Humor me.

In the wake of my post yesterday about the pros and cons of theatre seasons looking like the New York season from the prior year, and some great responses to it, the beloved phrase “national conversation about theatre” keeps coming to mind. Surely you’ve heard this concept, the now decades-old plaint from theatre professionals of all stripes that media conversation can center on a movie, a book, even a song, but that – perhaps not since Angels in America – neither the act of making theatre nor any particular work of theatre has made that grade.  Mind you, there are conversations within the field of great value; I’m talking about something that breaks past American Theatre, HowlRound, 2 AM Theatre, Twitter and other resources into the general public consciousness.

This is due to many factors, but surely one is the fragmentary nature of the American theatre. With each company choosing its season independently, there may be coincidences in programming, there may be a handful of select plays dotting the country over the course of a year or two. But in essence, outside of one’s own community, all theatre is a one-off.  Perhaps, on occasion, a little – or a lot of – collusion would be a good thing.

By now we’ve all heard of communities that choose a book for a city-wide read, with a concerted effort to promote the idea that a metropolitan bonds if they can all have a conversation about the same thing. This has been going on for a number of years, though not in places where I’ve lived, so I can only admire it from afar, rather than share personal experience. But it is a compelling idea.

Am I now going to suggest everyone should read the same play? No. You’re getting ahead of me. While there’s some merit to that idea, theatre is meant to be seen. I’m thinking bigger.

I wonder whether, say, a dozen theatres, large and small, in different cities and towns, could agree on a single work of theatre (and I’d much prefer that it was a new work, not a classic revival), a play of social and political importance, that could be near-simultaneously produced across the country. Not a tour, not a handful of co-productions, but a whole bunch of theatres doing the same work within, say, an eight-week period.

Now I know that every theatre has to balance its season, struggles with its budget, weighs its logistics. I’m not saying it would be easy. But hear me out.

“Clybourne Park” at Playwrights Horizons

When Clybourne Park was first produced at Playwrights Horizons in 2011, it was followed within weeks by a production at Woolly Mammoth. The following season, it was featured in a number of seasons (as well as in London at the Royal Court), making it to Broadway for the spring and summer of 2012, and now playing in yet more cities in regional productions. Now imagine if all of those productions (sans Broadway, which is irrelevant to my proposal) happened in only a few months time. Think of the conversations that provocative play would have sparked.  The same holds true for The Mountaintop, and Good People, and Ruined, and Chad Deity and many others.

A challenge? Yes. Impossible? No. Let us look to history. Specifically, A History of the American Film by Christopher Durang.

“A History of the American Film” at Arena Stage

In 1977, with Durang barely out of the Yale School of Drama, his pastiche of classic movies had a tripartite premiere, with productions in March and April of that year at the Mark Taper in Los Angeles, Arena Stage in DC, and Hartford Stage. It had been discovered in a workshop at The O’Neill the prior summer; it moved to Broadway, briefly, in 1978. But just imagine: a new play, by a tremendously talented up-and-comer, hitting a trifecta of productions out of the gate. I didn’t see it at the time (I was 14), but I sure remember reading about it.

If we want to be part of “the national conversation,” we have to look to a mashup of the Clybourne-History models, so the country will truly sit up and take notice, regardless of whether a New York berth is in the mix or not. We’ll either have to get over our deep desire to proclaim “world premiere” (or agree that everyone gets to say it); we’ll have to use a microtome to slice up the royalties normally given over to an originating company so everyone gets a share, but doesn’t overburden the play’s ongoing life; we’ll have to tacitly accept that the playwright might be working on the piece personally at only one theatre while revisions fly out to many. But remember that thanks to Skype and streaming video, the playwright can confer with disparate teams, and even look in on multiple rehearsals, without criss-crossing the country on planes. And no one need worry about cannibalizing audiences, since city to city overlap is fairly rare.

If many people are seeing the same play at once, we can at last have one show that’s reaching more people in a single night than any individual Broadway or touring show can; we’ll have a story that national press outlets can’t ignore; we’ll have a playwright who can dedicate themselves to working in theatre for a season without receiving an inheritance or a genius grant, since the collective royalties will be significant.

With theatres having just announced or on the verge of announcing their 2013-14 seasons, why do I toss this out for consideration now? Because it would take a year to get this together; for the intra-theatre conversations to begin and bear fruit; for a national sponsor or two to be signed up; for a single advertising campaign to be developed for use by all participants; to insure that a year from now, this grand idea could be unveiled to the public.

Collectively, the number of people who attend theatre on a daily basis in America is significant, but because it’s mostly happening in theatres of perhaps 500 seats or less, its hard for the country at large to get a handle on our significance. So let’s all hang together, since hanging separately doesn’t get us the impact we so desire, so need and so deeply deserve.

Now to find “the” play…

With U.S. theatre seasons being announced almost daily, things have been pretty lively around the old Twitter water cooler, with each successive announcement being immediately met with assessments at every level.  How many female playwrights or directors? Is there a range of race and ethnicity among the artists? Is the season safe and predictable or adventurous and enticing? How many new plays, or actual premieres? How many dead writers? How many American playwrights? Any new musicals? The same old Shakespeare plays?

Thanks to social media, what once might have incited some e-mails and calls among friends in the business is now grist for the national mill, and the conversations swing their focus from city to city as rapidly as a new announcement is made. While some of the critiques may strike a more strident tone than I would personally adopt, I have to say that this is evidence of the developing national theatre conscience, under which news of upcoming work is not merely relayed but considered, from a macro rather than micro viewpoint, and not only by artistic directors at conferences or journalists in major media. People are keeping score.

I find this heartening and useful; last year I wrote a column for The Stage in which I declared my belief that the work on U.S. stages must better reflect U.S. society. But even as I applaud every recounting of a season being graded on a variety of balances (gender, race, vintage, etc.), and hope that it informs not only a national conversation but action and change at the local level, I want to strike a note of caution about one of the criteria being applied, specifically: why are so many theatres doing the same plays?

It’s easy if one lives in a major metropolitan area that’s rich in theatre to wonder why certain plays are receiving 10, 15 even 20 productions in a single season, typically works that have been seen in New York, whether on Broadway or off.  We all see the list compiled each fall by TCG and American Theatre magazine; it generates stories about the most popular plays at U.S. theatres and usually mirrors the NYC fare of the past year or two. But at the same time, how many new plays remain unproduced, or receive a premiere and then don’t find their way to other stages?  Have U.S. theatres become ever more safe and New York-centric?

What seems like a herd mentality has a more practical basis. It has been some time since plays have toured the country with any regularity (before the current War Horse, the last significant non-musical tour I recall was Roundabout’s Twelve Angry Men); the days when a play would run a season on Broadway and then tour for a year are long over. So while not-for-profit theatres may have been born in part to offer an alternative to commercial fare that was once available throughout the country, the life of plays has fallen almost exclusively to institutional companies.

Those companies tend to be fairly hyperlocal, drawing the majority of their audience from a 30 to 45 mile radius. This holds true even for larger cities, although they may benefit from some portion of a tourist trade. Generally, only “destination theatres” like Oregon Shakespeare Festival or Canada’s Stratford and Shaw Festivals can lay claim to a wider geographic spread. So while our overview of production may be all inclusive, the communities being served are less transient and more insular than that view.

On top of that, we can’t deny that theatre in New York has a range of media platforms which, even in our online era, few other cities can match. Consequently, a success in New York, or merely a New York production, gets a boost in the eyes of all concerned – theatre staffs, freelance artists, funders, audiences. And as a result, companies which are the major – or only – theatre in their community may feel duty bound to offer those “name” works in their seasons, because their audiences may not have any other opportunity to see them and also because their artistic leadership believes in the quality and value of that work. Of course, in some markets, theatres may compete for these “name” works, especially if they’re accompanied by the name Tony or Pulitzer.

This was brought home to me years ago during my time as managing director of Geva Theatre in Rochester NY. Geva was by far the largest theatre in Rochester; its peers were the former Studio Arena Theatre in Buffalo, 60 miles to the west, and Syracuse Stage, some 80 miles to the east. Each city had its own theatrical microclimate, with only the smallest sliver of die-hard theatre fans traveling among all three, an effort hampered by a snowfall season that ran from November to April.

Having come from Connecticut theatre, where a daytrip to New York was commonplace for professionals and audience alike, I wasn’t used to working on “last year’s hits” (though Geva’s seasons were certainly much more varied than that). In Connecticut at that time, doing work recently available in NYC was redundant. Frankly, what had been a source of pride at the places I’d worked had become a sign of elitism in my new setting, and I had to adjust my thinking accordingly – a mindset that has stayed with me as I ventured back into Connecticut and then to Manhattan.

This year, Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop has been one of those frequently produced plays; on the east coast alone I know of productions in Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington DC without even looking at schedules; I could just look at the Amtrak Northeast Corridor schedule for that rundown. Some might call this copycatting, especially after its Broadway run the prior season, but based upon reviews and reports of sales, The Mountaintop has been meaningful at each venue where it has appeared, presumably without overlapping audiences. And on a personal note, I have to say that even in a production compromised by a labor dispute, I found the Philadelphia incarnation to be even more affecting than the Broadway one.

Even as I lobby for artistic directors to be ever more committed to a wide range of essential criteria, I acknowledge the difficulty of their task. Aside from taking into account the questions I highlighted in the first paragraph, they also have to consider issues like budget, educational commitments, work that might prove especially meaningful to their audience or their community. Many have to do that with only five or six shows in a given season and it may not be possible to hit every desired mark.

A national survey across a range of criteria will certainly show us trends in production at the country’s institutional theatres, and I avidly support such an effort. But as we look theatre by theatre, we might allow, slightly,  for what else could be happening at other theatres in the same city, and perhaps for how each theatre’s season does (or doesn’t) make improvements in diversity year over year. We also have to accept that in meeting one of many goals, a theatre might fall short on another; watching how they trend over time will be the most telling indicator. And while we need more and more platforms for truly new work, if a show with a New York imprimatur is a genuine part of a season striving towards meeting a range of goals, it is not necessarily a cop-out.

A final word for the theatres that face this new scrutiny, from playwright Stephen Spotswood during yesterday’s water cooler chat on Twitter: “Dear theatres whose seasons people are complaining about: This means we care and are invested in you. Start worrying when we stop.”

I wanted to title this particular post, “Theatres: Hotbeds of Disease,” but that seemed, after due consideration, to be a bit alarmist and a potential deterrent to attendance. That is not my wish. However, it is extremely apt that just as I prepared to write this, I retrieved a message from my friend Mark, who referred to coming into New York as ‘entering a giant petri dish.’ Not a quote for the tourism posters, to say the least.

We are, as the news has been alerting us hourly, in the midst of a significant outbreak of the flu, which, when it was called influenza in the books we read as young adults, seemed more appropriately alarming. The contagion has blanketed the country and wherever you go, you hear people talking about feeling like they’re getting sick or how sick they were, accompanied by tweets and posts from people in the throes of illness.

Any place where people gather carries enormous risk for the uninfected and residual risk for the uninoculated: theatres certainly fit the bill, but so do schools, offices, mass transportation, stores and, worst of all, doctors’ waiting rooms and hospital ER’s. Anyone remember the rather horrifying scenes of microscopic droplets entering the noses and mouths of a movie theatre audience in the film Outbreak? Maybe it should be required viewing just about now.

We’re told, again and again, that the best deterrent is frequent hand-washing with soap and warm water. But while countless public places offer touchless Purell dispensers, I have been struck in the past couple of weeks by how many theatres, live and movie both, seem to have taken the Victorian workhouse approach to manual hygiene. Put more simply: why don’t they have, now or ever, warm water in rest room sinks?

In my highly unscientific study, not one venue restroom offers sink water above a temperature that might be politely called frigid. Dual faucets seem to simply mock us, each producing the same icy stream; the increasingly prevalent motion sensor faucets offer us no thermal options and dispense water somewhat arbitrarily.  This strikes me as a major break in the chain of public health and personal hygiene.

Mind you, I understand that people are unwilling to stay home when they have tickets for a live performance, especially when no exchange or refund is offered. I can’t hit the, “if you don’t feel well, stay home” note very strongly, as it falls on deaf ears (though we can dream). However, in my more controlling moments, I do wish we could require anyone who coughs or sneezes more than once during a performance or screening to wear a surgical mask; if we go masked at Sleep No More, why should there be any stigma about obscuring one’s nose and mouth in public for the benefit of others (I once saw a show which passed medical masks out to the audience, but for effect, not prophylaxis). And while we all wish the coughers in particular would stay home, as they disturb both the audience and performers in live theatres, I recall in years past Ricola sponsoring bins of cough drops at classical concert venues; perhaps that effort could be renewed or expanded in an effort to silence those around us.

But let’s start with the basics. Even though the production of hot water has a real expense, I think theatre owners and operators might push the thermostat on the hot water heater up to a minimally therapeutic level (whatever that may be) during a national epidemic, at least. Aside from helping to stem disease, which is no small matter, you’ll please your patrons and keep theatres busier because, as someone surely said at some point: warm hands, warm hearts. And I imagine we’d all rather be producing hits instead of illness.

“She nailed it! She nailed it! What a spectacular pirouette, Biff, wouldn’t you agree?”

While the idea of all-arts talk radio, modeled on sports talk radio, may strike one upon first thought as rather absurd, I think my friend Pia Catton is really on to something in her enthusiastic pitches for just such a thing both this week and last week in her “Culture City” column at The Wall Street Journal.

Frankly, whether it’s sports, politics or, for that matter, car repair, we’ve been shown time and time again that there are people who are drawn to listen to, and participate in, audio conversations for hours on end. NPR’s Car Talk managed to attract listeners who didn’t even own cars, because the program was simply so entertaining. Now, while the Magliozzi brothers weren’t on a 24-hour car talk network (they had to make room for things like Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me and All Things Considered), their 30 year run is a testament to the idea that good talk makes for compelling listening, no matter what the subject.

So even as yet another arts television network heads towards rocky shoals (Ovation just lost the significant access to the pool of Time Warner Cable subscribers), maybe it’s time to realize that arts TV may be too expensive to sustain. But talking is considerably cheaper to produce, even when done truly well, and if Twitter, Facebook, chat rooms and the like are any evidence, there’s an audience for talking about the arts.

Certainly one fear is that it would quickly devolve into debates about which recording of La Boheme is best, or whose Mama Rose was definitive. I wouldn’t have much patience with such circular argument. But shrewd hosts could prevent repetitive (and insoluble) contretemps in favor of variety, and daily topics and special guests could focus the discourse. This is a little trick known as producing, and while it seems invisible when it comes to talk radio, it’s essential. They’re rarely just turning on a mike and letting some personality do whatever they want, which explains why Keith Olbermann keeps getting fired – he doesn’t want to be produced, but let free to roam wherever he sees fit and get paid for it.

One hurdle to be conquered by arts talk radio is the hyperlocal nature of the performing arts. While the entire country can share movies, recorded music and books, even the most successful Broadway show might be seen by say 500,000 people in a year, meaning that if an arts show is national, you may have trouble finding enough people who have seen any given piece to fuel a great conversation. Though there may be original sports talk radio in many markets, I suspect it corresponds with those markets which have major league teams, even though thanks to broadcast, cable, satellite and the web, sports are accessible across the country as never before.

Because of Pia’s ambition, I’m not prepared to theorize about arts talk radio that only serves New York, Chicago and London even at the start; its greatest service to the arts would be if it was national or international, connecting often disparate arts communities into a single conversation. Where I would moderate her vision is length. A daily show or weekend programming block would be a good place to start and test things out, without round-the-clock pressure and expense.

Another staple of most talk radio is opinion, which can fall somewhere between loud argument over the holiday dinner table and outright character assassination. That worries me. I would have trouble listening to people, whether host or caller, tearing down any artist, even when I agree that their work is negligible. That, of course, is because I come from inside the field. Perhaps, just as with many people’s reactions to the Bros on Broadway on Theatremania, it’s the reflex of the dedicated arts aficionado, protecting the artists and the art, and if arts talk radio is to attract an audience beyond the already-converted, maybe some feelings will have to get hurt, beyond bad reviews.

A number of years ago, I read a fascinating speech given at an arts journalism conference in which the speaker/writer said that if the performing arts want more coverage, more attention and perhaps more acceptance, they need to – to use the sports analogy – let the arts media into the locker room. We are, as a rule, profoundly careful about access to artists and process, so we should be surprised if our coverage is limited to one feature story and one review per outlet. While post-game interviews and sports press conferences are remarkable for their ability to say very little, they create the veneer of connection; if they didn’t, they’d have been axed by editors and producers long ago.  Even in film, there are both prepackaged behind the scenes featurettes and set-visits for select outlets, whether high-brow (Vanity Fair) or low (Access Hollywood and the like). Maybe arts talk radio can open up those avenues.

Yes, social media has been used creatively by some celebrities to build the bond with their fans, but most theatre folk don’t manage to reach a critical mass or approach social media all that creatively (on Twitter, Lin-Manuel Miranda offers a great template for artist-fan interaction). They need a platform that goes beyond their own efforts.

Would I have called into arts talk radio when I was 20? Probably so often that I’d have gotten a nickname and become a recurring voice (or gag). Would I do it now? Probably only to play a similar role to that which I play on Twitter: fact-checker, conversation starter, and mild wit. Of course, at this stage, after seven years helming “Downstage Center,” I’d apply for a hosting job in a flash. Frankly, I think Pia and I would make a great duo. And with Car Talk off the air, maybe an arts talk call-in show is just what’s needed. Hmmm.

So I’ve gotta go. Need to find the number for the heads of programming for some radio outlets. NPR, WNYC, WBEZ and WGBH, you’re on the top of the list. Go arts, go arts, gooooo arts!

Many people, and I count myself among them, often find themselves trying to quantify the totality of theatre activity in the United States and, within that, to delineate differences between the various sectors: commercial, not for profit, educational, amateur and so on.  While absolute figures may prove elusive, there are a handful of studies that provide a reasonably good picture of professional production, lending perspective to any discussion about the reach of theatre in America.

The Broadway League, the professional association of theatre producers in the commercial sector, both Broadway and touring, generates multiple reports annually; its recent release of its annual demographic figures last week focused a lot of attention on Broadway and who’s attending those productions. The Theatre Communications Group (TCG), the national service organization of the country’s not-for-profit theatres (NFPs), produces its annual Theatre Facts report, the most comprehensive picture of activity across a variety of NFP companies based on an comprehensive fiscal survey.

While the methodologies may vary, and the TCG report isn’t 100% inclusive and includes extrapolation, looking at the two is very informative as a means of comparing and contrasting these two sectors, which inexplicably to me seem to be always addressed discretely, rather than as parts of a whole.

Here’s the main snapshot:

I was surprised to find that in terms of revenue, the two sectors are quite close; the NFPs edge commercial production by $36 million (for the purpose of this summary, I have merged earned and contributed income in the NFPs). Attendance between the two shows the NFPs ahead by a bit over $8 million, which is almost 33%. But the real difference is in the number of productions, which demonstrate that the production pace in NFP theatre is vast compared to the commercial arena, and the total number of performances almost eight times greater.

Obviously caveats quickly arise: most of the NFP production is in houses of 500 seats or less, while that’s the minimum size in the commercial world, where theatres can reach over 3,000 seats. It takes only a handful of productions in commercial to generate nearly equal revenue to the entire NFP sector; that’s because a single production might play throughout the season, either on Broadway or on tour, while each NFP might produce a half-dozen shows in a year. Though production figures aren’t available, the budget of a single commercial musical might fund a mid-sized LORT theatre for two seasons, let alone countless storefront or LOA companies for years.

But what’s perhaps most interesting is that, operating under the reasonable assumption that each show has one director, one set designer, on lighting designer, one costume designer and one sound designer, those working in those fields are employed almost entirely by the NFP companies, since there are so very few opportunities in commercial theatre. Indeed, its not uncommon for the same designer in the select group that secure Broadway shows to do two or three in a season, and for those same designs to go out on tour, so when it comes to individuals, that count of 118 grows even smaller.

In terms of the aggregate economic force of Broadway, the League’s numbers show that Broadway and commercial touring generates significant income from a relatively small amount of shows. The TCG numbers show a more granular reach, with thousands of productions just edging the commercial world to reach a similar figure. But it’s the NFPs that are providing the vast majority of theatrical employment.

Let’s look at another measure of employment, specifically when it comes to actors. I think it’s a safe assumption to say that with musicals dominating commercial production, the cast size of an average show must surely outpace those found in resident theatre. Drawing upon employment data from Actors Equity for the same 2010-11 season, here’s the snapshot:

There’s obviously a staggering difference in compensation for performers in the two sectors, since with 40,000 fewer work weeks, the commercial productions yielded almost three times the earnings for its actors as the NFP companies provided. While certainly star salaries may have had something to do with this, it’s more likely because production contract minimum typically exceeds the top salary at any of our not-for-profit companies.

So what have we found? Resident, not for profit theatres provide the foundation for the vast amount of theatrical activity in the United States, employing the lion’s share of the artists and presumably staffs as well, and playing to about 30% more patrons. When it comes to overall sector income, the two are extremely close (although the inclusion of more of Equity’s smaller contracts might tip this slightly further). But for those fortunate enough to secure employment as actors or stage managers in commercial productions, the compensation far outstrips what’s paid by resident companies.

Next time you want to make a generalization about the difference between commercial and not-for-profit theatre, here’s your broad-based data to draw from. But there’s lots more where this came from, and I urge everyone in the field to review it, to understand both the divergences and similarities, and to better understand American theatre not as an array of silos, but as a whole.

*   *   *

Notes:

• Data from the Broadway League is drawn from their Broadway Season Statistics summary and their Touring Broadway Statistics summary, as well as information taken from their IBDB and provided by their press office.
• As previously indicated, revenue for NFP companies is inclusive of both box office and contributed income, since both are required to achieve the level of production represented within; commercial theatre may have some amount of sponsorship income, but it wasn’t broken out in the Broadway League survey, nor did I treat capitalization as income.
• There are almost two dozen AEA contracts not represented in the actor workweek summary, because I am not familiar enough with each contract to properly categorize it. The contracts included represent almost 2/3 of all AEA employment. It’s worth noting, by the way, that the Disney World-AEA contract covers 5% of all AEA annual work weeks, but does not factor in here.
• While the Broadway League has assembled its numbers for 2011-12, and as I was writing, AEA indicated that their figures for that period would be released imminently, 2010-2011 remained the period of comparison because that is the most recent TCG data available. It should be noted that once every seven years, the League has to compile its data into a 53, instead of 52, week season; 2010-11 was such a year, so the comparison of the data is imprecise, giving a quantitative edge to the commercial numbers.

The Broadway League released the results of its annual demographic survey of audiences yesterday, and as always, it’s a useful snapshot of the Broadway audience, whatever your philosophical view of Broadway may be. The percentage of tickets purchased by tourists (those residing outside of the tri-state area) inched up to 63.4% of all tickets sold (a slight rise from the prior year’s 61.7, but showing that roughly two out of every three Broadway tickets are purchased by visitors, not locals. 18.4% of all tickets were purchased by international tourists, which means that nearly 20% of all ticket sales are to foreign residents, while a bit more than 40% are to U.S. travelers. This shouldn’t be terribly surprising, since a variety of surveys show that Broadway is the number one attraction for visitors to New York.

Although the news yesterday was about the demographics, a number of outlets treated the release as if it were the first announcement about Broadway’s audience during the 2011-12 season, when in fact the League issued a release on revenues and attendance on May 29, two days after the official close of the season as they define it (roughly June 1 to May 30 each year). Indeed, if you looked to The Hollywood Reporter, Entertainment Weekly or Deadline, you would have thought the League just managed to finish tallying the season that ended six months ago, as the demographics (admittedly inside pool) took a back seat to dollars and bodies.

The 2011-12 season marked a record high dollar gross for Broadway shows, at $1.13 billion, with total paid attendance of 12.33 million. While direct comparisons are slightly skewed, because for statistical reasons, the prior year had 53 weeks instead of 52, the figures were consistent with recent trends, with growth in revenues outpacing the growth in number of paid tickets. Yes, thanks to the innovation of VIP or premium tickets, the finite universe of theatres and seats manages to make more money with every passing year, because Broadway has fully embraced the simple economic principle of supply and demand.

You can expect that yesterday’s announcement will be followed in roughly four weeks time by the sales and capacity figures for the calendar year 2012 (as opposed to the theatrical season, creating a second opportunity for headlines sliced from the same data). So with percentages and numbers floating around, I decided to explore, on a top-line basis, how much of the Broadway wealth is being spread around, and how much of it is attributable to only a few shows.

Based on the tally drawn from IBDB.com, a total of 72 productions played, in whole or part, during the 2011-12 season, ranging from long-running hits like Phantom of the Opera to special limited events like Hugh Jackman: Back on Broadway. Of those, 41 were new productions, and it’s worth keeping in mind that there are only 40 Broadway theatres.  Given that long runners occupy a portion of the designated real estate, this quickly reveals how many shows were coming and going throughout the year (as is the case every year), some intentionally (star vehicles that were planned for only 16 week stints), some not (Bonnie and Clyde).

So, I wondered, what were most people seeing? Utilizing data collated by The Broadway League, I pulled out the results of revenues and paid attendance for five shows, opting for those I thought might be the most popular. Here’s the results:

So what do we find? That out of 72 possible productions, five shows yielded 33% of the gross revenues for the Broadway season and 25% of the audience. That’s an awful lot of firepower in only five theatres. And given the nature of the shows and the length of some of the runs, I think it’s a fair assumption that those eight million tourists who attended Broadway last year bought a good number of the three million tickets sold by these shows.

What about Mary Poppins? What about Jersey Boys? I could have swapped either of them with Phantom and the results would have been almost identical. Why five shows – why not all seven? Simply for the optics of how a handful of shows can dominate Broadway, and five is somehow more effective than seven, to my mind at least.

When it comes to grosses, the presence of Book of Mormon has a significant impact: even though its paid attendance is smaller than any of the five shows selected, you can see that its gross is disproportionately high (it had an average ticket price of $159 in this period, compared to $80 for Phantom). But it isn’t an anomaly, it’s what you learn on the first day of Econ 101: the logical result of a smaller house, a hit show and premium pricing. We’re likely to see more shows follow this model as time goes on, as a “tight” ticket seems to only build demand.

All of this data goes to show that, when the theatergoing public thinks about Broadway, they’re likely defining it through the handful of shows that dominate at any given time, since those are the ones that most people see and those are the ones minting the money – and they are, as we’ve always surmised, the long-running hit musicals. And for all of the statistical benchmarks that make for success in headlines, the rising tide is not floating all boats — it’s concentrated in the hands of a very few hits, which have a disproportionate cut of the Broadway pie.

Life and safety are most important. A place to live comes next. Then jobs, business, livelihoods. In the wake of the storm that just slammed New Jersey and New York, these are the priorities, first and foremost.

But it’s my nature to turn to thoughts theatrical, and there’s no question that every manner of live performance in the affected areas will feel a strong and lingering impact in the days and weeks, perhaps months, to come. Even venues that were spared any direct damage from the storm will have to grapple with having artists, staffs and audiences cut off from theatres for days or even weeks; the minds of ticketholders and potential ticket buyers are not focused on their next evening out, but instead on the priorities of my first paragraph.

Yes, we all heard that Broadway was shut down on Sunday night and has yet to announce the reopening of shows as I write. But Broadway is just the tip of the iceberg, the headline that efficiently communicated, pre-storm, that New York was hunkering down. Off and Off-Off Broadway, theatres outside of Manhattan, and outside of New York all shut down as well. Rehearsals, tech, workshops, showcases, readings – all were hit, from Virginia northward, and westward too.

On the internet, snide remarks on Sunday and even Monday played off of “The show must go on,” as if heeding safety alerts and protecting patrons were somehow a dereliction of duty, instead of a prudent decision to insure that no one took undue risks. These are the same people who are probably complaining about lack of mail service today.

The immediate suspension of productions will no doubt have a financial impact on every venue, commercial or not-for-profit. Movies may get more attention, but they are fixed art; perhaps their theatrical runs may be curtailed by loss of marketing momentum, but they won’t cease to be. TV ratings may take a hit because of major markets without power, but reruns, Netflix, Hulu and the like will make certain that programs don’t go unseen.

In theatres throughout the region, shows that were already at financial risk may see their demise hastened; shows in previews or rehearsal may see their production schedules altered and face challenges in luring audiences, even after transportation returns to normal, because focus and priority won’t be on entertainment. Even successfully running shows will take a sustained hit.

This is a natural disaster, not terrorism. But as the ripple effects of 9/11 went far from ground zero, for an extended period of time, this storm will pass but its memory and its impact will linger. Theatres in the mid-Atlantic and northeast will have to convince audiences to return once again, and it won’t be about conquering justified fears, but conquering physical and financial realities which will impede that process. It will take a long time to get past this.

As a final word, precisely because the relighting of Broadway, when it occurs, will again capture headlines, I’d like to remind everyone who cares about live performance that the performances and companies at greatest risk are those that are not as high profile, those without extensive financial resources, those that operate from small venues in locations somewhat less traveled. Yes, the relighting of Broadway houses has an impact on the many industries that benefit from the influx of audience members to those shows, but that same situation is played out in microcosm at every performance venue, in every neighborhood affected.

Let’s do all we can to help our families, our neighbors and those we don’t even know heal and rebuild. But when each of us is able, let’s also look to the arts, so often an afterthought in the minds of so many, and make sure that we can gather together in theatres large and small very soon, and support with our labor, our money and our presence this area of endeavor, at once an artistic pursuit and a vital industry.

The programme/script of Caryl Churchill’s new play

Like most American theatergoers, I’m always startled when I get to England and I’m expected to shell out £4 (about $6.40) if I want a theatre programme. This flies against the American tradition of free programs, regardless of whether you’re attending commercial or not for profit theatre; don’t confuse a program or Playbill with souvenir programs, those $20 photo galleries found on Broadway, at ice shows and circuses, and their like. When you calculate the cost of a theatre ticket in England against what’s charged here, there remains a significant savings, so I and other Americans should really keep our mouths shut about the extra tariff. Comparatively, we’re still getting a bargain.

That said, the experience reminds me once again about the nature of theatre programs, their purpose and their often unrealized value. That’s something that transcends price and international boundaries. At its simplest, the program gives us the basic info about the show we’re seeing: who did what and what they’ve done before. It’s a tool for telling us about the artists, and a great way of insuring that you’re not distracted by thoughts like, “Wait, is that the woman who was in…” while you should be focused on the story unfolding, not the identity of a performer.

Beyond that, programs can tell us more about the show we’re seeing, in the manner of a study guide for adults, with everything from impressionistic pages replicating art works and corollary quotes worth contemplating in relation to the show, to explicit essays which seek to tell us things we might not know, but should (at least in the eyes of the producer or artists). They can also tell us more, in the case of work produced by ongoing companies, about the people and organization responsible for the show; while this is often boilerplate, it’s institutionally necessary, just like those pages of donor acknowledgements.

In our media suffused era, programs have become tablet friendly; I’m seeing theatres making their entire program available on iPads in advance of the show, or downloadable as PDF files for those without the newest technology (he said, pointing to himself). I think that’s a terrific asset, especially if there’s something in the program that might prove particularly valuable to one’s appreciation of the work. Very often people read their programs after a show is over, so advance access is a great step forward – provided theatres make a distinction between programs and newsletters, and define a clear purpose and corresponding type of content for each.

I could ramble on all day about the nature and benefits of theatre programs, but let me cut to the chase with a particular and perhaps unique example. For many years, London’s Royal Court Theatre’s programmes have been copies of the play you’re seeing, an exceptional asset and value, especially at a venue dedicated to new plays. I know of many American companies that have long envied the Court, yet few have managed this feat of offering new scripts to their audiences; in this age of instant publishing and tablets, perhaps it’s time to look at it once again.

Last week, seeing Caryl Churchill’s new play Love and Information, which is comprised of dozens of vignettes that go far beyond the title topics while always managing to encompass one or the other (or both), I bought my Royal Court programme/script. When I got home that evening, I wasn’t about to immediately re-read the play, but I did decide to glance through it, foolishly thinking that the ever-enigmatic Ms. Churchill might offer some additional insight in the text. What I found profoundly changed my view of the play.

While there was no treatise on the piece, by the author or anyone else, there was a brief production note on the text that made the experience, in retrospect, even more fascinating. It reads:

The sections should be played in the order given but the scenes can be played in any order within each section.

There are random scenes, see at the end, which can happen at any time.

So what Ms. Churchill informed me, and anyone who bothered to read that text note, is that Love and Information is a theatrical erector set. While there are certain rules that must be followed (as in, say, architecture), there’s also a freedom to reimagine the work with every staging. Indeed, the optional scenes were not in the premiere production that I saw, but they’re still available for a director, leaving (or perhaps mandating) that the text be approached as malleable with every new iteration.

I don’t recall that reviews of Love and Information noted the unfixed nature of the play’s vignettes, suggesting that it wasn’t called out in the press materials or that some critics may have missed this note, which to me is vital. As part of a play which offers no conventional narrative and a highly fractured structure, it’s sure to set off lots of conversations. In her taciturn way, Ms. Churchill appears to be telling us that there’s no singular answer because there’s no singular version of the play. Mind blown.

Some will argue that what’s on stage should be all there is, and one can make a case for that. But I see nothing wrong in reaching out to audiences with some useful, and at times vital, information.  In print or online, free or paid, programs can profoundly effect our understanding of what we see. The challenge that remains, no matter the price or the format, is how do we get people to take advantage of the information on offer, not because it’s “good for them,” but because it may open their minds to even greater insights and possibilities?

He clasps his hands together and bows, low. When he lifts his head again, his arms now at his sides,  his eyes glisten, moist perhaps, but not teary. He lifts his gaze to the balcony, scans it, then looks to those seated closest to him. As he glances across the front rows, there is the very slightest hint of a warm smile, perhaps conspiratorial. Then he joins hands with the rest of the company.

“Look, he’s so moved,” I’ll overhear a nearby lady remark. “Oh, but now he’s smiling,” says another, relived and happy, bonding with him in the very final moments of several hours in the theatre. They feel more connected because he’s shown them all that he feels so deeply, sad, elated, a bit tired, by all that’s come before.

I have seen this particular bow more than once, and it never fails to move audiences to comment, no matter what has come before. Because it is the bow of a friend who typically plays leading roles, I have seen it at the end of classics and new plays, of comedies and dramas.  It is a performance unto itself, but no less genuine for being one. And while the play that preceded it may be flawed, this particular, brief display of emotion and thanks always delivers.

We say so much about the theatre we see that we often don’t take into account the curtain call itself, the bows, the epilogue to the performance that allows us to join with the company one last time. Indeed it is not uncommon at the end of a curtain call for the actors, before they depart the stage, to reach out their hands, stretching towards us, to applaud us, in mutual admiration, cementing a bond. Nowadays, when the curtain call is discussed at all, it is to decry the falseness of Broadway’s seemingly de rigueur standing ovations, an honor once reserved for performances of extraordinary merit, now the inexplicable and meaningless standard.

Let’s not engage in yet another debate about the devalued ovation, but consider instead the act of the bows. Even at their simplest, different stages dictate different patterns; while a proscenium allows for a straightforward, straight-across line of actors entering and bowing successively, in the order of the size of their role or, in some cases, their personal fame, looking out, looking up (if there is one or more balcony) joining hands and bowing en masse. If the stage is a thrust, or perhaps in the round, the company is usually arrayed separately, and they turn together to each side of the audience as they bow, keying off of some unseen signal in a final bit of subtle choreography.

Subtlety is not always required; the curtain call can be an extension of the performance that enhances it. As if we had not had enough fun at Matthew Warchus’s Boeing-Boeing, he enlisted Kathleen Marshall to choreograph a final burst of motion and mirth, insuring that even the bows failed to begin to distance us from the show we had enjoyed; it sent us bouncing out of the theatre, not merely collecting our things after dutiful or enthusiastic clapping. A number of English musicals offer the mega-mix finale which, after we’ve already begun clapping and perhaps taken to our feet, recaps what’s come before with a medley of the show’s best tunes;  it is designed to get us on our feet, often against our better judgment, lest we be seen as spoilsports. In the case of Mamma Mia!, the curtain calls are topped with the song “Waterloo,” a big Abba hit that couldn’t be shoehorned into the plot, and its last minute deployment takes the entire show the one final joyous, rhapsodic plane.

Productions of the vintage Arsenic and Old Lace are known to have a series of complete strangers emerge from the set’s supposed basement; they are nightly-rotated strangers who are recognized as some of the heretofore unseen corpses sent off by the sweet old ladies’ wine. At Bring It On, the curtain calls are accompanied by videos of the cast in rehearsals, as well as the creative team; while it mirrors the videos that pervade our internet lives, or the bloopers that run alongside credits in some movies, it shows that the cast is “just like us.” It also allows brief glimpses of the creative team as we applaud and while they may not be known to all, I could smile as I applauded, at Amanda, at Lin-Manuel, at Tom and so on; I have always been of the belief that authors, directors and designers should be brought to the stage for bows whenever they are in the house, not only on opening nights, and this is a compromise solution.

These examples among the most creative I’ve seen, and perhaps far too rare. They don’t belong in serious drama, of course; they’d be ridiculous at Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? or The Normal Heart, but something special is certainly appropriate for vintage musicals and for comedies, even classic ones. Sadly, bows are too often an afterthought, roughly staged if at all at the first previews, given order as the production comes closer to an opening night. That is why I always marvel at my friend’s self-contained bow; no matter what the circumstance of a given production, he is complete unto himself at the denouement, with unwavering results.

Of course even the most perfunctory bow is better than none at all. Some directors, typically on dark works with many deaths, will argue that to bring the actors back to the stage is to deny what has come before; to brings back corpses (apparently having never seen Arsenic and Old Lace) makes no sense. In two productions that I have seen – the most recent Broadway revival of Journey’s End and, years earlier, Mark Lamos’ Julius Caesar at Hartford Stage – the bodies strewn about the stage rose before our eyes, not under cover of darkness, and we applauded as were slightly chilled, never knowing whether we’d just applauded performance, staging or resurrection, not that it matters.

I take issue with directors who eschew curtain calls on artistic grounds, because, along with everyone else in the audience, I am denied the opportunity to express my appreciation to the cast, and we leave the theatre dissatisfied and puzzled by the absence of convention, surely not what any director really seeks. Applauding is a theatrical social contract of many, many years’ practice, and appreciation denied is appreciation diminished.

I’m not suggesting that every production should contrive a unique curtain call; to do so would then make them as boring as standing ovations have largely become. But as we parse every aspect of theatre making and theatre marketing to insure that we are attracting and sustaining audiences, we mustn’t forget the impact of that last minute – after the show itself has ended but before the audience is released to back into the real world – and its ability to enhance what has come before and to make audiences truly a part of it, achieving community not just within the audience but throughout the theatre.

Yes, Mr. Survey looks innocent enough, but does he belong in artistic programming?

“We choose our season largely in response to what our patrons tell us. Lately they are interested in seeing shows that they already know.”

The quote above, from the producing artistic director of a large not-for-profit theatre, appeared recently in a perfectly innocuous “season preview” round-up, the kind found in newspapers and online resources around the country at this time of year. Some of you may well be surprised by the sentiment, though it is one with which I’m familiar. My only surprise is to see it stated so baldly. I’m not naming the theatre, or the publication, because I have no desire to castigate or demonize the specific organization, since this practice is hardly unique. It is the issue that’s worth discussing.

For those who traffic in the language of grants, or for that matter the universe of arts blogs concerned with mission and marketing, it is quite common to read about the necessity of serving one’s community, one’s audience. I certainly support that sentiment, but serving does not mean servant. Not-for-profit arts organizations exist to serve by leading, offering work which connects with a community, local, regional or national, by finding the correct balance between being able to sell tickets and raise money on the one hand, and, on the other, advancing genuine artistic goals that support artists, craftspeople and technicians dedicated to creating good work.

In the recent economic climate, there has been a flight to safety in so many areas of society, making it harder for organizations to be progressive in their work. Some have been unable to negotiate the enormously difficult economic waters, and we daily read of the fallout, be it the diminution of New York’s City Opera, the suspension of production by Minneapolis’ Penumbra Theatre, or the labor struggles in orchestras just chronicled by Diane Ragsdale.

It would be glib to say that theatres which produce according to the express wishes of their patrons become de facto commercial producers, because that’s not fair to the commercial sector. While many decry the rise in Broadway musicals based on well-known movies, they are at least new works for the stage, and they do not represent the entirety of commercial product. Even commercial revivals don’t always play it safe, since many seek to reinvent material, even if they attempt to insure their venture with famous actors. And new work does still debut under commercial aegis, even if the majority of new work is now created in not-for-profit companies.

As I mentioned, the idea of doing what one’s audience requests is not new. Since I began in this business, I’ve heard about companies that survey their audiences and point blank ask them what they’d like to see the next year. I’m pleased to say that I’ve never worked for one. And there’s an essential flaw in this question of what people want to see, since audience members can only name shows which they’ve already seen; you can’t choose something which doesn’t yet exist. “Familiar” work is the inevitable and immutable result.  While a generic box for new play or new musical might appear on such survey, and might get checked now and again, if the risk of producing new work is taken at such a company, it’s very likely that the audience will only respond to work that feels very much like what they’ve seen before, and that experimentation and innovation – especially if it turns out to be unsuccessful artistically – will only reinforce the flight to the safety of the known.

Don’t let me give you the impression that I’m opposed to companies that specialize in classics, or revivals. Those are absolutely valid missions – so long as the productions are not trapped in amber, trooped out every five years because of their proven box office appeal. If the text is always approached as new, so long as there is a creative rather than replicative spark, I say go for it.

Once upon a time in theatre in America, there’s no question that the known dominated. Think of Eugene O’Neill’s father touring for decades as The Count of Monte Cristo or William Gillette’s sinecure as Sherlock Holmes; that was the norm.

But that’s not what not-for-profit arts organizations were created to do. It’s important to note that the old actor-manager model, in which a company was built around a singular star has given way to companies where artistic directors are charged with understanding, serving and leading the artistic appetites of her or his audience and supporting artists by creating homes for their work. If an artistic director opts to produce by survey, then they are certainly a producer, but they may have well abandoned the right to claim artistry. If they don’t explore work beyond the most standard repertoire, if they don’t bring exciting artists to bear, if they don’t feel strongly enough to decide for themselves what they believe should be on stage, then perhaps ‘artist’ shouldn’t be in their title.

Am I being harsh, judgmental, inflexible? Perhaps, and I know that reality is an endless series of gradations, of balances. But so long as organizations slavishly serve, rather than creatively embrace and advance, we run the risk that success in the former model will create ever greater pressure on the latter.  We have seen how opera companies and orchestras in particular struggle to incorporate modern work in their repertoire, risking creative stagnation. If we are not constantly creating opportunities and appetites for the new in every art form, then each will, at some point, collapse in on itself, like a TV channel that plays nothing but reruns. However much fun that may seem initially, at a certain point, the nostalgia burns out and if there’s nothing new, the form dies.

It is the responsibility of a not-for-profit artistic director to serve and lead and audience, a board, a staff, while at the same time serving and advancing the art form; I like to believe that most do. But if they outsource their most important responsibility to anyone else, even their audience; if they abdicate initiative in order to minimize risk; if that’s the only way an organization can survive, then they’re just staving off the inevitable and their audience, ultimately, will lose.