As I write late in the evening prior to the second TEDx Broadway conference, I find myself wondering how much the presentations tomorrow will focus on plays, which have become the poor stepchild of The Great White Way.

Over the summer, I wrote about Narrow Chances For New Broadway Musicals and considered Do Revivals Inhibit Broadway Musicals? I counted the most produced playwrights in recent years in The Broadway Scorecard: Two Decades of Drama and, responding to what I saw at a glance as some misguided copy in the promotion of tomorrow’s event, I spoke out strongly with the declaration False Equivalency: Broadway Is Not The American Theatre.  Embedded in these posts were data, analysis — and my opinion — depicting Broadway as it is, not as some might perhaps wish it would be. As I noted in these posts, musicals dominate Broadway, both new and revivals, with roughly 80% of all Broadway grosses coming from musicals, even if the number of plays produced in most seasons outnumber new musical productions. Plays are admired, but when it comes to defining Broadway, the musicals by and large grab the lion’s share of money and attention.

That said, there’s one more, rather simple, data set that’s worth having in mind as tweets, blogs and news reports slice and dice tomorrow’s event (and I’ll be among those doing so). Here’s a listing of the Pulitzer Prizes for Drama and the Tony Award winners for Best Play, from 1984 to the present. I’m not suggesting that these awards are the final word on plays of quality, and awards success hardly guarantees box office success, but the two prizes provide a manageable universe for study. Why 1984? It’s an arbitrary choice, to be sure; it’s also the year I graduated college and went to work in the professional theatre, a microcosm of the celebrated plays of my theatrical career.

The honored plays above, shorn of duplicates as well as the years the Pulitzers honored musicals, make up a total of 43 different works that were recognized for achievements in playwriting in 29 years. Only nine works appear on both lists and The Pulitzers are only for American plays, which helps to reduce duplication.

Now here’s the key question: how many of those works actually had their world premieres on Broadway? The answer: only five. Those plays were Rabbit Hole, Lost In Yonkers, The Goat, The Last Night Of Ballyhoo and M. Butterfly. The others all began in not for profit U.S. venues, as close as Off-Broadway or as far as Seattle, or in subsidized or commercial venues in Ireland, England, and Europe. That’s not to say that there weren’t worthy plays that weren’t recognized which may have been produced directly on Broadway, but the ones that reaped the conventionally accepted big awards didn’t begin there. In the Pulitzer list, there are many that never played Broadway, at least in their original incarnations, as I discussed in At Long Last Broadway.

So as the future of Broadway is a subject on many minds in the next 24 to 36 hours, it’s worth remembering that strikingly few new plays debut there, as they commonly did in the days before the resident theatre movement really bloomed. If plays are to make their marks in Broadway history under the existing models of production, they need to be discovered, birthed and nourished elsewhere. National and international recognition may still be New York-centric, but the most honored works start overwhelmingly just about everywhere other than Broadway. Could that ever change? Should it? And if the answer is yes, then how?

Those who follow my Twitter feed know that I almost never tweet out reviews; I figure that there are plenty of others, including critics themselves, who do, so why be redundant. I focus my energies on highlighting material which may not have had the same kind of exposure.

For the second year in a row, I’m breaking that moratorium on my blog, because “Best Of” and “Top Ten” lists are affirmative summaries of the year in theatre. They represent what critics found most compelling or enjoyable, and even though some decide to toss brickbats with “Worst Of” lists, I’ve avoided linking to those unless they’re appended directly to the “Best Of” praise.

It’s worth noting that all of these lists should be taken with a grain of salt; that is to say, except in all but the smallest markets, they are almost inevitably incomplete, as critics do not have the time (or are not compensated) to see every last production in the area. These are perhaps better considered “favorites,” but that is no doubt insufficiently declarative for many editors, and if 10 Commandments could be selected out of a pool of 617, then surely critics can do likewise. But it’s worth noting that the critic for Time, a national magazine, has restricted his selection to New York; is this because that is where he saw the best work, or because that is the only city in which he went to the theatre this year?

Other than scanning my most cursory summary of each list, I urge you to use the links to look more carefully at what critics had to say about the works they selected, and in particular to do so to learn more about those plays that are unfamiliar to you. Also, as there were multiple Uncle Vanyas, for example, it may not be clear which production is being praised.

Finally, I should say that this is a work in progress and inevitably incomplete, but I urge you to tweet to me at @hesherman with links to lists that don’t appear here, and I’ll keep updating until after the new year.

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America: Terry Teachout, The Wall Street Journal 

St. Joan, A Little Night Music, Nobody Loves You; also a number of other notable productions and artists.

Atlanta: Wendell Brock, Atlanta Journal Constitution

Clyde ‘n Bonnie: A Folktale, Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner?, Apples And Oranges, Next To Normal, Wolves.

Baltimore: multiple critics, City Paper

The Iceman Cometh, The Whipping Man, The Brothers Size, Into The Woods, Office Ladies, Breaking The Code, This Bird’s Flown: A Tragedy Of Antiquity, A Skull In Connemara, Drunk Enough To Say I Love You, Ages Of Man.

Berkshire County MA: Jeffrey Borak, The Berkshire Eagle

A Chorus Line, Parasite Drag, Tryst, Tomorrow The Battle, Far From Heaven, A Gentleman’s Guide To Love And Murder, Cassandra Speaks, Edith, Pride @ Prejudice, Dr. Ruth All The Way.

Boston: Carolyn Clay, The Phoenix

Red, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Avenue Q, Billy Elliott, Master Harold…and the boys, The Elaborate Entrance Of Chad Deity, Marie Antoinette, Ted Hughes’ Tales From Ovid, Betrayal, Our Town.

California: Lisa Millegan Renner, The Modesto Bee

Time Stands Still, The Grapes of Wrath, Carousel, Metamorphoses, Brighton Beach Memoirs, Three Days Of Rain, Gypsy, The Shape Of Things, The Mikado, Mamma Mia!.

Cleveland: Andrea Simakis, Cleveland Plain Dealer

The Whipping Man, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Anything Goes, Bust, Avenue Q, The Mousetrap, In The Next Room, The Secret Social, The Texas Chainsaw Musical!.

Chicago: Catey Sullivan, Chicago Magazine

Angels In America, Cascabel, Dark Play, The Doyle And Debbie Show, Hamlet, Hit The Wall, The Iceman Cometh, Jitney, A Little Night Music, Sunday In The Park With George.

Chicago: Bob Bullen, Chicago Theatre Addict

Camino Real, Angels In America, Immediate Family, Superior Donuts, The Light In The Piazza, A Little Night Music, Eastland, Hit The Wall, Good People, Sunday In The Park With George.

Chicago: Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune

Sunday In The Park With George, Good People, The Iceman Cometh, Hit The Wall, Metamorphoses, Les Misérables, Time Stands Still, The Invisible Man, The Light In The Piazza, A Little Night Music; also Annie, Beauty And The Beast, Death And Harry Houdini, Kinky Boots, The Letters, The Mikado, Moment, Oedipus El Rey, Sweet Bird Of Youth, When The Rain Stops Falling.

Chicago: Kris Vire, Time Out Chicago

Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Good People, Hit The Wall, The Iceman Cometh, Idomeneus, Invisible Man, Metamorphoses, Oedipus El Rey, Romeo Juliet, Sunday In The Park With George.

Columbus: David Ades, The Other Paper

Age Of Bees, Long Way Home, King Lear, The Irish Curse, La Boheme, Memphis.

Dallas: Elaine Liner, Dallas Observer

Essay,  “The Year in Dallas Theatre.”

Dallas: Arnold Wayne Jones, Dallas Voice

Ruth, The Most Happy Fella, The Night Of The Iguana, The Elaborate Entrance Of Chad Deity, The Farnsworth Invention, Becky Shaw, Oklahoma!, The Producers, Superior Donuts, On The Eve.

Halifax, Nova Scotia: Kate Watson, The Coast

Lysistrata Temptress Of The South, Titus Andronicus, Hawk, Twelve Angry Men, Arsenic And Old Lace, The Drowsy Chaperone, Inherit The Wind, Same Time Next Year, Pageant, Bone Boy, Bare, Whale Riding Weather, The Monument, The Men, Who Killed Me, Kill Shakespeare.

Hartford: Frank Rizzo, The Hartford Courant

The Realistic Joneses, A Gentleman’s Guide To Love And Murder, Marie Antoinette, Into The Woods, Carousel, A Raisin In The Sun, Sty Of The Blind Pig, A Winter’s Tale, Les Misérables; also, Satchmo At The Waldorf, The Tempest, Bell Book & Candle, Metamorphosis, Harbor, I’ll Fly Away.

Kansas City: Robert Trussell, Kansas City Star

The Kentucky Cycle, Titus Andronicus, The Whipping Man, The Mystery Of Irma Vep, Time Stands Still, The Motherfucker With The Hat, Antony And Cleopatra, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Moustrap, The Real Inspector Hound, Inspecting Carol, The Importance Of Being Earnest, Making God Laugh, Game Show, Hairspray, Lucky Duck, Spring Awakening, Shrek, The Seagull, Sex Drugs Rock & Roll, The Addams Family, Memphis, An Eveneing With Patti LuPone & Mandy Patinkin, Next To Normal, Master Class, The Fantasticks.

Las Vegas: staff writers, Las Vegas Weekly

Nurture, Measure For Pleasure, Crazy For You, Golda’s Balcony.

Lehigh Valley, PA: Myra Yellin Outwater, The Morning Call

On The Town, I Love A Piano, Anything Goes, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Doubt, Arsenic and Old Lace, A View From The Bridge, The Tempest, Eleanor Handley in Much Ado About Nothing & Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, Parfumerie, The Miracle of Christmas.

London, Matt Wolf, The Arts Desk

Brimstone And Treacle, Cornelius, A Doll’s House, The Effect, In The Republic Of Happiness, Julius Caesar, Merrily We Roll Along, The River, Sweeney Todd, The Taming Of The Shrew.

London, multiple critics, The Guardian

Ten Billion, You Me Bum Bum Train, Gatz, Ganesh Versus The Third Reich, Noises Off, Mies Julie, Three Kingdoms, Three Sisters, Posh, In Basildon.

London: Susannah Clapp, The Observer

The Boys Of Foley Street, Coriolan/us, Love And Information, Timon Of Athens, Sea Odyssey, Constellations, The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time, Red Velvet, Julius Caesar (x2).

Los Angeles and New York: Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times

Clybourne Park, Death Of A Salesman, Follies, In The Red And Brown Water, Ivanov, Jitney, Krapp’s Last Tape, Our Town, Waiting For Godot, Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?.

Miami: John Thomason, Miami New Times

Winter and Happy, Becky’s New Car, The Turn Of The Screw, A Man Puts On A Play, Venus IN Fur, I Am My Own Wife, The Motherfucker With The Hat, Death And Harry Houdini, Next To Normal, Ruined.

Milwaukee: Mike Fischer, Journal Sentinel

Musicals: Avenue Q, Big, Blues In The Night, A Cudahy Caroler Christmas, Daddy Long Legs, The Sound Of Music, Sunday In The Park With George, Tick Tick…BOOM, Victory Farm, West Side Story; Plays: A Thousand Words, Cartoon, The Chosen, Honour, Love Stories, Microcrisis, Othello, Richard III, Skylight, To Kill A Mockingbird.

Minneapolis: Rohan Preston and Graydon Royce, Star Tribune

• Rohan Preston: Untitled Feminist Show, The Brothers Size, Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been, Dirtday!, Buzzer, In The Next Room, Swimming With My Mother, The Origin(s) Project, A Behanding In Spokane, Fela!
• Graydon Royce: Flesh And The Desert, Ragtime, Spring Awakening, Sea Marks, Compleat Female Stage Beauty, Cherry Orchard, Waiting For Good, Measure For Measure, In The Next Room, Buzzer

New Jersey: Bill Canacci, Courier Post

Once, Falling, The Piano Lesson, The Whale, Tribes, End Of The Rainbow, The Best Man, Clybourne Park, Merrily We Roll Along, Forbidden Broadway: Alive And Kicking.

New Jersey: Ronni Reich, Newark Star Ledger

Dog Days, Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, Death Of A Salesman, The Convert, Henry V, The Mystery Of Edwin Drood, The Best Of Enemies, Once, No Place To Go.

New York: Matt Windman, AM New York

Once, Merrily We Roll Along, The Mystery Of Edwin Drood, Clybourne Park, Closer Than Ever, Forbidden Broadway: Alive And Kicking, Vanya & Sonia & Masha & Spike, Porgy And Bess, Harvey, Bring It On.

New York: Mark Kennedy, Associated Press

Top 10 Theatre Moments: Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, Once, Clybourne Park, James Corden, Neil Patrick Harris, Kevin Spacey as Richard III, If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet, the death of Marvin Hamlisch, A Christmas Story: The Musical, the return of Forbidden Broadway.

New York: Robert Feldberg, The Bergen Record

Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, One Man Two Guvnors, Once, Annie, The Mystery Of Edwin Drood, The Best Man, Wit, Grace.

New York, Jeremy Gerard, Bloomberg News

Death Of A Salesman, Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, Disgraced, Sorry, February House, Slowgirl, Uncle Vanya (x 2), the Fugard season, One Man Two Guvnors, Detroit; also The Lady From Dubuque, Annie, Vaya & Sonia & Masha & Spike, A Streetcar Named Desire, Newsies, If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet.

New York, Thom Geier, Entertainment Weekly

Once, The Heiress, Porgy And Bess, Rapture Blister Burn, Newsies, Tribes, Death Of A Salesman, One Man Two Guvnors, Giant, Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?.

New York: David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter

As You Like It, Clybourne Park, Death Of A Salesman, Disgraced, 4000 Miles, Porgy And Bess, Golden Boy, One Man Two Guvnors, The Piano Lesson, Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?.

New York: T. Michelle Murphy, Metro

Venus In Fur, Once, Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, Death Of A Salesman, Then She Fell, Triassic Parq, Bare: The Musical, Peter And The Starcatcher, As You Like It, Helen And Edgar.

New York: Joe Dziemanowicz, New York Daily News

20 stage moments to remember: Assistance, Bad Jews, Claire Tow Theatre, Clybourne Park, Delacorte Theatres 50th, Einstein On The Beach, Feinstein’s, 54 Below, Marvin Hamlisch, Newsies, Nina Arianda, Norbert Leo Butz, Once, One Man Two Guvnors, The Piano Lesson, Rebecca, Sorry, Uncle Vanya, Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, Yvonne Strahovski.

New York, Elisabeth Vincentelli, New York Post

Assistance, Detroit, Gob Squad’s Kitchen, Natasha Pieere and The Great Comet Of 1812, One Man Two Guvnors, 3C, Tribes, Uncle Vanya, We Are Proud To Present A Presentation…, Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?.

New York: John Lahr, The New Yorker

Golden Boy, Death Of A Salesman, Peter And The Starcatcher, Title And Deed, Timon Of Athens, Tribes, Richard III, Clybourne Park, The Whale, The Piano Lesson.

New York, Scott Brown, New York magazine

Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, Tribes, Sorry, Death Of A Salesman, Cock, the black box conjurations, Detroit, Uncle Vanya, the unmusicals, One Man Two Guvnors.

New York, Ben Brantley and Charles Isherwood, The New York Times

• Ben Brantley: Cock, Harper Regan, Mies Julie, Neutral Hero, Once, One Man Two Guvnors, Peter And The Starcatcher, Sorry, Then She Fell, Uncle Vanya.
• Charles Isherwood: Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, Detroit, The Piano Lesson, Title And Deed/The Realistic Joneses, The Iceman Cometh, A Gentleman’s Guide To Love And Murder, Golden Boy, Disgraced, Uncle Vanya, One Man Two Guvnors.

New York: Jesse Oxfeld, The New York Observer

Death Of A Salesman, Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Wolff?, 4000 Miles, Clybourne Park, Hurt Village, Detroit, The Whale, Disgraced, Vanya & Sonia & Masha & Spike, Cock, The Twenty-Seventh Man, A Civil War Christmas, Assistance, The Great God Pan, The Bog Meal, Rapture Blister Burn.

New York: Richard Zoglin, Time magazine

Annie, Detroit, One Man Two Guvnors, A Christmas Story: The Musical, Grace, Louis CK on tour, End Of The Rainbow, Forbidden Broadway: Alive And Kicking, Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf, 4000 Miles.

New York: David Cote and Adam Feldman, Time Out New York

• David Cote: Golden Boy, Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf, Death Of A Salesman, One Man Two Guvnors, Uncle Vanya, Glengarry Glen Ross, Detroit, Natasha, Pierre And The Great Comet of 1812, A Map Of Virtue, If The Is I Haven’t Found It Yet.
• Adam Feldman: Natasha, Pierre And The Great Comet Of 1812, The Piano Lesson, Tribes, Golden Boy, The Material World, A Map Of Virtue, Hurt Village, The Twenty-Seventh Man, 3C.

Orange County CA: Paul Hodgins, Orange County Register

Topdog/Underdog, Car Plays, Elemeno Pea, The Jacksonian, Sight Unseen, American Idiot, Sight Unseen, Waiting For Godot, Jitney, War Horse, Red, The Book Of Mormon, Krapp’s Last Tape, Other Desert Cities.

Philadelphia: J. Cooper Robb, Philadelphia Weekly

Body Awareness, Spring Awakening, The Music Man, Clybourne Park, The Liar, Slip/Shot, The Marvelous Wonderettes, Next To Normal, A Behanding In Spokane, The Scottsboro Boys.

Portland ME: Megan Grumbling, The Portland Pheonix

Aquitania, The Birthday Party, Doctor Faustus Lights The Lights, Eurydice, Faith Healer, Ghosts, Henry IV.

Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, North Carolina: multiple staff, Indy Week

Original Scripts & Adaptations: What Every Girl Should Know, Jude The Obscure, Shape, Children IN The Dark, Donald, From F To M To Octopus, Sketches Of A Man, Perfect, I Love My Hair When It’s Good: And Then Again When It Looks Defiant and Impressive, The Men In Me; Productions: Acts of Witness: Blood Knot, The Brothers Size, Donald, I Love My Hair When It’s Good: And Then Again When It Looks Defiant and Impressive, Let Them Be Heard, New Music: August Snow, Night Dance, Better Days, The Paper Hat Game, Penelope, Radio Golf, Red, Richie, What Every Girl Should Know.

San Antonio: Deborah Martin and Michael E. Barrett, San Antonio Express-News

August: Osage County, Superior Donuts, Killer Joe, King Lear, Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, íCarpa, Open Sesame, Firebugs, A View From The Bridge, Macbeth, God Of Carnage, I-DJ, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Les Misérables, An Adult Evening Of Shel Silverstein, Hello Dolly!, My Fair Lady, American Buffalo.

San Diego: David L. Coddon, San Diego City Beat

Blood And Gifts, Allegiance, Kita Y Fernanda, A Raisin In The Sun, Harmony Kansas, The Scottsboro Boys, The Car Plays, Parade, Topdog/Underdog, Zoot Suit; also, Visiting Mr. Green, American Night: The Ballad Of Juan Jose, Fiddler On The Roof, Good of Carnage, Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots.

San Jose: Karen D’Souza, The Mercury News

Becky Shaw, Humor Abuse, The Aliens, The Caretaker, Any Given Day, War Horse, An Iliad, The White Snake, Woyzeck.

St Louis: Dennis Brown and Paul Friswold, Riverfront Times

Sunday In The Park With George, No Child…, Angels In America, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Sweeney Todd, Thoroughly Modern Millie, The Complete Works Of William Shakespeare (abridged), The Children’s Hour, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Eleemosynary, This Wide Night, The Foreigner.

Toronto: J. Kelly Nestruck, Globe And Mail

Top 10 Shows (via personal blog):  Maybe If You Choreograph Me You’ll Feel Better, The Iceman Cometh, The Matchmaker, Terminus, Home, An Enemy Of The People, The Golden Dragon, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, War Horse, Enron; also Top 10 Theatre Picks.

Toronto: Jon Kaplan and Glenn Sumi, Now Toronto

Terminus, Proud, The Little Years, Caroline or Change, Kim’s Convenience, The Small Room At The Top Of The Stairs, Miss Caledonia, War Horse, The Penelopiad, Tear The Curtain.

Toronto: Toronto Star

Actress Maev Beatty, War Horse, opera as theatre, Cymbeline, The Small Room At The Top Of The Stairs.

Washington DC: Peter Marks, The Washington Post

Mr Burns a Post-Electric Play, Astro Boy And The God Of Comics, Beertown, Really Really, The Strange Undoing Of Prudencia Hart, The Normal Heart, haute puppetry, locally grown theatre, The Servant Of Two Masters, fine old musicals.

as of 12/30/12  11:00 am

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.

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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.

Sanjay at Froghammer must be so proud. You remember Froghammer, the firm brought in by the New Burbage Festival to shake up its advertising and audiences, to cast off their stodgy image. So bold, so vibrant. Oh yes, and (spoiler alert) in that scenario, a fraud.

It’s hard not to recall this fictional scenario, from the ever-brilliant Canadian TV series Slings and Arrows, as the venerable Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Canada drops the middle word from its name…again, having jettisoned it in the 1970s and restored it in 2007. In the words of Stratford’s new artistic director Antoni Cimolino, who assumed his new post officially today, the name “is simple and direct, it resonates with people and it carries our legacy of quality and success.” It also eradicates the name of Shakespeare in the general promotion of the festival. How that plays out on its stages, and its materials, will be seen in the seasons to come.

Stratford is hardly the first theatre to diminish The Bard’s name. Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival began to transition as its Lafayette Street home became prominent and rose to co-billing in the portmanteau Joseph Papp’s The Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival, which later gave way simply to The Public Theater (which still produces Shakespeare in the Park, a catch-all that has included Comden & Green and Bernstein, Sondheim, and Ragni, Rado & McDermott in more recent summers).

Even the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Connecticut, as it drew its last breaths in the late 1980s, rebranded as the American Festival Theatre, as generic a company identity as one could ask for but hey, doesn’t everybody love a festival? It left in its wake an assortment of Shakespearean named businesses around it, which survived for years, despite the closure of the town’s major claim to the name.

Professionally, for these companies, the rebranding is rooted in solid marketing theory. In the case of the two going concerns, they have grown beyond being solely Shakespearean companies, though it’s worth noting that the Shaw Festival has not yet renounced old G.B., even as it has expanded its own repertoire. If Shakespeare is less prominent on the stage, perhaps it is best to not fly him as the company banner, especially since conventional wisdom holds that many people find the works of the playwright to be difficult and off-putting, a perception aided by years of dull literature teachers in secondary schools. If your name is a misrepresentation or worse a deterrent, business sense dictates that you remove the obstruction; when I was executive director of The O’Neill Theater Center, I quickly moved to rework the company’s logo after multiple people told me stories about its caricature of Eugene being frequently mistaken for Hitler.

While these demotions of old Will are extremely prominent, he’s not about to disappear from the North American consciousness. His works are omnipresent thanks to their eternal brilliance, as well as the added bonus of their being in the public domain, free from royalties or restrictive heirs. Every summer, Shakespeare in the Parks blossom as far as the eye can see, not only in New York’s Central Park, especially his most arboreal works like A Midsummer Night’s Dream and As You Like It. And of course we need only look to England where his works, and tributes to it, are a perpetual Shakespearean festival of which they are justly proud.

But there’s no missing the fact that the companies perhaps most credited with popularizing and sustaining Shakespeare in North America in the latter half of the 20^th century have shrugged off their inspiration and their mascot, in the interest of sustaining themselves as centers of theatrical creativity. It’s hard to argue with that latter goal.  After all, when theatre is restricted, or beholden to a limited, outdated artistic palette, it atrophies and dies.

But for all the business sense it makes, I can’t help feeling a pang of loss as Shakespeare’s name gets excised. Once a befuddled high schooler, who came to love Shakespeare as I saw ever-better productions following a dire Julius Caesar in 9^th or 10^th grade, it seems a small but significant chip away at Bill’s rep in The New World. For the theatres, it’s crucial re-branding. For The Shakespeare Brand, it’s a crucial loss.

Another round to Sanjay. Fortunately, after 400 years, I think Shakespeare’s still ahead. For now.

[Update 11/2/12: This post has been updated to reflect that the Stratford Festival has now dropped Shakespeare from its name twice in its history, which was not clearly reflected in the initial press reports that prompted this post.]

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.

“Broadway” is an industry that not only produces theatre events in mid-town New York City, but it’s also the primary engine and idea factory of American theatre, and arguably, theatre worldwide.”

I’m sorry, but I can’t read a statement like that and keep silent.

The above quote is taken from a blog by Jim McCarthy, CEO of Goldstar and one of three organizers of TEDx Broadway, which will take place this January for the second year. Jim organizes the event along with producer Ken Davenport and Damian Bazadona of Situation Interactive. I attended last year’s event and furiously live-blogged it; there was some very interesting conversation that day and what struck me about it was how little it spoke specifically to Broadway and how much of the content spoke to issues of theatre as a whole.  But as much as I’ve enjoyed meeting Jim and communicating with him subsequent to last year’s event, my response to his premise is at least dismay, if not outright offense.

I have spent my career in not-for-profit theatre organizations, the last of which, the American Theatre Wing, is inextricably linked with The Tony Awards, an honor for work in the Broadway theatre, clearly defined as 40 theatres on the island of Manhattan. The Wing gave me a ringside seat at the workings of Broadway, but never for a moment did I forget that I was running a not-for-profit organization, nor did I ever declare or think myself to have “gone Broadway,” despite the jokes of my friends and the assumptions of many in the broader theatre community. My love and dedication is to theatre, all of it, and Broadway is only one segment of a very wide-ranging art form. It is predominantly, but not exclusively, commercial. While its individual productions, running for years, playing in other countries and across the U.S. on tours and licensed productions, may reach the widest audience for individual shows, there are literally countless theatrical productions in this country every year far beyond Broadway’s annual average of perhaps 38.

That is why I take exception to falsely subsuming American Theatre under the banner of Broadway: because Jim has it backwards. Broadway is part of The American Theatre, but the majority of American Theatre is not Broadway.

There’s a second misleading statement in the quote from Jim, because Broadway simply is not “the idea factory of American theatre.” Very few productions reach Broadway without having first been developed and produced in not-for-profit theatre. This even holds true for British and Irish imports, which emerge from the subsidized sectors there onto platforms of ever-greater success. I’m not saying that Broadway never originates valuable new work, but I’d lay odds that more than half of the productions each year have achieved success after benefiting at some point from the efforts of not-for-profit companies.

Because I view Broadway as a part of the American Theatre, I neither love nor hate it as an entity; frankly, it’s a collection of theatres and productions, not a singular body. I have seen great work on Broadway, just as I have in small resident companies. Broadway is one model of producing, one that can yield great rewards for its investors and artists, but one which also benefits from the vestigial patina that remains from the days when it was indeed the primary source of theatre in America. Yet the coalescing and expansion of the resident theatre movement in the 1960s (there were regional theatres decades before that) fundamentally altered the balance of American theatre. While every aspect of theatre is perpetually challenged by economics, it is the not-for-profits, here and abroad, that now lead artistically; Broadway benefits from scale, from history and from its proximity to the majority of the country’s cultural media being so close by.

I don’t think I’m saying anything radical here, but it’s a message that bumps up against the tide of immutable conventional wisdom, because the mystique of Broadway is so powerful. Having worked alongside the Broadway League on The Tony Awards, in a mutually beneficial partnership, I have watched their increasingly strong efforts to brand Broadway, to make audiences internationally ever more aware of it, to unify its constituents, and to hone its image. They face a challenge, because “Broadway” is not a trademark, it cannot be controlled the way a corporate brand can, so they fight an uphill battle at times, while at others they reap the rewards of being the theatrical equivalent of Hollywood’s “dream factory.”

I learned last year that only official TED events can cover “topics,” while the offshoot TEDx conferences must be “geographic.” Indeed, the TEDx Broadway organizers told me of their challenges convincing the TED organization that Broadway is a locale, not a discipline, so they could hold their event; “TEDx Theatre” would not have passed muster. In that usage, I understand their rationale.

But they mislead their potential audience by using Broadway as a catch-all phrase; some of the NFP folks might stay away thinking it’s not for them, which is actually a shame. I support what Jim, Ken and Damian are doing with TEDx Broadway and if I haven’t made myself persona non grata with this piece, I hope to attend again this year. But let’s not confuse positioning and marketing with facts, especially since we’ve long been told how essential truth in marketing is to success. Let’s remember that Broadway actually prides itself on its exclusivity and grant them that, without judgment or rancor. But as for The American Theatre, there’s vastly more to it than just Broadway, and the theatrical idea factory is not restricted to 40 theatres in Manhattan by any stretch of the imagination. Period.

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.

Every January, the media run features on how to lose those holiday pounds. As schools let out for the summer, the media share warnings about damage from the sun and showcase the newest sunscreens. In Thanksgiving, turkey tips abound.

For theatre, September reveals two variants of its seasonal press staple, either “Stars Bring Their Glamour To The Stage,” or, alternately, “Shortage of Star Names Spells Soft Season Start.” Indeed, the same theme may reappear for the spring season and, depending upon summer theatre programming, it may manage a third appearance. But whether stars are present or not, they’re the lede, and the headline.

The arrival of these perennial stories is invariably accompanied by grousing in the theatre community about the impact of stars on theatre, Broadway in particular, except from those who’ve managed to secure their services. But this isn’t solely a Broadway issue, because as theatres — commercial and not-for-profit, touring and resident — struggle for attention alongside movies, TV, music, and videogames, stardom is currency. Sadly, a great play, a remarkable actor or a promising playwright is often insufficient to draw the media’s gaze; in the culture of celebrity, fame is all.

But as celebrity culture has metastasized, with the Snookis and Kardashians of the world getting as much ink as Denzel and Meryl, and vastly more than Donna Murphy or Raul Esparza, to name but two, the theatre’s struggle with the stardom issue is ever more pronounced. Despite that, I do not have a reflexive opposition to stars from other performing fields working in theatre.

Before I go on, I’d like to make a distinction: in the current world of entertainment, I see three classifiers. They are “actor,” “celebrity,” and “star.” They are not mutually exclusive, nor are they fixed for life. George Clooney toiled for years as a minor actor in TV, before his role on ER made him actor, celebrity and star all in one. Kristin Chenoweth has been a talented actor and a star in theatre for years, but it took her television work to make her a multi-media star and a celebrity. The old studio system of Hollywood declared George Hamilton a star years ago, but he now lingers as a celebrity, though still drawing interest as he tours. Chris Cooper has an Oscar, but he remains an actor, not a star, seemingly by design. And so on.

So when an actor best known for film or TV does stage work, it’s not fair to be discounting their presence simply because of stardom. True stardom from acting is rarely achieved with an absence of talent, even if stardom is achieved via TV and movies. Many stars of TV or film have theatre backgrounds, either in schooling or at the beginning of their career: Bruce Willis appeared (as a replacement) in the original Off-Broadway run of Fool For Love before he did Moonlighting or Die Hard; I saw Bronson Pinchot play George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? while he was a Yale undergraduate (the Nick was David Hyde Pierce); Marcia Cross may have been a crazed denizen of Melrose Place and a Desperate Housewife, but she’s a Juilliard grad who did Shakespeare before achieving fame. But when Henry Winkler is announced in a new play, three decades after his signature television show ended, despite his Yale School of Drama education and prior stage work, all we hear is that “The Fonz” will be on Broadway.

The trope of “stars bringing their luster to the theatre” is insulting all around: it implies that the person under discussion is more celebrity than actor and it also suggests that there is insufficient radiance in theatre when no one in the cast has ever been featured in People or Us. By the same token, there’s media that won’t cover theatre at all unless there’s a name performer involved, so ingrained is celebrity culture, so theatre sometimes has to look to stars if it wishes to achieve any broad-based awareness. But the presence of stars on stage is nothing new, be it Broadway or summer stock; we may regret that theatre alone can rarely create a star, as it could 50 years ago, but we must get over that, because the ship has sailed.

There’s certainly a healthy skepticism when a star comes to the theatre with no stage background, and it’s not unwarranted. But I think that there are very few directors, artistic directors or producers who intentionally cast someone obviously unable to play a role solely to capitalize upon their familiarity or fame. In a commercial setting, casting Julia Roberts proved to be box office gold, even if she was somewhat overmatched by the material, but she was not a ludicrous choice; at the not-for-profit Roundabout, also on Broadway, Anne Heche proved herself a superb stage comedienne with Twentieth Century, following her very credible turn in Proof, before which her prior stage experience was in high school. Perhaps they might have tested the waters in smaller venues, but once they’re stars, its almost impossible to escape media glare no matter where they go.

The spikier members of the media also like to suggest, or declare, that when a famous actor works on stage after a long hiatus, or for the first time, it’s an attempt at career rehabilitation. This is yet another insult. Ask any actor, famous or not, and they can attest to theatre being hard work; ask a stage novice, well-known or otherwise, and they are almost reverent when they talk about the skill and stamina required to tell a story from beginning to end night after night after night. Theatre is work, and what success onstage can do is reestablish the public’s – and the press’s –recognition of fundamental talent. Judith Light may have become a household name from the sitcom Who’s The Boss, but it’s Wit, Lombardi and Other Desert Cities that have shown people how fearless and versatile she is. That’s not rehabilitation, it’s affirmation.

I should note that there’s a chicken-and-egg issue here: are producers putting stars in shows in order to get press attention, or is the media writing about stars because that’s who producers are putting in shows? There’s no doubt that famous names help a show’s sales, particularly the pre-sale, so in the commercial world, they’re a form of (not entirely reliable) insurance. And Broadway is, with a few exceptions, meant to achieve a profit. But it’s also worth noting that star casting, which most associate with Broadway, has a trickle down effect: in New York, we certainly see stars, often younger, hipper ones, in Off-Broadway gigs, and it’s not so unusual for big names to appear regionally as well, cast for their skills, but helping the theatres who cast them to draw more attention. Star casting is now embedded in theatre – which is all the more reason why it shouldn’t be treated as something remarkable, even as we may regret its encroachment upon the not-for-profit portion of the field. But they have tickets to sell too.

Look, it’s not as if any star needs me to defend them. The proof is ultimately found onstage; it is the run-up to those appearances that I find so condescending and snide. It shouldn’t be news that famous people might wish to work on stage, nor should any such appearance be viewed as crass commercialism unless it enters the realm of the absurd, say Lady Gaga as St. Joan. If stars get on stage, they should be judged for their work, and reviewed however positively or negatively as their performance may warrant.

I’m not naive enough to think attention won’t be paid to famous people who tread the boards, and I wish it needn’t come at the expense of work for the extraordinary talents who haven’t, for one reason or another, achieved comparable fame. I don’t need a star to lure me to a show, but I’m not your average audience member. Perhaps if the media didn’t kowtow to the cult of celebrity, if they realized how theatre is a launch pad for many, a homecoming for others, and a career for vastly more, theatre might be valued more as both a springboard for fame and a home for those with the special gift of performing live. So when the famous appear in the theatre, let’s try to forget their celebrity or stardom, stop trying to parse their motives, and try, if only for a few hours, to appreciate them solely, for good or ill, as actors.

As some of you may know, I’ve been writing a monthly column for The Stage in London since the beginning of the year; regretfully, it is only available in the print edition so not easily shared stateside or online. For my July column, I had planned to write about the TCG conference held in Boston in late June. Unfortunately, my focus didn’t suit The Stage‘s requirements, despite two efforts that differed in style but were perhaps too alike in content. So, a bit belatedly, I share with you all two versions of my reflections on TCG 2012, which also serves as an insight into an amateur journalist struggling to meet an editor’s requests, and not succeeding. However, there’s no hard feelings, and I’ll be back in the pages of The Stage later this month.

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Version #1: MODELING MOVEMENTS AND CHANGE IN THE AMERICAN THEATRE

Attending the 2012 Theatre Communications Group multi-day conference in Boston felt somewhat like being thrust into an epic mashup of Ayckbourn’s Intimate Exchanges and Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More, going from hotel ballroom, to meeting room, to lunch session and then doing it all again, perhaps five cycles altogether. But while the roughly 1,000 attendees, made up of leadership and staff from large and small companies across the U.S., did gather for full conference plenary sessions, the rest of their time was divided among self-chosen breakout sessions and segments where one is segmented by affinity group (be it job title, budget size or particular creative focus). Consequently, every attendee had their own unique experience.

Not being a seasoned conference-goer, and having not attended TCG’s conferences for more than a decade, I was struck by the sheer scale; I remember the days of 400 attendees on a bucolic college campus. There was a barrage of information, opinion and inspiration coming non-stop, all focused on the making of theatre, and far too much from which to choose. For example, there were 53 breakout sessions, of which one could attend only 3.

The conference theme was “Model the Movement,” referring to the resident theatre movement which is roughly 50 years old (TCG itself is exactly 50 years old). Various models arose in discussions, but the breadth of the event rendered it difficult to pursue one theme singlemindedly. The takeaway from such a varied buffet is not sharply defined, although the persistent theme of change permeated the event. As an attendee, what I recall most were key thoughts, each of which might form a worthy topic for its own conference.

• Opening speaker Howard Shalwitz of Washington DC’s Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company questioned the new trend in talking about theatre as storytelling. “I’m not saying that stories aren’t a critical part of what we do in the theatre, but to say they’re the whole thing is a bit like a symphony orchestra saying they play melodies or an art museum saying they show pictures.”  Shalwitz also worried that in an effort to develop an efficient system of producing theatre seasons “that places the entire burden of innovation at the feet of our playwrights.”

• Marketing guru Seth Godin, observed that “100 years ago, everyone went to the theatre because there was nothing else to do”; spoke to the attendees’ hearts with “You are in the arts because we want you to fail and do it often until you do something that blows our heads off”; and most vividly suggested, “Don’t strive to be heard when you’re there. Work to be missed when you’re not.”

• Diane Paulus, artistic director Cambridge’s American Repertory Theatre and director of Broadway’s Hair and Porgy and Bess, expressed her belief that, “It is a generous act of the audience to come to the theatre and give several hours of their life to you,” while desirous of moving past established patterns because, once, “Theatre was ritual, theatre was pageant, theatre was all different kinds of things. Let’s not limit what we think theatre is.”

• Kwame Kwei-Armah of Centerstage in Baltimore, speaking of play selection, surprised many by saying, “I don’t have to love it. I have to love that my community will really love it and get something out of it. I’m not here to serve myself.”

• Clayton Lord, marketing director of Theatre Bay Area and editor of the intrinsic impact study Counting New Beans called for unity with, “We have to instill loyalty to art, not ‘my art’.”

• Ralph Peña, Artistic Director of New York’s Ma-Yi Theatre, counseled, “Within every organization we have to get leaders to acknowledge their own biases, because if you don’t see anything wrong, you’re not going to change.” He also asked pertinently, regarding diversity, “What art is not ethnic-specific?”

• Adam Thurman, marketing director of the Court Theatre in Chicago, spoke to the ever-present conference theme of change with, “Discomfort causes everyone to focus and everyone to hear each other…the ability to live in that discomfort creates the progress that this industry is looking for.”

• On the same panel as Thurman, Suzanne Wilkins of The Partnership Inc. of Boston, spoke of organizations’ need to “tolerate complexity and paradox – the capacity to connect across difference” in efforts to diversify both internally and within their audiences.

Two final observations, distinct from the inspirations that abounded:

• While most resident theatres produce musicals, that theatrical form was barely mentioned in any session I attended and seemed to not be on anyone’s minds. As evidence, a breakout on a student arts education program, which included on its panel Broadway stalwarts Rebecca Luker and Marc Kudisch (who both sang), drew only 25 attendees. In other circumstances, this would have been packed, but obviously this crowd had other interests.

• The conference gave ample time to controversial monologist Mike Daisey, whose piece about Apple became a major news story when it was revealed he’d fabricated elements. Daisey presented a two-hour work-in-progress performance of his newest piece (about his life and travels post-scandal) and included him on a plenary panel about “Theatre’s Role in Activism,” where he was confronted from the audience by one marketing director who remains deeply angry at being made complicit in Daisey’s lies. “You didn’t do it,” he said to her in a packed hall, “I did it. You may be stuck with having to react to it. But it’s my fault. It’s my fault. It’s not a communal failing.” In the wake of director Julie Taymor’s appearance at the 2011 TCG conference after she’d been removed from Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, Daisey’s appearance suggests that the TCG conference may not just provide inspiration. It may be the place to go for artistic absolution as well.

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Version #2: DAVID BOWIE AND THE AMERICAN THEATRE

While “Model the Movement” was the stated name for the Theatre Communication Group’s 2012 national conference, it may as well have been “Changes: Turn and Face the Strain” from David Bowie’s early hit song. “Change” was certainly the word on everyone’s lips throughout the course of this gathering of the leadership and staff of many of America’s not-for-profit theatres. Perhaps it is the theme of every professional conference these days, but as I’ve only attended theatre conferences, and few recent ones, the theme of alteration was startlingly prominent.

Held in late June in Boston, the conference itself was an enormous change from what I’d experienced in the past. I hadn’t attended a TCG conference in more than ten years, and my most vivid memories go back more than two decades, when the event was held on a small-town New England college campus and perhaps 400 attendees explored the issues of the day. The 2012 conference brought together some 1,000 participants from theatres large and small in a hotel conference facility and one vast ballroom. While I encountered a number of leaders in the field who I had met over the course of my career, I was struck by how many people I didn’t know at all, a result of some combination of my most recent jobs, the significant expansion of the conference, and the inevitable influx of new talent, both artistic and administrative.

The vastness of the attendance, while to my eyes strikingly inclusive, was apparently not perceived that way by all. During the conference, and in the weeks that followed, various topics of contention arose. In tweets and on blogs, there were charges of elitism, as the cost of the conference had proved prohibitive for some smaller companies; of censorship, as volunteers chafed against being told that they were observers, not participants, and should not ask questions in public forums; and of an artistic-institutional divide, as some took issue with the declaration by Michael Maso of Boston’s Huntington Theatre, upon receiving an award, of his belief in institutional theatre. “Does that make us overstuffed bureaucracies?” asked Maso. “Bullshit!”

But those assorted debates seemed to take on larger life post-conference. In the moment, the event was an almost head-spinning array of non-confrontational challenges to orthodoxy, made essential by shifts in the field as well as the larger society. The opening keynote by Howard Shalwitz, artistic director of Washington DC’s Woolly Mammoth Theatre, was a saga of self-exploration, of a producer who worried that his theatre had become so skilled in its producing model that it had become an assembly line, leaving too little room for innovation. “It’s not just the stories we tell,” Shalwitz decided, “but why and how we tell them that determines our success.”

The pervasiveness of change was perhaps best demonstrated when, during a period of elective breakout sessions, I split my time between panels on “Hacking the Not-For-Profit Model with For-Profit Methodologies” and “Artistic Decision Making: Weighing the Balance in a Complicated World.” Despite the former panel consisting of for-profit veterans who had just made the shift into not-for-profit at New York’s Public Theater, and the latter comprised of not-for-profit artists including Kwame Kwei-Armah, just completing his first season at Baltimore’s Centerstage, my move from one panel to the other seemed merely a change of location and personnel. I had left a room where new leaders at The Public spoke of the change they hoped to instill, only to enter a room where the necessity of change for survival was under discussion. Was this happening in every break out, I wondered. Were seemingly specific themes being subsumed by an overarching theme of change? I would have had to jog about quickly to attempt to find out: during three time slots with breakout sessions, there were 53 panels from which to choose.

Since transformation is change, the presence of monologist Mike Daisey reiterated the unofficial conference theme. Having experienced a highly public fall from grace after it was revealed that he had invented portions of his piece, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, the conference offered the semi-fallen Daisey both an artistic platform (he previewed a work-in-progress) and an intellectual one (as a panelist discussing “Theatre’s Role in Activism”). In the wake of director Julie Taymor’s appearance at the 2011 TCG conference after she’d been removed from Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, Daisey’s quasi-rehabilitative appearance suggested that the TCG conference may now be the place to go for artistic absolution.

Although I found the conference exhausting, there was something reassuring simply in being part of a vast gathering of professionals who all, ostensibly, are genuinely dedicated to the well-being of theatre outside of the Broadway realm. Given the variety of theatre companies around the country, with different artistic goals and economic means, perhaps it is inevitable that it could not be all things to all people, and if it did not yield a singular model for the regional theatre movement, it certainly reinforced the necessity and inevitability of evolution.

Data doesn’t lie, they say, which is why I decided to take a data-based look at Broadway musicals. In the first part of my inquiry, I was trying to see whether musicals based on movies and “jukebox” musicals using scores created for other media were crowding out new, wholly original musicals. My conclusions were essentially that: movie material and even, within reason, existing music, are not scourges of Broadway, but the limited number of new musicals produced in any year pose the greater threat to sustaining the form with original books, music and lyrics. Logically, the next step was to look at revivals and their role in the ecosystem.

The conventional wisdom is that we’re overrun with revivals. Many feel that the musical theatre past is constantly being dredged up on Broadway: three Gypsy revivals in less than 20 years; two Sweeney Todd revivals in the barely 30 years since the show’s debut, with a current London production eyeing New York; three Guys and Dolls in just over a 30 year span. This is the sort of evidence that’s given of Broadway going back to the same musical well over and over. But those are the exceptions, not the rule.

Once again looking at the period from 1975-76 through the 2011-2012 Broadway season, a span of 37 years, I found 138 revivals. This includes return visits by Carol Channing in Hello, Dolly  and Yul Brynner in The King and I (twice each in 20 seasons, with Pearl Bailey and Lou Diamond Phillips toplining third incarnations), though recurring Broadway stands like those of Channing and Brynner  are now rare. My count of 143 also includes the new trend for returning holiday entertainments (for this study, the second runs of How The Grinch Stole Christmas and White Christmas are revivals). But still, that yields only 138 revivals, for an average of only four per season (3.73 to be precise).  And in fact, of those 37 years, only five of them ever saw seasons with more than five revivals, balanced against two seasons with no revival musicals and four with but a single one.

Has there been a huge jump in musical revivals of late? While 2011-12 and 2009-10 each saw seven revivals, the year in between saw only two. The years with seven  are the anomalies, not a trend, at least not yet.  And while there was a marked lull in the mid-80s, revivals were always part of the landscape; in the three earliest years that I examined, the revival count was four, eight, and five. So everything is hunky-dory, right?

In recent years, there’s been a remarkable consistency to the number of new musical productions, be it new work or revival: since 2002-03, there have never been less than 12 new musical productions on Broadway, nor more than 15; the 37-year average is 12.5. What has happened is a seemingly natural homeostasis: in years with lots of new musicals, there have been fewer revivals, and vice versa. While it’s impossible to know which book houses first, new shows or revivals, and surely it varies show to show, year to year, it does demonstrate that the limited number of Broadway venues, narrowed by long-running hits and further reduced by the number of musical-optimal theatres, has created a limit on overall musical production. Chicken (new musicals) or egg (revivals)? I can’t say whether one controls the other. But together, they seem to have found their level. And it doesn’t add up to an enormous amount of new musical productions of either kind.

Since new Broadway musical theatres are unlikely to be built, advocates seeking to raise the level of new musicals above the nine-per-season average might hope that theatre owners would exercise artistic control and favor new works, but that’s a naive position.  Theatre owners will book the shows with the best prospect of running, whatever their vintage. There might also be a desire to lobby producers to focus on new work, but given the ever increasing costs of Broadway, reviving proven work can seem even safer than new shows with familiar titles drawn from films or scores assembled from the work of road tested composers. In either case, the deciding factor will often be money: those who actually assemble a production and manage to assemble the financing as well will book the few available theatres. And as for success? Once again, a key element is whether they are actually done at all well.

Personally, I would not like to see revivals vanish from Broadway and, finding that they rarely exceed four a season (perhaps 10% of an entire Broadway season), think they’re at a level which doesn’t do any damage. Broadway does have the ability to play a single production for a very large audience  and, as a draw for New Yorkers and tourists alike, it seems proper that our musical theatre heritage maintain a place where it first made its mark. My concern is that with an average of only nine new musicals a year, and of course fewer that which succeed, the pool of musicals worthy of being revived is growing awfully slowly – especially since the biggest hits now seem to run for a generation in their first appearance. Since the producing and critical community tend to express the sentiment that we should only see a work revived once in a generation, especially if the prior incarnation was a hit, the options narrow.

I think revivals actually create a greater problem outside of New York for the overall health of the form. Let me explain. In the mid-70s, when my survey starts, musicals were primarily the purview of Broadway, a range of civic light opera companies, summer stock, and the rare regional theatre like Goodspeed (where I once worked). Since that time, the regional theatres that emerged beginning in the 60s as dramatic companies have discovered the lure of the musical, and it is now rare to find the large regional theatre that doesn’t program one musical a year (at least). But I will hazard a guess (I’m not backed by data now) that the tendency is for more of the regional companies to do known commodities than to undertake wholly new shows. In their seasons, the musical slot is the budget balancer, the show that pays for new plays and large classic; new musicals primarily appear when a commercial producer wants a low-cost try-out and dangles enhancement funds as a lure, or when the new tuner is so small in scale that it remains affordable. When it comes to new musicals, are our largest not-for-profit theatres risk averse?

As before, that is not to suggest that there are not worthy organizations dedicated to the development and growth of the new musical repertoire. The question is how much of that material finds ongoing life, and begins to be recognized as a work considered part of the popular musical repertoire?

So to come back to the concern I expressed at the end of my last post: how will new musicals find audiences and how will their creators make lives in this business? If Broadway has but nine slots a year, if not-for-profit companies primarily seek the tried and true, how will new musicals develop creatively and develop a public profile? There needs to be a new model for musical production, one which doesn’t rely solely on Broadway for artistic or commercial success and affirmation. America needs more places to do new musicals, in a variety of styles, in which Broadway is simply one alternative, not the pinnacle from which all success derives. To achieve this would require a major reinvention of the ecosystem I referred to at the top of this post.

But musical revivals are in no way hogging the Broadway spotlight, and as with Shakespeare, each generation’s great performers should get the chance to play great roles. And perhaps those classics should be celebrated, because they can often show the current generation what craft and talent in the form has looked like in the past, in order to inform the future.

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Notes on process: as noted at the end of my first blog on the subject of new Broadway musicals, I am working with information drawn from multiple sources. To reduce inconsistencies, I completely re-charted the seasons, relying solely on the Playbill Vault. As a result, my number of new musicals crept up; what I originally counted as 309 became 322, as I worked through such fine distinctions as “musical vs. play with music” and discovered that a forgotten work such as Censored Scenes from King Kong should have been called a musical.  Consequently, the annual average number of new musicals shifted from a bit over eight to closer to nine, which is why there’s not a precise match with the prior post. I have no doubt that were someone else to undertake this review, or even were I to go over it another time, the counts might shift slightly yet again. But as I said in the notes to the first piece, the ratios and trends remain consistent. And those are what tell the tale.