Macbeth. Twelfth Night. Richard III. Romeo and Juliet. No Man’s Land. Waiting For Godot. Betrayal. The Winslow Boy.
The syllabus for a university survey course in drama? No. Instead, it’s the roster of eight of the 16 titles scheduled to open on Broadway between now and the end of 2013.
To be sure, British plays, artists and productions haven’t ever been strangers to Broadway, but this preponderance of works – featuring actors such as Jude Law, Mark Rylance, Rachel Weisz, Daniel Craig, Anne-Marie Duff, Stephen Fry, Orlando Bloom, Roger Rees, Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart – in the 40 theatres that comprise Broadway, all at the same time, is an embarrassment of riches. Add in concurrent Off-Broadway productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream with David Harewood and Kathryn Hunter (opening the new Theatre for a New Audience space in Brooklyn) and Michael Gambon and Eileen Atkins in All That Fall, and it appears that Anglophilia is running rampant in the playhouses of New York.
Much of this is coincidence, since it’s not as if producers conspire on themes. Indeed, from a marketing standpoint, it’s not necessarily even a good idea, since the theatregoers most drawn to this work may have to face some tough buying decisions unless they have unlimited resources and time. Cultural tourists won’t even be able to fit all of these terrific sounding shows in, should they fly to the city for merely a long weekend.
But whether the productions are transfers from the UK or newly minted in America, as is the case with No Man’s Land, Romeo and Juliet, and Betrayal, the British imprimatur seems as if it’s a requirement this year, even if only in part. UK director David Leveaux is staging Romeo and Juliet with a North American cast capped by Bloom. US director Julie Taymor tapped Harewood and Hunter for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, her first project since the highly-publicised and contentious Spiderman: Turn Off The Dark (a tell-all book by her collaborator Glen Berger will be released just as Midsummer performances begin). Even the US classic The Glass Menagerie is being helmed by John Doyle. Only Classic Stage Company’s Romeo and Juliet, with Elizabeth Olsen and TR Knight, is wholly comprised of American artists, though their Romeo is Japan-born.
The English theatre can certainly take pride in this abundance of talent exported to American shores, and I look forward to each and every one of these shows enthusiastically. Indeed, I’ll pass on my annual autumn trip to London since I’ll need only take the subway and not British Airways.
But it does beg the question of whether classical work can succeed on Broadway without a UK connection. Are producers giving up on our best American actors and directors taking on British and Irish pieces without at least some of that heritage in the shows’ DNA? To be sure, not-for-profit companies may lean American overall (LCT’s Macbeth is Ethan Hawke), but has public television conditioned us to desire the “genuine” article? Great American plays appear on British stages frequently, ranging from A View From The Bridge to Fences to Clybourne Park, without the perpetual need to import Americans, let alone the cream of American talent, to make them work. Yet the power of UK casting appears to be such that even multiple Macbeths are deemed economically viable, with Alan Cumming having played virtually all of the roles on Broadway only months ago and Kenneth Branagh due at the Park Avenue Armory in June 2014.
I don’t like calling attention to national divisions when it comes to art, but the fall theatre season in New York simply can’t be overlooked. Despite the luxury of all of the great theatre on tap, the timing sends the message to US actors, theatre students, critics and audiences that when it comes to staging foreign classics, the talent exchange flows more strongly from west to east than in the other direction.
But looking on the bright side, perhaps this means we’ll soon enjoy one more benefit of the English stage, and be able to buy ice cream at the interval.
While the arts are often notoriously slow adopters of new technology, the rapid rise of social media would seem to dictate that commercial theatre jump on the bandwagon and hold on tight.
But social media may be best suited for use by subsidised companies, rather than the shows that populate the West End and Broadway.
Certainly, every show has the basics in place, a Facebook page, a Twitter feed and so on, in addition to the now de rigeur website. But producers and their marketing teams seem to view most social media as an extension of advertising or PR, feeding out casting announcements, special ticket offers and ‘exclusive’ photos and video all directed at driving sales.
The problem is that for most productions, especially early in their runs, there aren’t necessarily enough people who have followed or liked the show to read what’s on offer, and the content is often repurposed for other uses, diluting the impact that ‘exclusivity’ might still carry.
Shows appear drawn to the media portion of this new manner of communications, when it is the social aspect that is most innovative and compelling. Social platforms offer rapid and direct communications with individuals, but the fact is that people engage most with those who actually engage with, or entertain, them. It may take place on an overwhelming scale when it comes to major celebrities, but in the theatre, it’s quite easy for fans to strike up conversations with stars, writers, designers, directors and even critics – something virtually unimaginable a decade ago. So, if shows don’t actually engage with their audiences beyond tarted-up press announcements, they’re dropping the ball.
Of course, the challenge is how creative on an ongoing basis any one show can be, since they’re a relatively fixed offering (people, on the other hand, can have remarkably varied day-to-day lives) and how much they’re willing to invest to be socially rather than sales-oriented, focusing on the long game rather than immediate gain. Except for a very small portion of the audience, attendance at a commercial show is a one-off event, not an ongoing commitment, seemingly at odds with the basis of social media. The building of relationships afforded by social media can create a stronger bond for an ongoing company producing an array of works over months or years.
In 2009, when social media was still working its way into public consciousness, the Broadway production of Next to Normal garnered great attention and achieved a remarkable million followers through two initiatives. It offered one night “live-tweeting” the plot of the entire show for anyone who cared to follow. Shorn of songs and even most dialogue, they were serialising an outline in real time, but it was a distinctive effort that marked the show as creative and tantalised people with the framework of a show they might then choose to see in real life.
Next to Normal also ran a campaign in which Twitter followers were encouraged to make suggestions for a new song for the show, creating a connection directly with the authors, who did indeed write a song based on suggestions. While it wasn’t added to the finished work, fans could hear it online. It’s a shame that, since the account still has 946,000 following (though it is closed), it hasn’t tweeted since April of last year, leaving a huge untapped base of potential ticket buyers for other productions.
Despite the efforts and success of Next to Normal, social media still seems an afterthought for most Broadway shows. In a survey of Broadway theatres in early May, prompts to interact with the show through social media activity (primarily Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) were on display at 15 theatres – yet a nearly equal number (14) had no such reminders in their front of theatre or box office lobby displays (a number of theatres had no tenants at the time). A few showed real initiative in advocating social media use (a photo backdrop outside the Lunt-Fontanne for Motown; a ‘photo stop’ in the upper lobby of the Gershwin for Wicked).
Unfortunately, others simply displayed social platform logos without the specific names used by the shows in those arenas, so one would have to seek them out; it’s akin to posting ‘we have a website’ instead of giving a URL.
If productions don’t feel that social media gives them sufficient bang for their buck, perhaps they shouldn’t establish a presence only to give it short shrift. On the other hand, as some shows are demonstrating, with a little thought, a show can build its profile at a proportionately low cost, amplifying the power of the ever essential word of mouth, so long as they’re willing to commit to subtly promoting their presence by offering intriguing content and damping down the urge to shout “BUY NOW”.
During the 2012/13 Broadway season, a total of nine new musicals appeared on Broadway (hitting the average annual level of recent years). Of those nine, only four are still running. As I write, there are seven new musicals playing Off-Broadway, with an eighth due in a few weeks; there may well be others. What does it tell us when 12 months of Broadway yields just about as much new musical material as we find Off-Broadway in only a couple of months?
To be fair, many of the Off-Broadway musicals are limited runs in the seasons of subsidised companies, and two are commercial transfers from such companies from earlier this year. Only one will play in a theatre which is comparable in size to Broadway venues, and in that case it’s under the auspices of Shakespeare in the Park; most are in spaces where one week of performances equals the capacity of one Broadway performance. A transferred Off-Broadway hit can easily become a Broadway casualty given the commercial demands of larger theatres and higher costs.
Certainly, hit Off-Broadway musicals are hardly new; one need only look to The Fantasticks, You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown, Godspell and Little Shop of Horrors for precursors, and it’s unlikely the current new shows will ever attain the longevity of those icons. But in recent years, the standard model has tended much more towards the Off-Broadway to Broadway transfer for success, as evidenced by shows ranging from Rent to Avenue Q to The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Even shows that began in rudimentary stagings at the New York International Fringe Festival and the New York Musical Theatre Festival have fought their way to Broadway, including Urinetown and Next to Normal.
Surveying the variety of material, it would appear that the modest scale of Off-Broadway allows for a greater range of topics and styles than the Great White Way, from the sung through pop opera of Dave Malloy’s Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 (based on a portion of War and Peace, and performed in a tent) to David Byrne and Fatboy Slim’s Imelda Marcos disco bio Here Lies Love. There’s one musical that is drawn from a film (Far From Heaven) and two with their roots in Shakespeare (Venice, after Othello, and Love’s Labour’s Lost). Several adopt variations on an environmental, break-the-proscenium approach (Here Lies Love, Murder Ballad and Great Comet). None model themselves on the formula of the classic American musical.
I suspect that no one is getting rich off of these productions, while the backers of Kinky Boots, Matilda and Motown on Broadway will surely do quite well over time. For these Off- Broadway musicals to become true earners for all involved, they will either have to manage sustained runs under a commercial model, on Broadway or Off, or spawn productions across the country and abroad. But even if that doesn’t come to pass, what they are doing is providing a superb showcase for predominantly new talent and unexpected subjects; they are bolstering the musical repertory at a pace at least equal to Broadway and building the reputations of artists.
This shouldn’t suggest that musical success Off-Broadway is a breeze, and it’s worth noting that many of these shows are only mounted with significant donor underwriting or “enhancement” from producers who hope the property will turn out to be Broadway-worthy. But with different scale and different expectations, Off-Broadway musicals may well be supplanting Broadway in advancing the form.
Hindsight doesn’t benefit anyone, but it is hard to resist wondering whether the short-lived Hands on a Hardbody might have fared better at director Neil Pepe’s Atlantic Theatre Company instead of in a Broadway theatre. Ironically, that was the birthplace of Spring Awakening, a musical that had struggled through a number of developmental productions over the years only to find praise, first Off- Broadway, then on.
There’s an old saying that one can’t make a living on Broadway, but can make a killing. It’s not easy to make a living off of Off-Broadway musicals either, but you can build a career.
Ever so quietly this week, the national arts scene became a bit more fragmented, a bit more stratified and a lot more invisible. The Associated Press has just spiked a chunk of its opera, dance and off-Broadway coverage. And in this case, no news is bad news.
In an email, AP chief theater writer Mark Kennedy described the decision to me:
“We sent out a survey before the Tonys to the members of our cooperative, asking about their use of our reviews,” he wrote. “While music, books, movies and TV came back positive, the results proved what we have long suspected: Members overwhelmingly are not using our opera, dance or off-Broadway reviews.”
“It’s more than that,” Kennedy continued. “In some cases, they actually resent [that coverage], thinking we can use our resources better. So while we of course will dip into the world of off-Broadway, whether for an occasional review or a story, we have to listen to the people who pay our bills.”
This may seem like an inside-baseball story, of interest only to theatrical publicists and producers. But the ramifications are a little greater.
Coverage in The New York Times has prestige and tradition, and speaks to the arts community; The Wall Street Journal reaches art organizations’ board members and corporate sponsors; USA Today has mass appeal. But the AP almost certainly has the widest reach of all: Its copy is available to hundreds of print and online outlets internationally, including the big three above.
Indeed, as news has increasingly shifted online, AP arts coverage is probably more accessible to more people than it has ever been. It appears directly on countless news websites — including NPR’s — without any human effort, as part of a continuous news feed, where it’s not subject to the day-to-day editorial priorities and space limitations that govern a print paper or radio show. Even when editors “don’t use” this coverage, it appears on their sites; in some cases, an AP item may prompt an outlet to do its own story on the same subject.
In my days as a publicist, pre-Internet, reportage by The Associated Press often resulted in a single story cropping up in the most unexpected places. It would get relayed back to me by other publicists in other cities — or, charmingly, by the parents of co-workers.
Further back, when I was a teen hungry to learn, AP coverage fed my arts interest with news of culture beyond that originated by my local paper.
What’s important to note is that this week’s news is not the callous edict of a commercially driven corporate behemoth, but rather a practical decision by a member-driven service organization that operates as a not-for-profit. Yet it represents how, in an ever more challenging environment for the news industry, the arts are drawing the short stick.
Some might think that coverage of these areas is essentially local news for Manhattanites. But the arts ecology is more complicated than that. Sure, many people may not be able to attend a New York opera in person, but both radio and TV broadcasts bring those performances to audiences across the country — and the AP’s stories may be the most accessible source of advance coverage for fans in a variety of markets.
Dance companies may well tour to those same locations, and since few can sustain themselves playing only in Manhattan, the AP’s coverage has a direct impact on the viability of those bookings as well.
As for off-Broadway? That’s the easiest to argue for. It’s home to a significant number of new works that may never reach Broadway, but which increase the body of theatrical literature — and which often go on to play numerous regional and amateur stages.
This is particularly important when it comes to plays (as opposed to musicals): Of the 45 works recognized by the Pulitzer for drama or the Tony for best play since 1984, only five originated on Broadway. Yet that is the arena on which the AP will now narrow its focus. Coverage of “regional” arts organizations — long hailed as a similarly deep well of creativity — has already been marginalized.
This is just the latest news in a dispiriting trend. Onetime show-business bible Variety has all but eliminated regional theater reviews, along with a significant amount of its off-Broadway coverage; there’s occasional opera coverage in its pages these days, and no dance coverage.
The Village Voice, home to off-Broadway’s Obie Awards, laid off drama critic Michael Feingold just weeks ago, after more than four decades of service, even as it broadened its coverage of food.
There are countless other examples: Arts coverage at outlets large and small has been narrowing in favor of the largest and most popular companies and offerings, just as arts funding sources have been shrinking, and often tilting in favor of the bigger players. That stratification will only be reinforced by the AP’s coverage reductions.
There’s an invisible cost here. When attempts to reduce or eliminate funding to the arts crop up — which they do with a depressing regularity — they gain traction in part because not enough people encounter the arts, or even regular coverage of the arts, on a daily basis. When a resource as mighty as The Associated Press can’t even offer material for consideration because of a professed lack of interest by other media gatekeepers, I worry it’ll only lend support to those who want to delegitimize the arts with a charge of elitism.
Because celebrity holds ever-increasing sway in all entertainment coverage, and because the performing arts are (to too many editors) the poor stepchild of entertainment, I have a sneaking suspicion that if Hugh Jackman ever ventures off-Broadway, when Renee Fleming sings something at the Met, wherever David Hallberg dances, The Associated Press will probably manage to tell us about it.
But we will know infinitely less about all the fine work being done by those who aren’t already well known, or at companies where tragedies mercifully don’t happen, or among worthy troupes that could most benefit from national attention not found elsewhere.
And should The Associated Press’s decision prove to be a model for yet more media outlets, then entire swaths of the arts may be, as long feared, on the brink of popular irrelevancy. Because soon no one may know they’re there.
I’m often asked by journalists for observations about trends, on Broadway, Off-Broadway, or about theatre in general. One recent call queried me about the prevalence of shirtless men on Broadway this season, a topic on which I had little to say.
Although I was taught in my press agent days that two similar items are a coincidence but that for journalistic purposes, three similar items make a trend and get covered as such, I still tend to look at confluences on Broadway in any given season as accidents. Shows come together (or not) at certain times for many reasons, without co-ordination. But it’s hard not to look at the spring Broadway crop of one-actor shows and let it go unremarked.
In a span of only eight weeks, four of Broadway’s 40 theatres will be home to new one-person shows – all genuine plays, not musical revues or autobiographical monodramas – representing four of the ten new plays due this spring. They tell the stories of three influential women, all deceased – Hollywood agent Sue Mengers (I’ll Eat You Last), Texas governor Ann Richards (Ann) and Jesus’ mother (The Testament of Mary) – and those Scottish social climbers, The Macbeths. Not having seen any of them as yet, I know that the Scottish play has a single actor (Alan Cumming) playing every role; whether there are multiple characters portrayed in the other shows is to be seen.
Is this confluence the result of ‘star casting’ run amok? Not really, since of the four actors involved– Cumming, Bette Midler, Fiona Shaw and Holland Taylor (in alphabetical order) – only Midler is a multi-generational ‘big name’ in the U.S. The other three are all accomplished and honoured actors, and Cumming’s star has risen sharply since he joined the cast of TV’s The Good Wife, but none is necessarily box office catnip. Taylor last appeared on Broadway three decades ago in the infamous Moose Murders, while Shaw’s only prior appearance was as Medea during a brief run 11 years ago. Midler, we hear, won’t be singing, the feature of her previous Broadway forays in the 1970s.
So what to make of this monomania? In all likelihood, it’s simply a quirk of fate, but it has potentially lasting effects. As new plays on Broadway are typically launched into long lives in regional and later amateur theatres, is the theatrical canon being expanded with this work? One only has to see how Red and The Mountaintop have flourished around the US to see the Broadway effect on plays’ future lives, perhaps due to their tiny casts helping to balance out large plays elsewhere in a theatre’s season. Will these solo plays make the same journey – or are they taking the place of larger pieces that need a marketing boost to make that leap?
One-person shows place a significant burden on one person’s shoulders. In any venue, there’s the risk of the actor becoming ill or being injured; while subsidised theatres in the US often don’t use understudies – they’ll carry them on shows like these. But will any audience want to see a substitute for the person truly charged with the singular task of holding a stage by themselves?
If the shows are hits, and do spawn future productions, they could further diminish cast sizes nationally. The economic temptation will be there, and perhaps playwrights who worry now about writing shows that require even six or seven actors will start to think in a smaller scale, to the detriment of the dramatic canon. We can ill-afford a scenario in which God of Carnage is a theatre’s ‘big’ show.
I look forward to each of these plays, which promise a variety of subject and style. But if solo shows become Broadway’s dramatic bread and butter, they’re likely to be met with the sound of one hand clapping.
I was invited by the editors of the National Endowment for the Arts blog to contribute to their “blog salon” on the topic of tweeting during live performances, so this short piece was one of several that were posted by them in a week’s time. To see it in its original context, click here.
I’m not keen on “live-tweeting” at live performances. I’m not against tweeting at performances.
Equivocal enough for you?
The perpetual debate over live-tweeting, in play for at least a year, dredges up the same arguments. “When you live-tweet, you are not present.” “Can’t people put their phones down for even two hours?” “Why should I be disturbed by tapping or glowing screens?” I agree with all of these.
I am in middle-age, and remember the introduction of personal computers, portable computers, cell phones, digital music players, smart phones, and tablets, to name but a few. My patterns of consuming live entertainment were set in the era before most personal electronic communication was available, and in that, not so different from my parents, or audiences in preceding centuries.
Yet I am an avid tweeter, a moderate Facebooker, and, when there are live TV events, I often adopt the two-screen approach, shifting focus between TV and computer, looking up facts and tweeting commentary as I watch. I have live-tweeted talks and speeches in person, most recently TEDx Broadway this past week, yet I have no desire to do this during a play or concert. However, those raised in more recent years, with this technology commonplace, may find it perfectly natural. Who am I to say?
If arts groups can accommodate live tweeters in a manner where their actions in no way impinge upon other attendees or the performers, why not let these experiments play out? If we are Luddites, we risk losing future audiences, which we can ill afford, and hypocrites for saying we want to reach them, but only on our own rigid terms.
Over the years, I can recall disdainful and exclusionary complaints about the introduction of supertitles at operas, sign-language interpreted and open captioned performances, and other such “intrusions.” Thirty years ago, people were startled when I wore jeans to the theater; now shorts are not uncommon in warmer months. Times change.
I will always hold the performance paramount and I hope I will also welcome innovation. Technology will soon make the crude method of live-tweeting obsolete, with elegant, unobtrusive interactivity flawlessly executed, in ways we can’t yet imagine. So for now, as long it doesn’t affect others, I choose to support exploration.
I would rather have people at live performances dividing their attention if they must, instead of not being there at all.
If supply and demand is a fundamental tenet of economics, then the tweet offer last summer from New York’s Soho Rep, during its sold-out run of Uncle Vanya, made no sense – “99¢ Sunday performance tonight at 7.30pm”. Why would it undermine something so desired as a seat to this show? Why wasn’t the price for this heretofore unavailable cache of seats $299.99?
As explained on its website: “Soho Rep is thrilled to offer 99¢ Sundays on selected Sunday performances to make our shows accessible to the widest audiences possible.”
The catch was that one could only buy the tickets, in person, an hour before the show. While admiring the gesture, I had visions of hundreds of people showing up and most being disappointed, because Soho Rep seats only 75.
Certainly one could look at this offer and think it is great value. That is true for those who were able to buy a seat. For those who were turned away, it was a disappointment and loss of time. And time, to use another basic economic tenet, is money. These days, however, the cost-value equation in theatre is vastly more complicated than ever before. As price has become fluid, it is hard to determine where true value lies.
When people wait in line, sometimes overnight, for the Public Theater’s free Shakespeare in Central Park, the ticket they get is indeed gratis. But if seven or eight hours sleeping among strangers outdoors results in attendance at a disappointing show, which can happen, then there was a high cost for little value (or, with a great show, a cashless bargain), calculable only by a subjective assessment of the worth of each individual’s time (although the overnight experience is its own type of participatory theatre).
While the time commitment necessary for acquiring tickets for Shakespeare in the Park is likely much greater than that required for 99¢ Sunday at Soho Rep (unless one is lucky enough to secure a ticket through the ‘virtual line’ online), the odds are also more favourable, since the open-air Delacorte seats some 2,000 per performance and every single performance is free, although the commitment to acquire a ticket carries risk through the final curtain – should it begin to rain ten minutes into the performance, the show may have to stop and all value is lost.
To go to the opposite end of the spectrum, take Book of Mormon, arguably the hottest ticket on Broadway. The least expensive ticket is priced at $69, but if you can secure one, it may well be for a performance months away. If you do not want to wait so long, you can, if you can afford it, buy a VIP seat for up to $500. This is a pure case of supply and demand, but it is not new. Eleven years ago, The Producers began offering premium seating at $488 per ticket. There were, then as now, various expressions of dismay, but desire trumps thrift.
Some might argue that the scarcity and cost of Mormon serves to make the experience even more valuable, as price can be an expression of worth. Having seen the show becomes a status symbol. In a unique move, perhaps an effort to diffuse frustration on the part of thwarted or economically constrained would-be ticket buyers, Mormon periodically holds ‘fan appreciation day’ performances, distributing tickets for free, akin to the Shakespeare in the Park model.
What falls between these scenarios? Rush tickets, sold on the day of the show or shortly before curtain, have been common in regional theatre fordecades. Somewhat newer ‘pay what you can’ performances are offered by some companies at early previews. Broadway shows have adopted the ‘ticket lottery’ model, holding back front-row seats at young-skewing shows such as Wicked or American Idiot, available at low price through a raffle two hours prior to curtain. In most of these cases, access to the theatre itself is essential. Every instance carries risk (will you get a ticket?), personal cost (time and effort) and value (cheap tickets).
In the UK, the Barclays Front Row scheme at the Donmar Warehouse is a lottery-rush hybrid, guaranteeing 42 low-priced seats at each performance, sold Monday mornings for the coming week (with a website clock counting down to the moment of release).
Discounting is rife on Broadway. All but the biggest hits usually have discount offers, sometimes as much as 40% off the declared value, that can be uncovered with an internet search, or in your mailbox if you are a regular theatregoer. Discounts not only allow, but also encourage, advance sales, with no great time investment. Producers trade savings for guaranteed money in the till.
The TKTS booth in Times Square may yield a 50% off price, only day-ofshow and it requires your time and presence, as lines can be long and subject buyers to the vagaries of weather (in contrast to the Leicester Square booth in London, where I have never waited more than five minutes). Both the UK and US TKTS booths have partially reduced potential disappointment by listing available shows online or by mobile app. The actual discount can be variable.
In another iteration of price/value matrix for theatre tickets, dynamic pricing seems the most clear-cut exemplar of supply and demand. I say ‘seems’ because those who employ such systems, in which prices shift according to popularity, tend only to shift prices upward opportunistically, such as increases during holiday weeks, or as a limited run approaches capacity. Price reductions are not usually found at the box office. Price charts in Broadway theatres are now all displayed on video monitors, the easier to alter as needed. Dynamic pricing is not employed only by commercial productions – subsidized theatres use it as well, raising for some the question of whether not-for-profit theatres are now pursuing profits, or simply maximising their income to support ongoing artistic and community efforts.
There is one more model of the theatrical price-value challenge, seen in the £12 Travelex season at the National Theatre in London and the $25 price for all seats, thanks to Time Warner, at New York’s Signature Theatre. These both offer great value at a most reasonable cost, as both are exceptional companies. The sponsors that make such programmes possible, as well as the theatre staff who secure the funds, are to be applauded. But with the stated goal of making theatre accessible to everyone, it is interesting to consider what both the short-term and long-term implications will be. When top-notch theatre is offered at an artificially low price, does it make the challenge of selling tickets for every competing organization that much more difficult? Could these prices simply be providing those who can afford market price a discount they never sought? Will patrons forgo comparable theatre devoid of subsidy?
In the jungle of discounts and rising costs, we have to look at the National, Donmar and Signature efforts, and others like them, as the start of admirable and essential long-term experiments. Since low-priced tickets are not being offered simply to fill houses, but to make tickets more generally accessible, they are bellwethers that can tell us if price is indeed a barrier to theatre attendance, and if, by removing that impediment, theatre can draw in new and younger audiences.
Signature’s can only be studied at some point in the future, as every ticket is low-priced, flat rate and subsidised for years to come. The National reports that annually, 22% of the Travelex tickets are sold to first time attendees. The very early weeks of the Donmar plan shows some 40% of the Front Row seats going to patrons new to their customer rolls.
As the means of selling and acquiring tickets mirror conventional marketplace practices, while at the same time initiatives rise up to spur sales to more demographically and economically differentiated audiences, the matrix of price and value becomes ever more complex. For producers, there is flexibility to adapt as never before. For patrons, the price points can become advantageous or prohibitive. Hopefully, in this new and perpetually evolving world, theatregoing will not be predicated and expanded solely on the cheapest access possible, but on the fundamental and incalculable premise of the art of the theatre itself having meaning for those who seek to attend.
“What is the best that Broadway can be?” was the central question of the second TEDx Broadway conference, which continued to explore the query that fueled last year’s inaugural conference.
Presented, perhaps ironically, at off-Broadway’s New World Stages in Manhattan on Monday, the six-hour array of speakers struck similar notes: A better Broadway can be achieved through access for, engagement with and connection to the audience.
The conference mixed seasoned producers like Daryl Roth and Disney Theatrical Group’s Thomas Schumacher, artists such as playwright Kristoffer Diaz, actor George Takei and designer Christine Jones, and experts in other fields including Ellen Isaacs, the principal scientist at the Palo Alto Research Center; tech and media entrepreneur Randi Zuckerberg, and Susan Salgado, the founder with restaurateur Danny Meyer of Hospitality Quotient, consultants on the customer’s experience.
A capacity audience of 450 turned out to hear 17 speakers, watch thematically related videos from official TED Talks, and hear a performance by the all-female cello-driven band Rasputina. (TEDx conferences are independently organized events sanctioned by the official TED organization.)
Mixing pragmatism with imagination, Wall Street Journal critic and columnist Terry Teachout, who made his debut as a playwright in 2012, cited the oft-repeated figure that 75% of all Broadway shows fail financially. Then “why do people produce on Broadway?” Teachout asked. “Because it’s fun.”
He urged the attendees to take a chance on Broadway, “to do something that’s never been done … let the fact that most Broadway shows fail liberate you.”
He advised, “Don’t start settling for safe, gamble on great. If you’re not going to make money, make something beautiful, something that makes you proud. Who knows, you may even get rich.”
Takei, who plans to make his Broadway debut next season in the musical “Allegiance,” (which was produced at the Old Globe in San Diego last fall) talked up the power of social media. He acknowledged that he has a base of “geeks and nerds” thank to his “Star Trek” days, but he didn’t address how less famous figures, or shows, might achieve similar success.
Schumacher related his ideal vision of Broadway and how it ran counter to what he felt one night sitting at a show, responses that he believes many in the business must conquer.
“Who are these jackasses?” he wondered of his fellow patrons. “My loathing for the people I was surrounded with was insurmountable.” He then talked about countering such “pretentious” instincts, saying, “Populism has its own manifest destiny and we must embrace that.”
Jones, the designer, is also artistic director of Theatre for One, which creates intimate theatrical experiences between a single artist and a single audience member in a retooled peep-show booth. She spoke of her desire to “distill the space” between performer and artist. She then explained her efforts to connect every audience member in every seat with the work on a Broadway stage.
“I wish we all had the same ability to make choices about how the audience is seated as I do with what’s on stage,” she said.
Jones alluded to Lewis Hyde’s book “The Gift,” which was also taken up by Adam Thurman, marketing director of Chicago’s Court Theatre, who proposed, “Marketing, fully realized, is a gift. I am in the gift-giving business and so are all of you.”
But he cautioned about preaching only to the converted, those who already attend the arts, saying, “We need more people who love us.”
Diaz and Zuckerberg offered lists of ideas for Broadway. Diaz’s random yet passionate litany included a contrary notion to many.
“Having playwrights working in television is a good thing,” Diaz said. “But we need to get them back and bring with them everything they learned and evolve the stories we tell.”
He enthused over the works of Lynn Nottage, described the theater community as being made up of “nerds and misfits who didn’t fit in,” and declared, “We’re living in a post-“Book of Mormon” society.”
Zuckerberg spoke of her original plans to pursue a career in theater, then shifted to a list of “10 Ideas to Open Broadway to the World,” including open auditions on YouTube, crowd-sourcing costume designs, creating online viewing options and offering social media walk-on roles.
“Instead of having a small sliver of the world come to Broadway,” she asked, “why not bring Broadway to the entire world?”
Other speakers included “The Millionaire’s Magician,” Steve Cohen; David Sabel, head of digital media for the National Theatre of Great Britain, and Seth Pinsky, president of New York City’s Economic Development Corp.
The TEDx Broadway conference was organized by Damian Bazadona, president of Situation Interactive; theatrical producer Ken Davenport; and Jim McCarthy, CEO of Goldstar Events.
See the story as it appeared at the Los Angeles Times here.
This is the note from Kimberly Kaye at Theatermania that preceded my op-ed:
When TheaterMania launched its Bros on Broadway series in October 2012, theatre pundit and arts administrator Howard Sherman reached out to Creative Director Kimberly Kaye via Twitter to say he would be “monitoring” the feature and internet responses to it. After the debut of the TheaterMania’s fourth “Bro” this week, Sherman reconnected, stating he would like to “weigh-in” on the reviews and the controversy around them. Below are Sherman’s thoughts. They belong solely to the author, who received no payment or compensation for his work.
* * * *A number of years ago, I took my two best friends since junior high to a play I was publicizing. They weren’t by any means theatrical novices, having previously been taken by their parents or dragged by me, but they were far from regular theatergoers. (In the past several decades, I can’t recall them ever buying theatre tickets of their own accord.) The show I took them to, a modern romantic comedy, had a brief moment where the leading lady was topless; it was natural within the play and not gratuitous. As we waited for others to file out after the show concluded, my friend Stephen leaned across our friend Mike to inform me I had failed to get good seats. “What are you talking about?” I asked. “If we’d been on the other side of the theatre,” Stephen explained, “we would have had a much better view when she had her top off.“Yes, my old friend is a “bro,” and was one before the term even existed. So Stephen, and Mike as well, are factors that explain, in part, why I didn’t erupt in aesthetic umbrage when TheaterMania introduced its “Bros on Broadway” feature a few weeks back, even though many who know or read me might have expected me to do so. When your best friends are bros, you learn to accept. Frankly, I was a bit surprised by the anger provoked by the first “Bros” piece, and indeed might have missed the article entirely had I not spotted online brickbats being thrown at TheaterMania Creative Director Kimberly Kaye (who I follow on Twitter, but do not know in real life). I reached out to her that day online, to offer a bit of moral support, since it’s never easy to be on the receiving end of public verbal assaults. I’ve been there, so I know.I said at the time that, while my instinct was to be dismissive of the piece, I would adopt a wait-and-see attitude. Would “Bros on Broadway” be a means of ridiculing theatre and those who choose not to attend it in one insulting unit? Only after a few columns appeared would I make any judgment.In the meantime, I pondered the premise. It’s not as if TheaterMania had suddenly jettisoned a theatre critic in favor of bro-mmentators; this was an add-on to their existing theatre coverage. TheatreMania is a commercial venture, and (shockingly) there are other sites that ply the same territory. The new series was certainly unique. While fraternity membership and sports fandom seemed to be recurring resume points for the bros, TheaterMania wasn’t trooping out rejects from The Jersey Shore to pontificate about Chekhov. And the whole “bro” concept is sort of a joke in and of itself, as simultaneously popularized and satirized in the character of uber-bro Barney Stinson [Neil Patrick Harris] on the sitcom How I Met Your Mother, so why get all serious?
With four pieces to date, I can now say that “Bros on Broadway” is not the end of theatre criticism as we know it. It is merely another iteration of “citizen criticism” that has burgeoned since the advent of blogs and social media. The premise may have already been copied by another outlet (D Magazine’s “The Broducers “), but I don’t see The New York Times subsuming their arts coverage into the sports section yet, so I don’t think it’s a snowballing trendsetter either.
I’d even argue that “Bros on Broadway” is beneficial to the field of theatre. Within the circles of arts professionals there is always the risk of “talking to ourselves.” That is to say, believing that we are our audience, when nothing could be further from the truth. Getting a true sense of what the man (or woman) on the street may think of the work to which we’re dedicated only makes us better at our jobs, allowing us to understand the perceptions of those not immersed in our world. It’s a good thing for the die-hard theatre buffs to see our cherished, insular world through someone else’s eyes–eyes that don’t line up in freezing temperatures at the TKTS booth.
People far more intelligent than myself have written about how our society is more fractured than ever, facilitated by self-selecting social media circles and DVRs that allow us to only watch what we want. Indeed, if we reached out more astutely to the bros of the world, maybe theatre wouldn’t be the niche pursuit that it is.
Although it’s catchy, I wonder (hope?) that perhaps the “Bros on Broadway” title may prove limiting in the long run. After all, surely there are women who’ve never been to the theatre before, and I’d like to hear from them as well. I’d also like to see first-timers taken to off and off-off-Broadway, or regional theatre, since Broadway is only the tip of the iceberg of American theatre. But fundamentally, I love the idea of introducing new people to the theatre and learning their reactions. In turn, perhaps they’ll look at those of us who are, now and forever, “theatre geeks,” in a new light.
And this all reminds me: it’s time for me to drag Stephen and Mike to the theatre again real soon. It’s good for them to get out of the house and into a dark room.
P.S. If you’re just dying to know the name of the play and half-dressed actress described in the first paragraph, you just might be a bro.
See the story as it appeared on Theatermania here.
I have yet to see Pinter in the Pinter or Sondheim in the Sondheim. I have, however, seen Ayckbourn in the former and, incongruously, Pee Wee Herman in the latter. For anyone confused, I am referring to the recently renamed Harold Pinter Theatre in London’s West End and Broadway’s Stephen Sondheim Theatre. I applaud the naming of these venues, and I am equally enthusiastic about the Caryl Churchill Theatre that will open in Surrey next year. They are manifestations of a topic I find myself musing upon: using theatre naming as a means of promoting the awareness of theatrical history.
On the one hand, the name of every Broadway and West End theatre carries history, since the venue name will be associated perpetually with famous productions that played there. However, names are not exactly fixed in stone. While Broadway’s Belasco and New Amsterdam may stretch back to a century ago, the current Helen Hayes Theatre is the second building to honor “the first lady of the American Theatre”; the original (which had two names before Hayes) was torn down some 30 years ago. Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? premiered at the Billy Rose Theatre 50 years ago; today, that same theatre is the David T. Nederlander, named for a member of the family that now owns it.
The point is that theatre names are somewhat fluid, and the rationale behind their naming, past and present, can have a variety of motivations. It was certainly the style, once upon a time, for the impresario who built the theatre to name it after himself, but in New York, there has been an intermittently enlightened approach that has resulted in such venues as the Lunt- Fontanne Theatre (named for the husband and wife acting duo in 1958) and the August Wilson Theatre (renamed in 2005, just after the pioneering African American playwright passed away, the building’s sixth name). Among Broadway’s 40 theatres, two are named for legendary critics, the Brooks Atkinson and the Walter Kerr, and a third for newspaper caricaturist Al Hirschfeld, no small recognition for the fourth estate.
Other theatres are named for more practical reasons: when the not-forprofit Roundabout Theatre Company reclaimed a theatre on 42nd Street, part of the restoration and its ongoing funding was secured through a long term sponsorship that named the new venue the American Airlines Theater. Purists were dismayed, but to my mind, it was not affront, since it reestablished a working theatre where none had been for decades.
But I return to the Wilson, the Lunt-Fontanne, the Sondheim, the Hayes, because to me they are exemplars. Maybe, just maybe, patrons seeing shows in those theatres might take the time to find out about these storied names, both bygone and current. Perhaps programmes or websites can provide not just the history of the theatre, but of its namesake. Could our theatre capitals take the opportunity to make themselves billboards for theatre history with more judicious naming? In New York, what of a George Abbott, a Comden and Green, a Wendy Wasserstein Theatre? And they need not be posthumous. Harold Prince, one of the most influential figures in New York theatre from the 1950s to today, might be thusly honoured (even if he has had, at one time, not one but two theatres named for him in Philadelphia). In London, what of Ayckbourn, Stoppard, or Ralph Richardson?
This is not a decision that can be achieved through public opinion, since the authority rests with the owners of the buildings themselves. But perhaps while theatres retain the truly memorable, essential names, the more generic ones can become theatrical history markers. By way of example, both New York and London have Lyceums that might be better off personalized, if preservation regulations allow it. Since theatre is not a religious rite, why do London and New York both have St James Theatres if he was the patron saint of furriers and chemists?
Some theatres’ historic names have been proven outdated, the figures they were named for more fleeting than expected. Perhaps we must change these pieces of the theatre’s history in order to better promote theatre history and commemorate it for subsequent generations.
