim’s “Merrily We Roll Along” with Daniel Radcliffe in the cast is going to sell, but what about a new play like “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding,” a comedy set in a Harlem hair braiding salon, or “Suffs,” a musical about Alice Paul and the fight for women’s suffrage?

“We want to get influencers in the door to see something like ‘Gatsby’ — and hope they like it,” said Carly Heitner, 25, who recently started her own influencer marketing company and helped manage influencer invites for the event. “So when we invite them to the next thing, like ‘Suffs,’ they’re open to it and can appreciate it and will bring audiences to Broadway.”

The strategy seems to be paying off, though how much is hard to say. “The Great Gatsby,” which has been working with influencers since its premiere last fall at Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, New Jersey, said the show has seen as much as a 21% increase in traffic to its website in the two weeks after an influencer collaboration, though it was also running other marketing campaigns simultaneously. (The production, which opened in April at the Broadway Theater, grossed a healthy $1.27 million for the week that ended July 28.)

“It’s sometimes tough to draw a direct line, but broad awareness is no doubt underpinning broad sales,” said Katharine Quinn, 35, the social media director for “The Great Gatsby,” who has made the production — which has accounts on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube — one of the most followed of any Broadway show that opened during the 2023-24 season.

The show’s stars, Jordan and Noblezada, whom Quinn regularly enlists for dressing-room chats and fan question-and-answer sessions, have gained followers, on their personal Instagram accounts — Jordan, 75,000 and Noblezada, 20,000 — since January, she said. A trending song from the show, “Only Tea,” appeared in TikTok videos created by Olympians and the Russo Brothers, who used it to tease their next Marvel film.

Which is to say, awareness of the show extends far beyond New York.

Mark Shacket, the production’s executive producer and general manager, said that when he was visiting the class of his wife, who teaches theatrical producing at the University of Florida, and she told her students that her husband was working on a Broadway-aimed musical adaptation of “The Great Gatsby,” the reaction was euphoric.

“The entire class lost their minds,” Mark Shacket said. “I said, ‘Wait a second, how are you even aware, here in Florida, that there’s a production of ‘Great Gatsby’ at Paper Mill with Jeremy Jordan and Eva Noblezada?”

“To a person, they all said, ‘a) Jeremy Jordan and Eva Noblezada — and your social media,’” he said.

Influencing, of course, is not a new concept — in 2023, it was a $34.08 billion industry, with more than 500,000 self-identified active influencers. TheaterTok really took off during the pandemic, when stages were dark and fans missed theater desperately, said Quinn, who created her own account in 2021.

“It just exploded,” said Quinn, who has nearly 77,000 followers on TikTok. “It was this amazing new way to engage with the community.”

Compared with food or beauty influencers, theater influencers have a relatively small footprint: The most popular have Instagram and TikTok followers in the tens of thousands, not millions.

But you don’t need a lot of followers to have an impact; you just need to reach a niche audience and persuade them to take action, said Jill Avery, a marketing professor at Harvard Business School who has written about “microinfluencers,” or individuals with a smaller following — but generally higher engagement rates — on a platform.

“Their reach can be much more targeted or specific,” she said.

Kate Reinking, 36, a software engineer in Colorado who frequently travels to New York City to see shows, shares her thoughts with her more than 39,000 TikTok followers and views herself as an influencer and critic.

“The goal is to play matchmaker” between people and shows, said Reinking, who sees more than 200 productions each year and pays for 90% of her tickets, many acquired through rushes and lotteries. “Even if I didn’t like a show, I’ll frame it as ‘I didn’t like this show, but you’ll like it if you also liked this.’”

Ashley Hufford, 33, a video content editor in Brooklyn, had a slightly different perspective. “If I didn’t love something, I won’t make a video telling you it’s the greatest thing I’ve ever seen,” Hufford said, adding that she is transparent when a production provides her with a free ticket. Her greatest fear is that her nearly 64,000 followers would ever think her authenticity had been compromised. Also, she added, “I don’t want to spread negativity about a show that may already be struggling.”

Quinn said that productions do not stipulate that influencers post positive content — or any content at all. “We’re building community more than we’re making a sell, and that will ultimately convert to sales,” she added.

But they have done paid partnerships, in which a brand — or a show — compensates an influencer for promoting them in one or more posts (known as “sponsored posts”), are rare for theater influencers. The goal, according to people working on shows and influencers, who tend to be lifelong theater fans, is to generate excitement for and community around theater.

Some productions also try adjacent spaces like#BookTok, where reading recommendations are shared, as well as communities for Momfluencers and Black female content creators.

“Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” hosted 20 influencers during an early performance last September, providing gift bags and holding receptions. As did “Mary Jane,” a drama about a single mother of a sick son, which hosted Momfluencers.

Each event, said Chris Jennings, the executive director of Manhattan Theater Club, the nonprofit organization that produced both shows, resulted in posts from nearly every attendee — and, he added, the theater saw a 45% increase in ticket sales in the week that followed.

But even if there were no direct correlation, he said, the theater would see them as a worthwhile investment in cultivating a young audience.

That was the philosophy of Mike Bosner, the lead producer of the musical “Shucked,” a countrified comedy about corn, when he invited influencers to the final dress rehearsal.

“A lot of people told me I was foolish to bring them into the sacred space of the rehearsal hall,” said Bosner, who subsequently rented a tractor last spring to haul cast and creative team members through Times Square to promote the musical’s cast album. “But our strategy was to let the show speak for itself, and we knew influencers would be the best way to get the word out.”

Bosner said the production saw spikes in social engagement and ticket sales that coincided with the dress rehearsal and tractor pull events.

The thinking, he said, was that if he could take the amount of money he might spend on a full-page newspaper ad, and instead spend it on a tractor going through Times Square, “I felt that was something that would get way more attention and eyeballs for the people who were most prone to get into our show.”

Producers are still learning how influencer marketing works, said Ayanna Prescod, a former theater producer and a social media specialist who earlier this year started an influencer marketing agency, Relay Influence, whose clients have included “Hamilton” and “MJ.”

“I’m not teaching a new concept — Dove and Casper have used this type of marketing for years,” said Prescod, who coordinated a themed dinner for influencers in Chicago for the “Hamilton” national tour. “It’s just new to theater.”

Back at the Rickey, applause came from the door by the bar: Noblezada, Jordan and other “Great Gatsby” cast members had arrived. They hugged attendees, and posed for a group photo.

“Say ‘Old Sports’!” Quinn said.

It was time for prizes.

“If you hear your name, give us a ‘woo,’” said Quinn, pulling a completed trivia sheet from a basket. “First we have a poster — for Jacob Kent!”

Then, the prizes got bigger: A $100 gift card to the Rickey. A pair of tickets to see “The Great Gatsby,” which earned the loudest cheers.

“I haven’t seen it yet, but I will,” said Laura Gruener, 30, a dance influencer with nearly 420,000 followers on TikTok.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.