I keep expecting to get jaded. Even though the actuarial tables tell me that I’m more than halfway through my life, I can still be a teenaged drama club kid, over and over again, with only the slightest provocation. Yesterday was one of those days.

Like so many in “the business,” I started out as a performer in my high school shows, both plays and musicals. But as practical considerations like finances and family, as well as negligible talent, took hold, I shifted over to administration, allowing me to be close to what I loved, but without the vagaries of an artist’s life. I have never forgotten how much I enjoyed performing, but I moderated any dreams in that regard.

When I met high school acquaintances over the years who expressed surprise that I wasn’t still on stage, I’d preempt the conversation by saying I’d be happy just to sit in a jury box on an episode of Law And Order. I was as surprised as anyone when the universe – and one very generous person on Twitter – listened, and I landed a small speaking role on Law And Order: Special Victims Unit two years ago. I still can’t believe it.

As for standing on a Broadway stage, singing? I had moderated that to a lingering desire to one day write the liner notes for a cast recording, something more within my wheelhouse. (I came very close about nine years ago, for a Tony-winning show, but it was not to be.) I am, for reasons too mundane and absurd to mention, thanked in the liner notes of the reissue of The Golden Apple,  but that doesn’t count.

So when I read last week of a recording session that would include the public on a track on the cast album of the Pippin revival, my heart leapt. I filled out forms online; I placed a few calls to friends in the industry. My not-so-submerged fanboy, my long suppressed performer, went into overdrive. This was my chance to sing on a Broadway cast recording. I had to do it. It wasn’t quite being in a Broadway show, but it was the next best thing.

Mind you, I would be doing my vocalizing with some 250 strangers; I wouldn’t get my name on the recording; royalties or even payment wasn’t in the cards. Only those I told about it would even know I was there. But I would know.

Whether it was fate or phoning, I got my e-mail notice, my golden ticket, that I was “in.” Yesterday, I lined up with what turned out to be more like 500 or 600 others to play the role of “audience” on the Pippin track “No Time At All.” As we filled the auditorium at the School for Ethical Culture on New York’s Upper West Side, I took note of the surroundings, which clearly are that of a church. I considered the phrase painted above the stage/altar: “The place where people meet to seek the highest is holy ground.” I found it rather apt, in my own secular interpretation, given the degree of devotion many have to musical theatre.

I was a mix of seasoned pro and giddy youth. I said hello to some of the journalists in attendance; I greeted a Twitter pal who had gotten in by volunteering to guard one of the microphone stands near an entryway; I chatted with Kurt Deutsch, whose Ghostlight Records will be releasing the cast album; I sat with my friend Bill Rosenfield, who during his days as head of A&R for RCA/BMG was responsible for countless cast recordings (and for filling out my CD collection with those discs). At one point, Kurt’s wife joined us in the pew where I was seated, so suddenly I was singing with the tremendously talented Sherie Rene Scott, only two people separating us. The radio host, author and accomplished musical director Seth Rudetsky was seated directly in front of me; I feared he might turn at any moment and cast me out as a poseur.

But when the music team came out, I was just one voice in a big chorus, albeit one which knew the song before the first note was played. Imagine my surprise when, after being drilled on diction and rhythm, we were then taught harmony lines. I had not thought of myself as a “baritone” since high school chorus, nor had I attempted harmony in public in some 30 years. I was quickly reminded of my inability to remember anything but a melody line unless others around me are singing “my” line; scary flashbacks to my poor efforts at barbershop harmonizing ensued. Although we had been seated as we learned our parts, we were given the direction, “Let us stand,” as in worship and as in chorus rehearsals decades ago. I was surprised by the power of those three words.

Pippin’s composer/lyricist Stephen Schwartz was onstage for the session, and he was genuinely listening and tweaking what we did; Andrea Martin, although her vocal track had already been laid down in a studio, was there to egg us on. I was pleased to see them, but I know them both casually, so there wasn’t the sudden rush from being in the presence of celebrity. When Andrea first came out, she spied me and flashed a big grin and a tiny wave of recognition; I felt even more connected, more than just someone whose name got drawn along with so many others.  Ah, a performer’s ego.

But the truest thrill was when every member of the assembled horde lifted their voices, including mine, in song. I had forgotten what it was like to sing in a group, in harmony, the magical mingling of one’s self with others in music, the unique vibration of the vocal cords and emotion that music can produce. Yes, a shotgun microphone was only a few feet away, but it was forgotten in the sheer happiness of being encouraged to sing full out, without embarrassment, on a tune that is undoubtedly one of the most effective and spirited earworms of the Broadway repertoire.

I’d still like to write some liner notes on day, but even if that doesn’t come to pass, I know that embedded in the Pippin cast recording is little old me, happily singing away for present and future generations of musical theatre fans. I am preposterously happy at the thought of being an indistinguishable footnote and at what is now already a memory of a magical hour.

I leave you with these random thoughts:

Thank you to every person at Pippin who made “my debut” possible.

I’ll be happy to sign your Pippin CD when it comes out (kidding, kidding).

Sing out Louise, whenever and wherever you can.

Not a musical.

Let’s be honest.  If you didn’t follow documentary filmmaking or live and die by theatre news, Hands on a Hardbody would sound like something that might play late at night on Cinemax. Those of a certain age might think it was a belated sequel to the 1984 teen sexploitation comedy Hardbodies (think Porky’s, with less class). But the fact is, that title was very likely a deterrent to audiences, even with “a new musical” appended to it, which is seemingly de rigeur these days, despite having been brilliantly parodied years ago by The Musical of Musicals (The Musical!).

It’s not my habit to write critiques of shows, and I’m not about to break that practice, but with Hands on a Hardbody now closed, I feel a bit freer to engage in analysis of the show’s marketing. In my outsider assessment, it didn’t manage to sufficiently surmount the challenges inherent in the show, attested to by the consistently low grosses throughout previews and the four weeks of the regular run. Hardbody built up no head of steam, no significant name recognition and apparently no advance sales, despite the usual potpourri of discounts. Frankly, if it came up in any of my discussions, I couldn’t make it sound inherently appealing either.

“Hands on a Hardbody,” a new musical

If, as some suggest, the theatergoing audience is finite, and fragmented by the welter of openings each spring, then Hardbody was starting at a disadvantage. Though it was based on a well-received documentary, it didn’t come with name recognition, since the film is 17 years old and grossed less than a half-million dollars; though its creative credentials were impressive, how many new musicals are sold solely on the strength of their writing team nowadays; it had a talented cast with several names well-known to theatre audiences (particularly Keith Carradine and Hunter Foster), but there was no Tom Hanks, Bette Midler or Alec Baldwin to tap into the celebrity buzz machine.

Mind you, I don’t mention the foregoing to say that they are absolute necessities for Broadway success. How many people really knew Once the movie before the show opened (with the benefit of starting at New York Theatre Workshop)? Were Jonathan Groff and Lea Michele big names before Spring Awakening? Who on earth was Lin-Manuel Miranda or Quiara Alegria Hudes in the public imagination before In The Heights?

This could be looked at as Monday morning quarterbacking, but the title must have suggested a challenge to the creative and producing teams up front. There was a change made from the documentary name, merging what had been “Hard Body” into “Hardbody.” Perhaps this means something to those who are truck aficionados, but in the steep canyons of New York (and let’s remember that new Broadway shows don’t often reach the tourist market right away), I fear this ultrafine distinction was lost.

Going back to my earlier comparison to late-night cable, I’m not sure whether “hard body” or “hardbody” is an important distinction; I also wonder about some of the glistening bodybuilders who beckon from magazine covers on the newsstand when those words are deployed. In any event, the title didn’t bring any marketing recognition to the table; perhaps it deserved something that would have moved us into the realm of the mythic, rather than grounding us, enigmatically, in the truck at the center of the show. Sometimes, being too loyal to source material can be counterproductive.

TV ads I saw seemed to be on the right track, emphasizing the spirit of competition. To be sure, playing up to TV’s countless reality contests wasn’t a bad strategy. I just wonder whether they went far enough, or – once again – were clear enough. You could (pardon the expression) drive a truck through the space between winning a motor vehicle and a better life. The campaign needed to express something between a pickup with a foreign brand name and a nebulous American dream. Unfortunately, few shows could have mounted the series of ads that might have prompted audiences to feel they had a stake too.

Poster or infographic?

Where I really worried for the show was in its big three-sheet in Shubert Alley, long considered prime display space for Broadway shows, much sought after and fought over. I’ve reproduced it here so you can see exactly how eye-catching it wasn’t. Frankly, it could be compared to everything from a flow chart to a child’s board game to assembly instructions, and it required a close read for it to register at all. In trying to do everything, it did almost nothing, and even marred by amateur photography here, it sure remains one of the most confusing images I’ve ever seen put to use in advertising a Broadway show, or any form of entertainment, for that matter. If this was also used in print ads I can’t say, having shifted to almost exclusively digital readership; it might have worked if you were holding it in your hands, but it still would have been quite the jumble compared to the simplicity of The Phantom’s mask or the Jersey Boys in lights.

You can debate the pros and cons of the show among yourselves, but the failure for Hardbody to gain even initial traction is evidence of a communications strategy that couldn’t pump up any meaningful interest, leaving the show in the hands of the critics and an uninformed base of ticket buyers at the most Darwinian time of the year. Ironically, in preparing this piece, I found the cover of a home video release of the documentary and it had a rather intriguing tagline that might have been provocative and helpful to the show: “You lose the contest when you lose your mind.” Turned around so that it didn’t harp on losing (negatives are, funny enough, not positive in advertising), there was still something there: a sense of mental toughness, of endurance, even of the potential for madness. And if reality TV has taught us nothing, those are qualities people like to watch.

So I mourn the closing of the possibly misunderstood Hands On A Hardbody both because it was a show that dared to not fit some standard Broadway formula and because its closing probably scared producers and investors for future projects that don’t fit the mold. I hope that’s not the case.

But I’ve found a great new opening night gift for the brave souls who dare to take on Broadway with new material in particular: “You lose the contest when you lose your mind.”

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?

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.

*   *   *

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.

To begin, an exercise. Below you’ll see four groups of shows, labeled A through D. Groups A and B have a common factor, as do groups C and D. Take a moment to see whether you spot the common ground. Now imagine the Jeopardy theme playing.

Group A: Grey Gardens, Hairspray, Once, Passion, The Producers, Nine, The Light in the Piazza

Group B: Sweet Smell of Success, Big, Nick and Nora, Carrie, The Red Shoes, Footloose

Group C: Once, Jersey Boys, Movin’ Out, Contact, Fosse, Crazy for You, Ain’t Misbehavin’

Group D: Good Vibrations, Never Gonna Dance, Saturday Night Fever, Swinging on a Star, Buddy, The Look of Love

Did you get it? A and B are both lists of musicals based on movies, groups C and D are lists of musicals which came to Broadway with scores that had originally been written for other media.

If you are a fan of Broadway musicals, odds are you’d be quick to declare your affinity, or at least respect, for the shows in Groups A and C, while I imagine you’re unlikely to come out with passionate statements about the artistry of the shows in Groups B and D. Although not shown above, I also suspect that my Group E would meet with general favor – Next to Normal, The 25^th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Urinetown, Book of Mormon, In The Heights – namely, the supposedly extinct, wholly original musical.

Why am I playing this parlor game? It’s because I hear certain assumptions about musicals, and particularly Broadway musicals, all the time and they tend to be generalizations, based on recent and often selective memory. So I set out to look at whether Broadway is being overrun by musicals based on movies, or jukebox musicals, thinking I’d look at the past 10 or 15 years, but that turned into 20, then 25, and finally I ended up studying all of the new musicals to play Broadway since the 1975-76 season.

Why 75-76? Because just as Oklahoma! was seen as a watershed in the development of musical theatre, I feel I can argue that the next (and to date, perhaps only other) watershed musical was A Chorus Line. While a look all the way back to the season of Oklahoma! might be edifying, both Broadway and society in general have changed radically in that time; without undertaking a master’s thesis (or without an intern to wrangle data for me), this more modern era seemed manageable.

To get right to the first headline: yes, there are more musicals based on movies than there used to be; there were four this year and five last year. The year A Chorus Line debuted, there wasn’t a single movie-based musical, so that might send you running to proclaim how great things used to be. In fact, you’d be further buoyed when I told you that season saw musicals based on classic Greek literature, Shakespeare and U.S. and world history. But I’d deflate you when I told you those shows were the major flops Home Sweet Homer, Rockabye Hamlet, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and Rex. A pedigreed source isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be.

What we did see more of back in the 70s were musicals based on books or plays which had also been made into movies, although the source cited for the musical was usually the original material; some examples of this are Chicago (a play, later the film Roxie Hart),  The Grand Tour (the play Jacobowsky and the Colonel, later the Danny Kaye film Me and the Colonel), and Sarava (the book and film Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands).  But what’s worth noting as well is that these weren’t books or films which were hugely well known and, in those pre-VCR days, they weren’t easily found either.  For audiences and critics alike, they may have felt fairly new overall, successful source or not.

Though most think it of as a recent phenomenon, the jukebox musical was also already prevalent. Existing musical materials were frequently drafted into Broadway duty, although the early tendency was to do so in the form of a revue (Ain’t Misbehavin’, Eubie); in 79-80, a Cole Porter score was grafted (albeit unsuccessfully) onto Philip Barry’s Holiday as Happy New Year. In this era, perhaps the first major book-based jukebox musical was My One and Only, a troubled production that came out on top with a Gershwin score, following efforts by young avant-gardist Peter Sellars to crossbreed the songs with a Gorky play.

Sources in the 80s ranged from novels to comic books to plays to original stories to U.S. history, and movie-based musicals typically had literary antecedents, such as La Cage aux Folles and Carrie. The first shows I spotted in my sample that were based on original screenplays were from the 78-79 season: King of Hearts and Ballroom, the latter from a TV movie (although musical from movies certainly predated that; Promises Promises, from Billy Wilder’s The Apartment, is merely one prior example).  Because films may also have their own source material, it’s sometimes hard to tease out when the movie in musical pattern really took hold (or if it was in fact something new), but the mid 90s seem to be a point at which they became more persistently present.

Yet now I’ll venture my first strong opinion on this, which is that, as Group A up at the top reveals, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with musicals based on movies. When it is done with enough craft, with care and talent, no one begrudges a show its origins, although there is a tendency to now judge the source even before the show is produced. It would also appear that, in many cases, the more successful examples of this genre are shows drawn from lesser-known films; the rush to translate recent hit films hasn’t necessarily meant greater box office success. Barreling ahead, I’ll say that while I think we need original scores lest the craft of musical theatre songwriting be lost, there have been terrifically entertaining and creative shows based on music cobbled together from other sources, whether it be earlier musicals, pop radio or a songwriter’s catalogue. Again, the only question is whether it’s done artfully.

My rather wide spreadsheet built for this overview ended up showing me some things I did not expect, which play into our perception of Broadway being “overrun” with jukebox musicals and musicals based on movies. By looking at Broadway seasons, shorn of all plays (new and classic), concert bookings (which used to be quite frequent) and revivals, an interesting picture of new musicals in the post-Chorus Line age emerges. A rather small picture.

Based on my research, there were 322 new musicals on Broadway in the past 37 years – which works out to an average of nearly nine a year. That is a startlingly small number when you consider that musical theatre is considered to be one of the major art forms that is innately American, and Broadway, whether we like it or not, remains the prime showcase for that work and the engine for its economic success.  Yes, my time period covered the dark days of the eighties and early 90s, when Times Square was supposedly at its lowest. That didn’t keep critical and popular successes from arriving: A Chorus Line, Sweeney Todd, Dreamgirls, Big River, Phantom of the Opera, Miss Saigon, The Secret Garden, Tommy and more. What was happening was that fewer new shows were opening – coming off an already small number.

We’re not talking about a vast gap; in the late 70s, an average of 12 new shows opened each season, as already mentioned, the 37-year average is 9 (8.7 exactly). There were some truly dark years, but they’re not so long ago: 94-95 (2 new musicals), 2000-01 (five) and 01-02 (six).  As the number of new shows dropped, the scales tipped even more disproportionately to movie-based and jukebox musicals. But there’s no clear pattern which demonstrates these type of shows having usurped or corrupted Broadway; without them, the number of musicals might be even lower. There simply aren’t other musicals being produced to fill out the roster.

It is true that without celebrities, and there are few bankable musical stars these days, producers are looking for titles or music with built in marketing pull, because when you’re raising $10 or $12 million for one show, you’re looking to mitigate risk. That said, look at my B and D lists and you know that there’s no sure thing. Yet that doesn’t stop people from trying to maximize potential, and that same rationale speaks to the affinity for revivals as well (although I’ve not studied whether there’s been a commensurate increase in musical revivals to balance out the loss of new shows). I will note that Broadway did once seem even more musical, as the 70s and 80s saw a plethora of short-run concerts, with a roster of performers that resembled those of Vegas showrooms, including Engelbert Humperdinck, Bing Crosby, Shirley Bassey, Peter Allen, and Patti LaBelle, as well as the occasional dance company, ice show (!) and three editions of Oba Oba.

The success of the major long-running shows, ushered in by A Chorus Line, has also served to hold down the potential for new musicals on Broadway, marketing and financing aside. With shows settling in for 10, 15, 20 year runs, there simply aren’t enough of the big musical houses available, and so fewer shows get on. There are only 40 Broadway theatres, and many are too small to sensibly house a musical. The Broadway musical is a victim of its present day success and a finite amount of space.

Although I can now speak only anecdotally, I daresay there are more people than ever studying and writing new musicals. In contrast to the golden age of the 40s and 50s, when the skill of writing musicals was learned on the job or through mentorships, we now have undergraduate and graduate programs in musical theatre; the regional theatre network, founded primarily to mount plays, has discovered the artistic and economic appeal of musicals; and there are countless developmental opportunities under a variety of auspices. Yet with rare exceptions, truly successful musicals are made on Broadway, the opportunities there have diminished, and every hit new musical suppresses the potential for other shows for years at a time. The musical development complex runs counterintuitively to the chances for major production.

Musicals made from movies will not kill the American musical, as they only succeed when they’re done well. Jukebox musicals will not eliminate new musical scores, because only the shrewdest interpolations yield a successful show. What will keep the American musical at low ebb is: a) a risk-averse mindset among some producers that opts for the familiar over the unknown, despite the great success in the recent past of wholly original work, b) the almost single-minded focus on Broadway as the locus of all musical success when it is only the most lucrative market for musicals; c) the inability of Broadway to provide sufficient berths for a higher number of new musicals annually; and d) the perpetual generation of more and more musical writers into a field that can encourage many of them, but sustain few.  We need new avenues for the success of musicals that don’t require passing through Times Square and we need to eradicate the notion of Broadway and New York as the sole arbiter of a musical’s success. There are organizations attempting to do this, but the iconic nature of Broadway and its potentially considerable rewards still dominate.

The problem, however, is not Broadway; Broadway is an expensive and risky though potent option. The problem is that we have made Broadway the only hope. But we can’t. The numbers don’t lie: 8.5 new musicals a year, and fewer of those that run, is not enough to be the flagship for and to sustain an entire field of creative endeavor.

*    *    *    *

Notes on process: Counts were based on information from Theatre World and Playbill Vault, both invaluable, but not completely consistent on records and which theatres were indeed Broadway houses, especially in the early years covered. Whenever possible, I erred on the side of inclusion, but someone else might count slightly differently depending upon their methodology and judgment.  I considered new musicals to be newly constructed shows, using both new and existing scores, which could reasonably considered to be musical theatre; song revues like Ain’t Misbehavin’ or Swing I considered new musicals, while something like Tango Argentino or solo concerts, even when by impeccable artists such as Barbara Cook, were ruled out. I did not follow the Tony designations for “special theatrical events” during the decade that award existed, but judged each show on its own merits consistent with what I said previously. I would be the first to say don’t take my 309 count as written-in-stone gospel, but I’m confident that the trends and averages will hold up to scrutiny.

Update July 10: In preparing a follow-up to this piece, I re-reviewed the seasons in question using only the Playbill Vault for consistency’s sake. The post as it now appears reflects adjustments in numbers based upon that re-review, which reflect marginal changes which but do, as expected, maintain the ratios as originally determined.

I may take exception from time to time with some of what Ken Davenport has to say on his “Producer’s Perspective” blog, but he and I have somewhat similarly evangelical approaches to the stage and are therefore in pursuit of common goals. He is more commercially minded than I am, but we have come up in the business in different ways, and ply our trade in different areas;  his enthusiastic drumbeating for tonight’s premiere of Smash as a vehicle for Broadway vitality should come as no surprise to anyone.  In a blog post of just 185 words, he exhorts his readers that they must watch tonight’s broadcast because of what it will mean for Broadway – and mentions Broadway nine times. Just in case we missed it.

I fully intend to watch Smash tonight at 10 pm and I hope to enjoy it; I casually know lots of people involved and I wish them only the very best. While I’ve read some pieces that suggest I may find some issues (notably those raised by Rob Weinert-Kendt at The Wicked Stage, Frank Rizzo of The Hartford Courant and Kevin Fallon in The Atlantic), I will make up my own mind. I should point out that I downloaded the first episode several weeks ago, but haven’t watched it like seemingly everyone else I communicate with online; I want to see it in its hi-def glory tonight at 10, like in my youth when TV couldn’t be time-shifted.

Tomorrow by late morning, the overnight ratings will tell us if Smash had a successful first night, but no matter what’s reported, it won’t be a definitive referendum on the show. In light of the unending promotional build up, they could show grainy YouTube videos of high school musicals on NBC tonight at 10 and probably get a decent audience share; only time will tell if the audience sustains as the promotional barrage recedes. Anything less than huge numbers will set off predictions of the show’s imminent demise, but with much of the 15-week season one already in the can, NBC is likely to give the show time to find its audience, so once again, time will tell.

There’s no question that Smash can have a salubrious effect on Broadway if it succeeds, although I wonder whether there’s been a true cause-and-effect between Glee and participation in show choirs and drama clubs. I pray that, along the way, Smash doesn’t bash Off-Broadway and regional theatre in an effort to idolize the Great White Way, because countless theatre professionals do superb and varied work without setting foot on Broadway or even in New York, work that is enjoyed by and meaningful to audiences nationally. I hope that Smash’s truthful insights from its creative staff of theatre pros outweigh its dramatic license; after all, the only U.S. TV series to grapple with theatre recently were the hokey “reality” competitions to cast a replacement for Legally Blonde and the leads in the most recent revival of Grease (at least the latter launched the luminous Laura Osnes). I’m sure Smash can do better. I dream that Smash aspires to the giddy, funny and moving heights of Slings and Arrows, to this date the best television series ever about theatre, IMHO.

But must you watch Smash tonight? No. It’s not your job to be a cog in the marketing machinery of NBC, Broadway or anyone else for that matter. Frankly, if you’re reading Ken Davenport’s blog or mine, you’re already part of the core group that is taken as a given in the show’s viewership (which caused Entertainment Weekly’s Ken Tucker, demonstrating that magazine’s usual respect for the stage, to observe that “the Broadway-show audience, if every ticket-holder tuned in, would probably fit into the bodice of The Voice‘s Christina Aguilera”), so you’re not going to make the difference. What will truly matter is whether the storytelling, the time slot, the marketing and all the other variables that matter on television align with the mass audience required to make a successful TV show.

Watch Smash. Don’t watch Smash. Watch Castle. Read a book. Go out with friends. Get to bed early post-Super Bowl. See a live performance. Do whatever you like at 10 tonight. Perhaps Smash will become “appointment viewing.” But god forbid it’s seen as “assignment viewing.” That’s the fastest way to take the fun out of anything. And I’m really hoping that Smash is a lot of fun, instead of just good for business.

While I am given to pontificating, I generally avoid prognosticating. However, I am prepared to make a prediction. I suspect many of you will agree with me. Here goes: I don’t think, at whatever point in the distant future it is released for stock and amateur stagings, that The Book of Mormon will see many high school productions. It may do quite well at the college level, but high school? Nope.

The reason is obvious (to me). Namely, that Mormon’s liberal use of profanity is unlikely to be acceptable in an high school setting unless commonly accepted public discourse devolves rapidly in the decades to come. Even with significant rewrites, it’s highly unlikely that “the best musical of this century” (to quote Ben Brantley of the Times) will be part of the school repertoire. ‘So what?,’ you ask. ‘It will have made a pile of money, and while that market is lucrative, it’s not about to make or break the show’s extraordinary success.’ True, and I cite Mormon primarily for the evident absurdity of the fundamental question.

Why do I even bring this up? Because having seen every new musical on Broadway for the past eight years, I find myself musing on the shows I did in high school, the shows being done in schools today and what may be done in the future. Guess what? Some of the most popular high school shows today are shows I did: Bye Bye Birdie, You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown and The Music Man. Others date back to that time (and before), but weren’t done by my school: Grease, Guys and Dolls and Once Upon a Mattress. This is not to say that newer shows aren’t popular: Seussical, Beauty and the Beast, Thoroughly Modern Millie and Hairspray regularly rank among the 10 most produced high school musicals, but the presence and persistence of 50 and 60 year old shows is noteworthy. (For data, I am relying on the annual survey by the Educational Theatre Association, parent of the International Thespian Society, since some of the licensing houses do not release rankings or specific numbers for comparison of the shows they represent.)

Some of you might be encouraged by the fact that there aren’t a lot of newer musicals on the list. ‘Musicals have become more challenging,’ you might say; ‘isn’t it wonderful that pieces like Grey Gardens and The Light in the Piazza have been given life and who would want to see them performed by 16-year-olds’? On one level, I agree. The expansion of the range of musical theatre beyond “musical comedy” is essential and it does not allow for every major musical hit to be right for high schools, the way Fiddler on the Roof and The Pajama Game once were.

Even today’s shows closest to classic musical comedies would have to be adjusted for high school productions, if the authors permit it. Should a teenaged girl be encouraged to sing “If You’ve Got It, Flaunt It,” to fellow students and parents? Would teens get the satire of, “You won’t succeed on Broadway if you don’t have any Jews”? Shows with casts made up predominantly of young people, like Spring Awakening and American Idiot, are too challenging in their content for all but the most open-minded schools, so a youthful cast does not denote that the show is therefore “age-appropriate.”

I am no prude (although I told my then 16-year-old niece, when asked, that her mother needed to take her to see Spring Awakening during its Broadway run; I would have been too uncomfortable). But the fact is that schools, fearing parental and community backlash, are forced to protect themselves and that sends them running for the cover of The Wizard of Oz (another high school perennial, believe it or not). They cannot afford to offend and there are copious sensitivities: earlier this year a Pennsylvania high school had to cancel a production of Kismet due to its favorable portrayal of Muslim characters. The list of popular plays, by the way, proves even more cautious and antique, with Our Town and The Crucible (admittedly great plays), as well as You Can’t Take It With You and Arsenic and Old Lace in the Top 10 for each of the past three years; I wrote a year ago of a school that was almost prevented from doing a play by August Wilson.

Political and social pressures narrow the field of what can be done in high schools today. Is that the sole reason why hit musicals and musicals that teens can perform are diverging?

As I acknowledge, there’s the expansion of the “musical” umbrella, which benefits artists and audiences alike, so it’s counterproductive to the art form to argue against that material. But there is the incursion of profanity and sexual content in certain cases on what are, essentially, stories with classic structure and messages (Avenue Q, anyone? “My Unfortunate Erection” from Spelling Bee?). Has high-profile musical theatre become like network television, pushing the boundaries to keep up with, or mimic, what’s available on pay cable or at the movies? Will that create an ever-increasing gap between our most popular musicals and what young people can undertake?

Subject and language are not the only barriers (and I should acknowledge that artists and licensing houses often prepare “school versions” so as not to miss this market, but some shows may be rendered impotent by cuts). We also face the musicals which are so bent on spectacle that they limit what many high schools can tackle; while stripping down certain shows may reveal their core strengths in some cases (I would love to see a simple Lion King or less opulent Miss Saigon), there are also shows which demand spectacle (say the magic tricks required for the upcoming Ghost or the necessity of sending carts and people flying as Titanic sinks), not so easy in these days of constrained arts budgets. Conversely, another barrier is the reduction in cast sizes in new shows (even as tech requirements may grow elsewhere); musicals like Side Show or Little Women will only appeal to small schools, or those with weak drama programs, since most high schools want big shows for the greatest inclusion of the student body.

A rare effort to craft a musical for all ages, but uniquely suited for junior high audiences, actors and musicians, Jason Robert Brown’s 13, had a short life on Broadway (I hope it lives forever in middle schools). Maybe building musicals that anticipate their future academic life isn’t economically feasible in the commercial marketplace. I think it’s not entirely a coincidence that the musicals of Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty are popular (if not always top 10) high school shows; there is a common thread of humanity and warmth that runs through Once on This Island, Seussical and Ragtime (not to mention sufficiently large cast sizes and gender and racial flexibility and opportunities). But they didn’t set out to write “high school musicals.”

I fear I’m coming off like an old man, yet I’m arguing for today’s teens to be able to explore their talent in new material by our best current musical theatre artists, not limiting them to the same chestnuts that I appeared in more than 30 years ago (even though the legacy of great musicals has real value). The question is whether the material is drying up, and whether we can do something about generating new musicals which are not bland, silly, homogenized works devised solely for school productions,  but are challenging and entertaining both in words and music, so that “family musical” need not be a euphemism for “children’s theatre” and the repertoire can benefit at both the professional and educational level. I don’t doubt that there are progressive, enlightened and adventurous high school drama programs out there, just not enough to tip the survey balance.

I have often said that there is a theatrical continuum that runs from Broadway right through to schools; fundamentally, the process of putting on a show at any level is the same, with money and experience being the key points of difference. I worry that this through-line is being lost and that unless producers and artists think about future talent and future audiences, we will be conditioning the next generation to desire and demand less on our stages, rather than more. After all, if they are exposed in their youth to only the most populist and/or timeworn musicals, if they play mostly Peanuts and Munchkins, will they ever aspire to, or have an appetite for, something greater?

Update: As a result of writing this post, I learned a great deal more about the high school repertoire, and especially school editions of shows like Avenue Q and Rent, which filter out the language and content that would be most problematic in a school setting, while retaining the core of the shows themselves. Done in collaboration with authors, or their estates, they help to bridge the content gap that concerned me. That said, I still don’t think we’re going to see The Book of Mormon in schools anytime soon.