Now in its 20th year, the New York International Fringe Festival, better known as FringeNYC, has presented nearly 4,000 productions for five-performance runs each summer, sustaining a beehive of theatrical activity in spaces on the Lower East Side. In contrast to many fringe festivals, all of which seem to owe a debt to the progenitor, the Edinburgh Fringe, FringeNYC is a curated festival, with its 200 annual productions chosen from an array of applications. Unlike reports from Edinburgh, which have some 8,000 productions scrambling for space and audiences each summer, FringeNYC engages all of the necessary spaces and doles them out to the productions they accept, controlling the probability of the highly speculative rents that have crept into Edinburgh. FringeNYC also negotiates an agreement with Actors Equity, provides lighting and sound equipment, and covers general liability insurance.
FringeNYC’s two decade history and success made last week’s “Biz Blip” from the Dramatists Guild to its members, challenging terms regarding subsidiary rights, or ongoing revenue, within FringeNYC’s authors agreements all the more surprising. While it was not sent as a press release or public statement, the missive, issued the night before the 2016 Festival began, quickly became a topic of conversation on social media. One of the early sources for non-Guild members was Isaac Butler’s Parabasis blog, which reproduced the item in its entirety. Headed “NYC Fringe Contract: Warning,” it read, in part:
Playwrights should be aware that the standard for fringe festivals around the world (including the US Association of Fringe Festivals, the Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals, and the Edinburgh Festival, the model on which most other festivals are based) is that, as presenting entities that are not actually producing the work, festivals are not entitled to subsidiary rights from authors. The NYC Fringe, however, under Article IV-B of their contract, requires an author to pay 2% of subsidiary rights revenues earned within 7 years of the festival (after the author’s first $20,000). And the contract does not limit the scope of its definition of “subsidiary rights,” so it includes every use of the play on a worldwide basis; this is a definition broader than a LORT theater or even a commercial off-Broadway producer might be granted.
Because Arts Integrity and its director Howard Sherman have ongoing relationships with both the Dramatists Guild (having worked with them on multiple instances of theatrical censorship and having received an award from the Dramatists Legal Defense Fund) and FringeNYC and its producing artistic director Elena K. Holy (including reporting a 3-day “Fringe Binge” for Narratively.com and participating in a panel on censorship during the 2015 festival), it was incumbent that both parties have an opportunity to explain their policies and views.
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In conversation at one of the FringeNYC Lounges on the first full day of the 2016 Festival, Holy said of the Guild statement, “My initial response is that most of what they’ve said is true about our contract. However our contract incorporates a Participants Manual, which is like 64 pages, and none of that was included [in the Guild’s summary of issues]. We don’t have an attorney on staff so we wrote the participants’ agreement in 1997 and haven’t really changed it much since then. Every year, facts, figures, dates and stuff change, and technology changes, so that part gets put into the Participants Manual.”
Regarding the Dramatists Guild’s explicit comparison to the Edinburgh Festival, Holy explained, “We call ourselves presenters, but my biggest point of contention with what the Dramatists Guild said is we should be compared to Edinburgh. They see Edinburgh Festival Fringe as an industry standard, which totally makes sense, they’re the granddaddy of them all, they were 50 years old when we started, but the model is very different. They charge a similar participation fee to us and then they hand you a list of venues, and say ‘Great, go out and rent one of these venues to produce your show in.’
“Our thought was that if we did that in New York City and set loose 200 shows all looking to book the same 16 days, forget ten grand a week it would be thirty to forty grand a week, just through supply and demand. So we rent the venues, equip the venues, we staff the venues, we do marketing, we do marketing speed dates, director speed dates, town meeting – we are very hands on, and we’re invested in their production and we like to have skin in the game. I like that we are an adjudicated festival.”
Regarding the festival’s economics, Holy said, “On our 2014 990 form, we operated on 86% earned income. We’re invested in our artists. We spend between $6,000 to $7,000 on each show at FringeNYC. Part of that is we want a) for them to be invested in us and b) if they see huge success, huge unlikely success, for having done the show at FringeNYC, which does about 13,000 industry and press comps a year, then we would like for that to be recognized in order to keep our participation fees low for future artists. In our 19, almost 20, years now of doing our festival, three shows have contributed to that.” She cites Urinetown, which paid approximately $5,000 in royalties to the festival, as well as Eva Dean Dance and Dixie’s Tupperware Party.
Holy acknowledges that some applicants resist FringeNYC’s terms.
“Our 2% clause,” she notes, “when a famous person walks into our office and fills out an application form and doesn’t submit their script, or when someone’s agent calls us and says, ‘I know they’ve been accepted into the festival but we can’t sign this,’ it’s a pretty good indication that they don’t need one of our 200 slots.
“We only have 200 spots and if their career is beyond what we can offer, if their play is being produced that widely or if in the past they’ve had opportunities on Broadway, there’s really no reason for our 2500 volunteers to volunteer to help make somebody’s show happen when that somebody has ample opportunity elsewhere. So I’m not ashamed to say it scares a lot of people off and they’re probably people that shouldn’t be applying for our festival even.”
But isn’t it possible that FringeNYC is capitalizing on people’s desire to get their work seen on a New York stage, whatever the cost?
“Are they,” Holy asks, “given that it’s kicked in three times in 20 years? Given that it doesn’t kick in until after they’ve made $20,000, which actually these days means that you have to have a major motion picture made out of your play? Are they really encumbering their project? Most often what happens here is it’s not even the plays from FringeNYC that gets picked up. It’s our playwrights’ second and third plays that are what’s being produced regionally, or that’s when they get the Netflix series or the television show or whatever. So we certainly are not still around because of that $5,000 from Urinetown in 2000, or it was probably 2001 that it started.” She notes that the Fringe has received no subsidiary income from such shows as Matt and Ben and Silence! The Musical.
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Regarding the citation of other fringe festivals in the Dramatists Guild’s “Biz Blip,” David Faux, associate executive for business administration at the Guild, explained in a phone conversation, “When we speak to festivals and producers, every single one of them can say, ‘We’re special, we’re different, we do things differently from what the other people do,’ and invariably they’re telling the truth. That’s the beauty of the theatre, every festival has its unique attributes, every producer has his or her unique attributes that they bring that nobody else can bring. That’s part of the chemistry of good theatre. So the fact that they do something that other festivals don’t do, we can just look at the other festivals and say, ‘Yeah, but they do things that you don’t.’ Why would the thing that they do different have to rest on the authors’ shoulders? Why should the author be burdened with a unique attribute of the festival?”
“We look at thousands of contracts that our authors ask us to review every year,” said Faux. “When you see that many contracts you see patterns and you see where theatres and festivals are deviating.”
“It’s always germane what other people are doing in the market,” notes Faux. “With the Guild in particular we don’t tell members whether or not to sign contracts, we don’t dictate terms of contracts, but we do express our opinions when we believe a contract has substandard terms. In that way, all we have is the comparison.”
Asked to explain a very general idea of common practice regarding subsidiary rights, Faux said, “Commercial theatres certainly receive subsidiary rights. They’re taking on a lot of risk and this is how the author shares in that risk on the back end. If it works out, the success of the authors work can go back to the commercial producer or the investors.
“With not-for-profits, there’s a different structure, because they are receiving grant monies, they don’t pay taxes, they get a certain number of benefits that commercial producers don’t. So that’s why it would be unusual to see an author giving subsidiary rights of more than 5% to a not-for-profit theatre. That’s about the top when you talk about regionals, LORTs. We’ve seen a trend lately of only having subsidiary rights kick in after a significant windfall, and by significant we’re talking $40,000 to $50,000. These are general terms.
“At festivals though, you don’t see authors having to yield a revenue stream on their future revenue. That’s what’s different about this. You know what happens, a theatre festival in Wichita, Kansas will hear that NYC Fringe is getting subsidiary rights from the author. And that festival in Wichita doesn’t say, ‘Oh, it’s New York City, of course it gets something we don’t.’ That festival in Wichita says, ‘Our production values are even better than what they’re getting in New York. Our dedication, the number of hours we put in, because we have lower overhead, we can spend more time on each individual, festival has more value.’ And they may be right about that.
“But nobody thinks, ‘New York City Fringe is so much better than my festival they deserve what they get.’ They all think they have something to bring to the table that New York City Fringe doesn’t. So suddenly because one festival says, ‘I want to tax the author,’ now authors are getting taxed all across the nation. So we have to say something about it before it becomes a standard practice.”
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Addressing some smaller items in the Dramatists Guild statement, there are several points that bear clarification.
The Guild’s memo states, “It has been reported to us that the Fringe sent out its contracts to authors for this year’s festival at the end of July. If that is true, then it was a contract presented only a few weeks before the festival was scheduled to begin, after money has been raised and spent, leaving little or no time for authors and producers to assess their options in good faith.” Holy points out that all of the major terms of the agreements are included as part of the application process, so the terms should not come as a surprise, unless, in her words, “they didn’t read the information on the application before they submit.” However, Holy acknowledges the lateness of the agreements this year, saying, “I take full responsibility. We were trying to do everything electronically this year using DocuSign and I set it up so that the author’s agreement would fire when everyone had completed step one, the participants agreement and their W-9, and they haven’t all done that yet. That was a foolish way to set that up. So then I just gave up and e-mailed them a PDF.” Holy noted that this was a new process this year, replacing the previous practice of mailing paper contracts back and forth.
The Dramatists Guild cites “the standard for fringe festivals around the world (including the US Association of Fringe Festivals, the Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals, and the Edinburgh Festival, the model on which most other festivals are based).” However, Jeff Larson, responding to an online inquiry by Arts Integrity to the US Association of Fringe Festivals, commented, “The USAFF is a loose affiliation of United States Fringes and does not enforce standards on its members.”
The Guild noted, regarding the authors contract, that, “There are no obligations specified (either in the contract or the rules) for the Festival to support the show with any particular expenditure of marketing monies, nor any warrant of proper billing for the author and the play in whatever marketing and advertising the Fringe might do, and there is also no guarantee of mutually acceptable venues or performance schedules for the play, nor any discussion of the festival’s duties with regard to providing technical support.” As Holy noted above, those terms are included in the Participant Manual, an Appendix to the Participant Agreement. While the Guild concerns itself solely with the authors agreements, in the interest of transparency, FringeNYC might consider providing both the authors and participants agreements, as well as the participant manual, to the Guild so that all pertinent terms regarding production of the authors’ work are made clear.
So what of the FringeNYC terms regarding subsidiary rights, given the Guild’s characterization of prevailing practice and Holy’s acknowledgement that the terms cited were correct?
It is perhaps useful to look at the example of another New York summer festival, the New York Musical Festival, commonly referred to as NYMF, in operation since 2004 and the starting place for such musicals as Next To Normal and [title of show]. In 2010, NYMF sought to introduce a subsidiary rights clause to their agreements, saying in a statement:
Writers are the core beneficiaries of NYMF. Our goal is for NYMF shows to have future life, and for as many of our writers as possible to have their work produced again after the festival.
We specifically chose not to demand income from future third-party producers, as many other theater companies do, because doing so would encumber the project — making it less likely to be optioned or produced. Instead, we carefully structured our contract so that if — and only if — writers benefit substantially from NYMF’s support, they give back a small percentage so that we can provide similar opportunities to future generations of writers.
We think that’s fair.
Following a challenge by the Dramatists Guild to these new terms, NYMF withdrew its new terms in less than a month, writing in a statement:
The mission of NYMF is to support theatre artists, not to argue with them. We therefore withdraw our request to share in the subsidiary rights of authors participating in the 2010 Festival and will remove that section (Paragraph 5(E)) from our contract. Given the challenges of moving new musicals from the page to the stage and on to further productions, NYMF wants first and foremost to ensure that the shows we present have the unified support of the community.
While not working in the same kind of festival format, the O’Neill Theatre Center, one of the country’s oldest play development labs, also sought to introduce a subsidiary rights clause in 2006, at the start of the application process for the 2007 summer season. That effort drew a rebuke from Marsha Norman and Christopher Durang, the co-heads of the playwriting program at The Juilliard School at the time. A report from the New York Sun notes that the effort was quickly rescinded:
“We have their assurance that they will not this year, or in the future, be asking for a percentage of future royalties from the plays they accept for development,” Mr. Durang and Ms. Norman wrote. “They are looking for other sources of funding, but those monies will not come from your subsidiary rights.”
As the director of the Arts Integrity Initiative, I must step out of the third person to note that during my tenure as executive director of the O’Neill Theatre Center, from 2000 to 2003, I recall being charged by the board of directors to investigate the impact of introducing a subsidiary rights participation in authors’ future royalties. While I do not retain my notes from the time, I clearly remember my survey of prevailing practice, which consistently showed that regardless of whether I spoke with a festival, developmental, or producing organization, there was a clear dividing line for when it was appropriate to negotiate for subsidiary rights. That line was when a show was actually produced, not merely workshopped or showcased, even in cases where the work in question had been commissioned.
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In conversation, Elena Holy noted that “we call ourselves presenters,” although in the context of explaining how the role of FringeNYC differs from the Edinburgh Fringe, she noted more direct involvement with productions than many presenters might have. In its Participant Agreement, which is signed by the designated liaison for each FringeNYC show, FringeNYC identifies itself as the “Presentor,” as distinct from a Producer (to which the Participant may be equivalent, even when the Participant is the producer, author and performer all in one). It is the Participant who is taking on primary responsibility for raising money, securing rehearsal space, assembling the show and delivering it to FringeNYC – the role of a Producer – and is even subject to penalties if it is unable to do so after a certain date, though they may not have continuing right to the show themselves. While FringeNYC does provide resources to each production and makes an investment of resources in them, mores than many fringe festivals, anecdotally the costs of producing the shows themselves, especially for companies not based in New York, can be considerably more than the FringeNYC allocation, once artist compensation, physical production, and travel and housing are factored in. In addition to the 2% subsidiary rights participation that FringeNYC asks of authors, it also asks for 2% of the Participants’ future revenues as well (again, over the $20,000 threshold).
While the discussion of Presentor, Presenter, Participant, Producer and so on may seem semantic, it’s not. Subsidiary rights typically accrue to producers who mount full productions of shows, at their expense (or with funds raised by them), whether commercial or not-for-profit, although the terms may vary. In Arts Integrity’s experience and in the examples given, they are not customary for productions which do not meet that standard. As for subsidiary rights granted by authors to entities responsible for the original mounting(s) of their play, for more than 25 years, there has been discussion of the complications engendered by encumbrances on authors when works receive several early productions that each secure (or demand) subsidiary rights. Providing them to developmental productions as well could have the effect of making it too expensive to produce a work that has promised multiple payments to multiple entities, or severely impede an author’s ability to be properly paid for subsequent productions. Additionally subsidiary rights are typically activated once a production has given a certain number of performances; as few as five are typically insufficient.
For 20 years, FringeNYC has been and continues to be an invaluable asset for new, inventive, irreverent and diverse work in New York. While it can’t hope to catch up with the longevity of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, it is deserving of a comparably long life. After the frenzy of the current festival subsides, FringeNYC would be well served to reconsider its policy regarding subsidiary rights, lest it prove an increasing impediment to the depth and breadth of work seen in its venues each summer. But precisely because the Fringe by its nature attracts younger or less established artists seeking a showcase in one of the world’s greatest theatre cities, with the possibility of being seen by industry and media professionals who could advance their shows, their careers, or both, it would do well not to ask more of its authors, its artists and its producers than any other fringe, showcase, workshop, reading series or the like. While many artists have enjoyed and benefited from the Fringe and have agreed to its longstanding terms, with the subsidiary rights language ultimately being activated for the very tiniest percentage, the Fringe’s embracing spirit can set an example for its artists and producers of what they can and should expect in the future, and that begins with their contracts.
Years from now, when the musical Wicked is eventually made available for school and amateur productions, will some high school administrator declare it inappropriate? After all, among its many plot strands is the story of (spoiler alert) the manipulative Madame Morrible, a school headmistress who schemes against those in Oz who don’t conform precisely to her standards, be they green girl or anthropomorphic animal. It’s a terrible portrait of pedagogy gone wrong and surely doesn’t foster the collaborative, supportive relationships that school leaders must seek with each successive generation of students, as well as with their faculty and staff. From that perspective, it’s seditious.
I’m reminded of this element of Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holtzman’s massively popular musical as I consider the challenges to high school theatre that I’ve read about, heard about and involved myself in. Recently, I was engaged to deliver the opening keynote at the Educational Theatre Association’s (EdTA) annual conference for high school teachers. During the question and answer session that followed, one attendee asked the others how many had had shows turned down when they sought approval for them. Roughly a quarter of those in the room raised their hands. In follow-up, they were asked how many had wanted to do certain shows, but didn’t even try because they were sure they couldn’t get approval. Virtually every teacher raised their hand.
Because I don’t believe that these teachers had all been contemplating Oh! Calcutta!, I find myself wondering about their internal decision-making, their self-censorship. Surely they weren’t considering shows which would be blatantly inappropriate in a school setting, so what are those shows that they thought would be good for their students, but which they didn’t even dare raise as a possibility? That might make for an interesting survey in itself.
Of course, what’s acceptable to the powers that be at one school, in one town, may be considered problematic in another. Earlier this year in New Hampshire, Sweeney Todd was canceled at Timberlane High School (since reversed) even as another school just a few towns away readied their production of the same show. In 2012, Sonja Hansen lost her position directing shows at Loveland High in Ohio after her production of Legally Blonde was declared inappropriate, yet according to the EdTA’s annual survey, its was the fourth most popular musical in high schools nationally.
So I’m very interested in the new “Public Performance Policy” that has been put into place at the Junior/Senior High in South Williamsport PA, where a production of Spamalot has been canceled by the principal for reasons that remain unclear. The drama director Dawn Burch asserts that Principal Jesse Smith stated, in an e-mail, that the show’s gay content was a factor. Smith himself has been silent since this story broke, and while the school administration has taken exception to one element of the first report about the issue (since corrected), it has yet to produce the e-mail in question to clear things up. Two “Right To Know” requests have been filed seeking that e-mail and related documents; one of those requests is mine.
The timing of the Public Performance Policy, revealed last night at a meeting for the school board, is certainly no coincidence, coming between the initial assertions of anti-gay bias and the release of clarifying materials. As read by the school superintendent, Dr. Mark Stamm, it states:
General Guidelines: Public performances serve as a capstone project for students to showcase their dedication, determination, and talents for their peers and for their families. Performances must be age appropriate for participating students and audiences. Material that is generally considered offensive, suggestive, or demeaning based on race, religion, age, gender, or sexual orientation is not appropriate for school performances.
The first sentence of the policy, describing “showcasing dedication, determination, and talents,” is nicely affirmative – until one notices that there’s no mention of learning or growth, which would seem essential in any school activity, even at South Williamsport, where the drama program is extracurricular, and the drama director an outside contractor, not a teacher. That said, any adult working with young people in a leadership position is a teacher, accredited or not.
However, it’s worth noting that there is a mission statement for the drama program on the school’s website which admirably speaks to deeper value. It reads:
Our mission is to provide students with the opportunity to better themselves through the Arts. Whether it is onstage or backstage, in the production crew or artistic departments, theater helps all people more deeply understand our place in our modern, multicultural, globalized world.
As an aside: finding the drama information on the school website isn’t entirely logical. While there’s a section for clubs, which includes “Yearbook,” “Chemistry,” “Student Council” and “Songwriters and Musicians,” it doesn’t include “Drama.” The Athletic Program has its own site, with its own URL separate from the school district’s. But “Drama” falls under “Departments,” along with “Guidance” and “Nurse,” to which it seems wholly unrelated. How very odd to set it apart in this way.
But returning to the Public Performance Policy, the second sentence isn’t particularly troublesome, so long as it is not used as a justification to infantilize students by feeding them dramatic pabulum. But it’s the third sentence sentence where things turn tricky. While the phrase about not demeaning any parties is admirable (although in their seeming haste, they neglected disability, among other concerns), the language which begins the sentence is limiting, yet vague. “Offensive” and “suggestive” are completely subjective, presumably to be determined according to Justice Stewart’s famous phrase about what constitutes obscenity: “I’ll know it when I see it.” But no two people probably agree about what is offensive, or what is suggestive.
If this policy is meant to be general guidance for teachers (and contractors), shouldn’t it be constructed as such? Wouldn’t it be better to use affirmative language about supporting and advancing society through inclusive representations of race, religion, age, gender, or sexual orientation, instead of saying it simply won’t demean people on those grounds? As it is now, the policy seems more a declaration for the public, and a very general yardstick that teachers might be struck with should they violate its amorphous tenets. Since the school already has a practice of the principal approving the drama productions, it seems that process would presumably address content concerns, based upon reading the text and exploring productions and educational materials from other schools as aids, but in an open dialogue that would negate the need for future Right To Know inquiries. That said, I don’t favor shows going to any manner of public vote, and school boards shouldn’t decide play selection any more than they tell a coach what athletic plays to run.
I wonder, however, where the concerns were when the South Williamsport High School did Grease and Once Upon A Mattress? Certainly there are those who would find the plot points about pregnancy out of wedlock in those shows both offensive and suggestive. Grease, frankly, is rife with suggestiveness, at least as I construe it, but I don’t happen to find it offensive; but it was more than enough to cause a school in Missouri, following a 2006 production, to cancel the next show on the schedule: The Crucible. What about Urinetown, produced at the school in 2009? All that talk of toilets and body functions must have offended the sensibilities of some in South Williamsport. The world’s most famous teen suicide story, Romeo and Juliet, was staged, but I wonder whether the school provided educational programs and material to students and the public about the dangers of romanticizing exactly the sort of behavior Shakespeare depicted?
Was everyone sanguine with the following plot points, drawn from two synopses on the website of the licensing house Music Theatre International:
Soon after, attractive and seductive women appear and slowly surround him (“With You”). At first, Pippin is enjoying the romanticism, however, the mood quickly changes and the women bombard him. Pippin is pulled into numerous exotic orgies.
* * *
Audrey has forgotten her sweater, and Orin slaps her around for it…. Orin then pulls out a container of laughing gas, complete with a gas mask and puts it on himself to get high… Seymour feeds Orin’s body parts to the plant.
Obviously they passed muster, because Pippin and Little Shop of Horrors were produced at the school before Dawn Burch was hired. With this new policy, could any of the aforementioned shows be done again? Indeed, since there are – sad to say and sad as it is – still people who find homosexuality offensive, would LGBT life in any play or musical be precluded from the South Williamsport stage in deference to their reactionary sensibilities?
At the EdTA conference, I repeatedly counseled teachers to cultivate open and honest communication about their work with their department heads, their principals, even their superintendents if possible. Support for sports seems a given at our schools, but support for all of the arts, and it seems theatre in particular, must be developed over time – and started anew each time a key leadership position changes personnel.
When cancelations emerge from behind school doors into the public consciousness, locally and nationally, genuine rifts inside school communities and even entire towns are always possible, with long-lasting and detrimental effects on drama programs. Some schools, such as in Everett MA, do away with drama altogether, deciding a fair and open discussion about dramatic value is simply a nuisance – and therefore the program is as well. Yet are sports shut down when a student is seriously injured, publicly? No. In the case of football, it remains celebrated, even as data on traumatic brain injury mounts, because athletic prowess and competition is honored. It is the thought and expression of theatre that seems to be the dangerous undertaking in so many instances.
Another question I now field with some regularity is whether it’s wise to speak up publicly about these conflicts, bringing them broader attention than they might otherwise receive. My response is that it does carry risk, but if people believe in the power of theatre to not only entertain but educate, in the best interest of the participating students first and foremost, staying silent only allows repression to flourish, and for students to be consigned to the blandest, safest, time-worn work possible. And doesn’t Wicked (among countless works of literature) teach us about the dangers of people working behind the scenes, censoring, excluding, supposedly in the best interest of the community at large?
Having cited Wicked twice, let me finish with a few lyrics that hark back to L. Frank Baum’s Oz stories. I think this pair of couplets, devised by master satirist Tom Lehrer almost 50 years ago, speak simply and directly to slippery words like “offensive” and “suggestive.”
When correctly viewed
Everything is lewd,
I could tell you things about Peter Pan
And the Wizard of Oz, there’s a dirty old man.
When I saw it for the first time last week, I was really struck by the poster for the West End debut of the musical Urinetown. Why? Because it didn’t look like a theatre poster. It looked like a movie poster.
In point of fact, it looked to a certain degree like the poster for Star Trek: Into Darkness, which owed a debt to the poster for The Dark Knight Rises. Many movie posters are endlessly iterative and imitative, as they want to subtly remind you of other successful films in the same genre. I give points to Urinetown UK for evoking dark futures with humanity under threat – completely consistent with the world conjured in the show. Equally apt, it counters the darkness by placing a young attractive couple, reaching for a drop of water, at the center of a spaghetti-tangle of (empty) pipes, and they added a tagline: “A drop of hope can change the world.”
It has taken almost a decade since Urinetown’s Broadway closing for it to reach England, so the opportunity to capitalize on Broadway buzz has long since faded, That certainly suggests one reason why the graphic bears no relationship to the Broadway marketing material, unlike The Producers, The Book of Mormon, Jersey Boys and so many other US to UK transfers. That works in two directions as well, since Mamma Mia! and Matilda ads look the same in both countries, having started in London.
As I pondered the Urinetown UK art, it struck me that one reason the vast majority of theatre ad design looks so different from movie ad design is that while a movie is trying to simply drive sales and pique interest, theatre designs, more often than not, are trying to build a brand. If theatre images emphasize a star, they could be undermining a long run, since eventually stars leave; movies have no such problem. Think of the image of Les Mis’ Cosette: as the show ran and ran, the image became so ubiquitous that they could run ads without the show’s title and you would know what the ad was for. Producer Cameron Mackintosh’s team even could play with the image, running variations on Cosette that honored holidays or welcomed other shows to Broadway. And it was hardly the only show to do that: think of the Phantom’s mask, the eyes of Cats, the Chagall-esque Fiddler on the Roof, Larry Kert running after Carol Lawrence for West Side Story (though that would eventually be supplanted by Saul Bass’ fire escape logo for the film). Colleges, high schools and community theatres use knock-offs of these designs for years and years.
As I’ve said, it’s the lapse in time that has afforded Urinetown UK the chance to go in another direction, since given the relative age of the show, it doesn’t undermine a worldwide branding effort. The other reason they have that opportunity: in my opinion, the original Urinetown graphic never became iconic. Do you remember it? Perhaps only vaguely, and I suggest that’s because it was only a type treatment, as opposed to an image, a true logo, a brand.
To digress for a moment: when I worked at Hartford Stage, one of my responsibilities was to work with a range of local designers to secure pro bono graphic designs for each of our shows. In addition to keeping expenses down, it insured that each show would have its own feel and look, with the ads held together by a very solid, strong and consistently utilized company logo. In this process, the artistic director had only one edict – there must be some representation of the human in every graphic. He believed that people are at the center of theatre, that audiences come to watch people on stage, and so the human element – sometimes nothing more than an eye or a hand – was a reminder of the unique nature of live theatre. In hindsight, thinking back over 50 shows, I believe he was right and I’ve advocated for this approach ever since. To be fair, not every design was perfect, and some worked better as art than as marketing, but the best remain those that followed the artistic director’s dictum. If you think of great theatre graphics, I’d be willing to bet that you’ll find the majority do so as well. That’s why, at least in my estimation, there’s not a graphic image from the Broadway Urinetown that lingers in memory.
But turning back to Urinetown UK, as I have often this week, I continue to applaud the complexity and sophistication of its imagery, which come to think of it also recalls that used for Terry Gilliam’s film Brazil. I was so intrigued, that I took the time to watch a three-minute promo video for the show and, to be honest, it ended up showing me what I think is missing from the Urinetown campaign. A barrage of words flew at me from a variety of speakers, all describing the experience of the show: epic, wackadoo, eco-friendly, apocalyptic, daring, exciting, entertainment, political, adventurous and satirical wit. Director Jamie Lloyd said he hoped it would advance “conversations about climate change, environmental disaster, the moral responsibility of big business.”
But looking at the poster and watching this video, I realized that something has been, if not forgotten, downplayed for this Urinetown, at least as I know the show.
It’s very, very funny. I laughed a lot.
Not only that, it is especially funny to those who know and love musicals, since it’s “satirical wit” is focused, in part, on previous, iconic musicals.
Now if it is Lloyd’s intention to lean heavily on the show’s Brechtian overtones and downplay the humor, then you can probably ignore everything from here on in. But if Urinetown UK– with all of its topical, political and social overtones – is to retain its irreverent take on both a world without water and its stance as a love letter to musical comedy, then I’d urge the powers that be to tweak the tone of their rhetoric and their imagery, lest they mislead their potential audience – and those who buy. Remember, you’re fighting a title that, for some, carries a whiff of something distasteful, even while it becomes a memorable point of distinction from most other musical theatre.
I’ve heard it said many times that if a show is a hit, its logo – whatever it is – looks brilliant. And perhaps in the long run, if there is in the long run, that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. But when you’re trying to set expectations and lure audiences, every communication is freighted with meaning (it can even effect the advance perception of critics who were previously unfamiliar with the material), and what I remember most of Urinetown was having a darned good time.
During the 2012/13 Broadway season, a total of nine new musicals appeared on Broadway (hitting the average annual level of recent years). Of those nine, only four are still running. As I write, there are seven new musicals playing Off-Broadway, with an eighth due in a few weeks; there may well be others. What does it tell us when 12 months of Broadway yields just about as much new musical material as we find Off-Broadway in only a couple of months?
To be fair, many of the Off-Broadway musicals are limited runs in the seasons of subsidised companies, and two are commercial transfers from such companies from earlier this year. Only one will play in a theatre which is comparable in size to Broadway venues, and in that case it’s under the auspices of Shakespeare in the Park; most are in spaces where one week of performances equals the capacity of one Broadway performance. A transferred Off-Broadway hit can easily become a Broadway casualty given the commercial demands of larger theatres and higher costs.
Certainly, hit Off-Broadway musicals are hardly new; one need only look to The Fantasticks, You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown, Godspell and Little Shop of Horrors for precursors, and it’s unlikely the current new shows will ever attain the longevity of those icons. But in recent years, the standard model has tended much more towards the Off-Broadway to Broadway transfer for success, as evidenced by shows ranging from Rent to Avenue Q to The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Even shows that began in rudimentary stagings at the New York International Fringe Festival and the New York Musical Theatre Festival have fought their way to Broadway, including Urinetown and Next to Normal.
Surveying the variety of material, it would appear that the modest scale of Off-Broadway allows for a greater range of topics and styles than the Great White Way, from the sung through pop opera of Dave Malloy’s Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 (based on a portion of War and Peace, and performed in a tent) to David Byrne and Fatboy Slim’s Imelda Marcos disco bio Here Lies Love. There’s one musical that is drawn from a film (Far From Heaven) and two with their roots in Shakespeare (Venice, after Othello, and Love’s Labour’s Lost). Several adopt variations on an environmental, break-the-proscenium approach (Here Lies Love, Murder Ballad and Great Comet). None model themselves on the formula of the classic American musical.
I suspect that no one is getting rich off of these productions, while the backers of Kinky Boots, Matilda and Motown on Broadway will surely do quite well over time. For these Off- Broadway musicals to become true earners for all involved, they will either have to manage sustained runs under a commercial model, on Broadway or Off, or spawn productions across the country and abroad. But even if that doesn’t come to pass, what they are doing is providing a superb showcase for predominantly new talent and unexpected subjects; they are bolstering the musical repertory at a pace at least equal to Broadway and building the reputations of artists.
This shouldn’t suggest that musical success Off-Broadway is a breeze, and it’s worth noting that many of these shows are only mounted with significant donor underwriting or “enhancement” from producers who hope the property will turn out to be Broadway-worthy. But with different scale and different expectations, Off-Broadway musicals may well be supplanting Broadway in advancing the form.
Hindsight doesn’t benefit anyone, but it is hard to resist wondering whether the short-lived Hands on a Hardbody might have fared better at director Neil Pepe’s Atlantic Theatre Company instead of in a Broadway theatre. Ironically, that was the birthplace of Spring Awakening, a musical that had struggled through a number of developmental productions over the years only to find praise, first Off- Broadway, then on.
There’s an old saying that one can’t make a living on Broadway, but can make a killing. It’s not easy to make a living off of Off-Broadway musicals either, but you can build a career.
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Howard Sherman.