Attendees at BroadwayCon (Photo by Howard Sherman)

If the sight of perhaps 750 theatre fans spontaneously breaking into a song from their favourite musical warms your heart, then the conference rooms of the New York Hilton on Sixth Avenue were the place to be on January 22. If the cast of that same musical, having heard about the impromptu singalong, asking some 3,000 theatre fans to sing to them is similarly inspiring, well you should have been in the Hilton ballroom that same afternoon.

From January 22 to 24, the Hilton was home to the first BroadwayCon, a fan convention for theatre buffs. Filled with events, performances and panels not just about Broadway, but about the theatre overall – though admittedly with a tilt towards musicals – BroadwayCon reportedly sold some 6,000 tickets, which had gone on sale 10 months earlier and cost $125 per day or $250 for the weekend.

I went to BroadwayCon with a mixed agenda: first, sheer curiosity, second, the intention to document it for this column, and third, because I had been invited to moderate a panel about production assistants who subsequently ‘made it big’ in the theatre business. I didn’t know quite what to expect, and one press representative I saw at the event confessed that when it was first announced, there was a feeling of uncertainty in their office.

On the eve of the event, The New York Times cited the demographics of the attendees, provided by the organisers: “Nearly 80% of the registrants are female; 75% are from outside the state of New York; and 50% are 30 or younger.” That’s a far cry from the general assumptions about theatre appealing to an increasingly older crowd, and while 6,000 fans certainly can’t sustain the field alone, the sight of multiple Elphabas, Phantoms, and Tracy Turnblads was evidence that theatre still holds a very strong appeal.

What was on offer? Among many options, there were cast conversations with leads from Fun Home, Spring Awakening, Hamilton and Fiddler on the Roof, and a reunion of cast members of Rent (just days before the 20th anniversary of Jonathan Larson’s passing and the show’s first Off-Broadway preview). There were fan meet-ups organised by affinity (a room that was packed by Sondheim fans at 10am was rather sparse by 11am, when the call was for Lloyd Webber buffs), conversations about diversity, design and marketing, as well as audience participation games and variety shows. Both singalongs I mentioned earlier were from Hamilton events.

I experienced a mild sense of deja vu throughout the weekend (I spent time at BroadwayCon on each of its three days) because it was 40 years ago, to the precise weekend, that I had attended my very first fan convention of any kind, the 1976 International Star Trek Convention, at the very same hotel. It is frankly remarkable that with the flourishing of fan conventions since that time, it was only this year that anyone managed to capitalise on the convention model for theatre and Broadway.

While there were occasional snafus with wrangling crowds into the largest and most popular events on Friday, a gigantic blizzard unfortunately prevented many fans – as well as guest speakers and performers – from reaching the hotel on Saturday, and even Sunday. But the organisers scrambled valiantly and effectively to insure a good experience for those who made it. So while the attendance never seemed as high as on that first day, and while the largest rooms may not have always been as filled, I sensed no lessening of enthusiasm among the die-hards who had either stayed over at the hotel or braved the elements to be there.

Like Broadway itself, access to BroadwayCon wasn’t cheap, and presumably there were countless fans who couldn’t attend because of the added expense of a flight and hotel tickets. But this first year should prove that there’s an enormous appetite among theatre fans to gather both with those they admire, and others who share their passions, getting out of social media and chat rooms and into real life interactions. As someone who began the weekend by adopting a slight distance and harbouring even a bit of cynicism, I was drawn back through heavy snow and puddles of icy slush because BroadwayCon successfully tapped into my inner fanboy, and because I was having a good time watching others have a good time. It gave them access to the world I’ve long been in. The theatre must do more of that.

WestEndCon, anyone?

This essay originally appeared in The Stage.

Bruce Willis in Misery (Photo by Joan Marcus)

It’s a tad too early to announce the emergence of a new trend, but two recent announcements suggest that there’s something brewing in the theatrical zeitgeist.

The announcements to which I refer are Quentin Tarantino’s repeated references to adapting his newest film The Hateful Eight for the stage, and Warner Bros Theatre Ventures’ announcement that Stephen Adly Guirgis will adapt the 1974 film Dog Day Afternoon for Broadway. I’m more sanguine about the latter than the former, because Guirgis is a proven theatrical talent who is likely to assert his own unique take on the true-life story that fuelled the Sidney Lumet film. While some have noted that The Hateful Eight is, if you strip away the profanity and slurs, the widescreen, and the protracted running time, really a western equivalent of an Agatha Christie locked room mystery.

The potential wave of which I speak is the movie-into-play adaptation, which seems poised to supplant the movie-into-musical and jukebox musical trends of recent years. This isn’t a brand new idea, and has actually been more common on British stages than American ones, with Chariots of Fire, The Shawshank Redemption, Cool Hand Luke and The Ladykillers among the examples. But when British exemplars have crossed the Atlantic, they haven’t set Broadway afire, with Festen and Elling being blink-and-you-missed-them failures. The Graduate ran for a year, but it closed more than 12 years ago.

Misery, now on Broadway in a different version than the UK one in the early 1990s, has held its own in the face of negative notices, buoyed no doubt by the Broadway debut of Bruce Willis, but its fortunes have been declining. Breakfast at Tiffany’s and A Time To Kill both closed particularly fast.

Experts will be quick to note that in many cases, the movie-to-play adaptations are often based on an original book from which the film and play have been adapted separately. But it’s usually the movie’s success and familiarity that prompts the theatrical version. The same impulse that has driven the trend for musical adaptations of movies seems to be behind these play efforts, with movie companies eager to exploit even properties that perhaps don’t lend themselves to musicalisation.

The problem is that drama into drama efforts often aren’t transformative enough to make the new stage versions compelling. When assembling songs into a story (like Mamma Mia!) or adding songs to one (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels), there is inevitably a change in the source material. But the play into play paradigm doesn’t necessarily undergo the same kind of revision and rethinking – even though it’s essential to making great theatre. And of course without fundamental change, the inevitable comparisons are easier to make.

The best film into stage adaptations (The Lion King, Once) create something that is an altogether new way of looking at the preceding work. If film companies’ only goal is to generate more income from existing material, and to trade on our affection for it, then this incipient genre may well prove an unsatisfying one, as so many jukebox musicals and movie-to-musical adaptations have been before.

Having also produced Misery, Warner Bros’ choice of Guirgis is a heartening one, particularly if they give him room to let his own imagination and language truly create a new work for the stage, rather than a photocopy. While I never want to see them lured away for long from original work, I can only imagine what artists like Annie Baker, Anne Washburn, Stephen Karam, Suzan-Lori Parks, Mike Lew, and Tarrell Alvin McCraney could do with some classic and – better still – not-so-classic films. But only if it interests them creatively – not just for the money.

This essay originally appeared in The Stage, under a slightly different title.

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”.

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.