During the 2012/13 Broadway season, a total of nine new musicals appeared on Broadway (hitting the average annual level of recent years). Of those nine, only four are still running. As I write, there are seven new musicals playing Off-Broadway, with an eighth due in a few weeks; there may well be others. What does it tell us when 12 months of Broadway yields just about as much new musical material as we find Off-Broadway in only a couple of months?

To be fair, many of the Off-Broadway musicals are limited runs in the seasons of subsidised companies, and two are commercial transfers from such companies from earlier this year. Only one will play in a theatre which is comparable in size to Broadway venues, and in that case it’s under the auspices of Shakespeare in the Park; most are in spaces where one week of performances equals the capacity of one Broadway performance. A transferred Off-Broadway hit can easily become a Broadway casualty given the commercial demands of larger theatres and higher costs.

Certainly, hit Off-Broadway musicals are hardly new; one need only look to The Fantasticks, You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown, Godspell and Little Shop of Horrors for precursors, and it’s unlikely the current new shows will ever attain the longevity of those icons. But in recent years, the standard model has tended much more towards the Off-Broadway to Broadway transfer for success, as evidenced by shows ranging from Rent to Avenue Q to The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Even shows that began in rudimentary stagings at the New York International Fringe Festival and the New York Musical Theatre Festival have fought their way to Broadway, including Urinetown and Next to Normal.

Surveying the variety of material, it would appear that the modest scale of Off-Broadway allows for a greater range of topics and styles than the Great White Way, from the sung through pop opera of Dave Malloy’s Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 (based on a portion of War and Peace, and performed in a tent) to David Byrne and Fatboy Slim’s Imelda Marcos disco bio Here Lies Love. There’s one musical that is drawn from a film (Far From Heaven) and two with their roots in Shakespeare (Venice, after Othello, and Love’s Labour’s Lost). Several adopt variations on an environmental, break-the-proscenium approach (Here Lies Love, Murder Ballad and Great Comet). None model themselves on the formula of the classic American musical.

I suspect that no one is getting rich off of these productions, while the backers of Kinky Boots, Matilda and Motown on Broadway will surely do quite well over time. For these Off- Broadway musicals to become true earners for all involved, they will either have to manage sustained runs under a commercial model, on Broadway or Off, or spawn productions across the country and abroad. But even if that doesn’t come to pass, what they are doing is providing a superb showcase for predominantly new talent and unexpected subjects; they are bolstering the musical repertory at a pace at least equal to Broadway and building the reputations of artists.

This shouldn’t suggest that musical success Off-Broadway is a breeze, and it’s worth noting that many of these shows are only mounted with significant donor underwriting or “enhancement” from producers who hope the property will turn out to be Broadway-worthy. But with different scale and different expectations, Off-Broadway musicals may well be supplanting Broadway in advancing the form.

Hindsight doesn’t benefit anyone, but it is hard to resist wondering whether the short-lived Hands on a Hardbody might have fared better at director Neil Pepe’s Atlantic Theatre Company instead of in a Broadway theatre. Ironically, that was the birthplace of Spring Awakening, a musical that had struggled through a number of developmental productions over the years only to find praise, first Off- Broadway, then on.

There’s an old saying that one can’t make a living on Broadway, but can make a killing. It’s not easy to make a living off of Off-Broadway musicals either, but you can build a career.

Ever so quietly this week, the national arts scene became a bit more fragmented, a bit more stratified and a lot more invisible. The Associated Press has just spiked a chunk of its opera, dance and off-Broadway coverage. And in this case, no news is bad news.

In an email, AP chief theater writer Mark Kennedy described the decision to me:

“We sent out a survey before the Tonys to the members of our cooperative, asking about their use of our reviews,” he wrote. “While music, books, movies and TV came back positive, the results proved what we have long suspected: Members overwhelmingly are not using our opera, dance or off-Broadway reviews.”

“It’s more than that,” Kennedy continued. “In some cases, they actually resent [that coverage], thinking we can use our resources better. So while we of course will dip into the world of off-Broadway, whether for an occasional review or a story, we have to listen to the people who pay our bills.”

This may seem like an inside-baseball story, of interest only to theatrical publicists and producers. But the ramifications are a little greater.

Coverage in The New York Times has prestige and tradition, and speaks to the arts community; The Wall Street Journal reaches art organizations’ board members and corporate sponsors; USA Today has mass appeal. But the AP almost certainly has the widest reach of all: Its copy is available to hundreds of print and online outlets internationally, including the big three above.

Indeed, as news has increasingly shifted online, AP arts coverage is probably more accessible to more people than it has ever been. It appears directly on countless news websites — including NPR’s — without any human effort, as part of a continuous news feed, where it’s not subject to the day-to-day editorial priorities and space limitations that govern a print paper or radio show. Even when editors “don’t use” this coverage, it appears on their sites; in some cases, an AP item may prompt an outlet to do its own story on the same subject.

In my days as a publicist, pre-Internet, reportage by The Associated Press often resulted in a single story cropping up in the most unexpected places. It would get relayed back to me by other publicists in other cities — or, charmingly, by the parents of co-workers.

Further back, when I was a teen hungry to learn, AP coverage fed my arts interest with news of culture beyond that originated by my local paper.

What’s important to note is that this week’s news is not the callous edict of a commercially driven corporate behemoth, but rather a practical decision by a member-driven service organization that operates as a not-for-profit. Yet it represents how, in an ever more challenging environment for the news industry, the arts are drawing the short stick.

Some might think that coverage of these areas is essentially local news for Manhattanites. But the arts ecology is more complicated than that. Sure, many people may not be able to attend a New York opera in person, but both radio and TV broadcasts bring those performances to audiences across the country — and the AP’s stories may be the most accessible source of advance coverage for fans in a variety of markets.

Dance companies may well tour to those same locations, and since few can sustain themselves playing only in Manhattan, the AP’s coverage has a direct impact on the viability of those bookings as well.

As for off-Broadway? That’s the easiest to argue for. It’s home to a significant number of new works that may never reach Broadway, but which increase the body of theatrical literature — and which often go on to play numerous regional and amateur stages.

This is particularly important when it comes to plays (as opposed to musicals): Of the 45 works recognized by the Pulitzer for drama or the Tony for best play since 1984, only five originated on Broadway. Yet that is the arena on which the AP will now narrow its focus. Coverage of “regional” arts organizations — long hailed as a similarly deep well of creativity — has already been marginalized.

This is just the latest news in a dispiriting trend. Onetime show-business bible Variety has all but eliminated regional theater reviews, along with a significant amount of its off-Broadway coverage; there’s occasional opera coverage in its pages these days, and no dance coverage.

The Village Voice, home to off-Broadway’s Obie Awards, laid off drama critic Michael Feingold just weeks ago, after more than four decades of service, even as it broadened its coverage of food.

There are countless other examples: Arts coverage at outlets large and small has been narrowing in favor of the largest and most popular companies and offerings, just as arts funding sources have been shrinking, and often tilting in favor of the bigger players. That stratification will only be reinforced by the AP’s coverage reductions.

There’s an invisible cost here. When attempts to reduce or eliminate funding to the arts crop up — which they do with a depressing regularity — they gain traction in part because not enough people encounter the arts, or even regular coverage of the arts, on a daily basis. When a resource as mighty as The Associated Press can’t even offer material for consideration because of a professed lack of interest by other media gatekeepers, I worry it’ll only lend support to those who want to delegitimize the arts with a charge of elitism.

Because celebrity holds ever-increasing sway in all entertainment coverage, and because the performing arts are (to too many editors) the poor stepchild of entertainment, I have a sneaking suspicion that if Hugh Jackman ever ventures off-Broadway, when Renee Fleming sings something at the Met, wherever David Hallberg dances, The Associated Press will probably manage to tell us about it.

We’ll also still hear from the AP when an artistic leader is the victim of internecine violence in his own company, or when a tech mishap injures a performer. Bad news always trumps good.

But we will know infinitely less about all the fine work being done by those who aren’t already well known, or at companies where tragedies mercifully don’t happen, or among worthy troupes that could most benefit from national attention not found elsewhere.

And should The Associated Press’s decision prove to be a model for yet more media outlets, then entire swaths of the arts may be, as long feared, on the brink of popular irrelevancy. Because soon no one may know they’re there.

Here’s the post in its original form on NPR.org

With U.S. theatre seasons being announced almost daily, things have been pretty lively around the old Twitter water cooler, with each successive announcement being immediately met with assessments at every level.  How many female playwrights or directors? Is there a range of race and ethnicity among the artists? Is the season safe and predictable or adventurous and enticing? How many new plays, or actual premieres? How many dead writers? How many American playwrights? Any new musicals? The same old Shakespeare plays?

Thanks to social media, what once might have incited some e-mails and calls among friends in the business is now grist for the national mill, and the conversations swing their focus from city to city as rapidly as a new announcement is made. While some of the critiques may strike a more strident tone than I would personally adopt, I have to say that this is evidence of the developing national theatre conscience, under which news of upcoming work is not merely relayed but considered, from a macro rather than micro viewpoint, and not only by artistic directors at conferences or journalists in major media. People are keeping score.

I find this heartening and useful; last year I wrote a column for The Stage in which I declared my belief that the work on U.S. stages must better reflect U.S. society. But even as I applaud every recounting of a season being graded on a variety of balances (gender, race, vintage, etc.), and hope that it informs not only a national conversation but action and change at the local level, I want to strike a note of caution about one of the criteria being applied, specifically: why are so many theatres doing the same plays?

It’s easy if one lives in a major metropolitan area that’s rich in theatre to wonder why certain plays are receiving 10, 15 even 20 productions in a single season, typically works that have been seen in New York, whether on Broadway or off.  We all see the list compiled each fall by TCG and American Theatre magazine; it generates stories about the most popular plays at U.S. theatres and usually mirrors the NYC fare of the past year or two. But at the same time, how many new plays remain unproduced, or receive a premiere and then don’t find their way to other stages?  Have U.S. theatres become ever more safe and New York-centric?

What seems like a herd mentality has a more practical basis. It has been some time since plays have toured the country with any regularity (before the current War Horse, the last significant non-musical tour I recall was Roundabout’s Twelve Angry Men); the days when a play would run a season on Broadway and then tour for a year are long over. So while not-for-profit theatres may have been born in part to offer an alternative to commercial fare that was once available throughout the country, the life of plays has fallen almost exclusively to institutional companies.

Those companies tend to be fairly hyperlocal, drawing the majority of their audience from a 30 to 45 mile radius. This holds true even for larger cities, although they may benefit from some portion of a tourist trade. Generally, only “destination theatres” like Oregon Shakespeare Festival or Canada’s Stratford and Shaw Festivals can lay claim to a wider geographic spread. So while our overview of production may be all inclusive, the communities being served are less transient and more insular than that view.

On top of that, we can’t deny that theatre in New York has a range of media platforms which, even in our online era, few other cities can match. Consequently, a success in New York, or merely a New York production, gets a boost in the eyes of all concerned – theatre staffs, freelance artists, funders, audiences. And as a result, companies which are the major – or only – theatre in their community may feel duty bound to offer those “name” works in their seasons, because their audiences may not have any other opportunity to see them and also because their artistic leadership believes in the quality and value of that work. Of course, in some markets, theatres may compete for these “name” works, especially if they’re accompanied by the name Tony or Pulitzer.

This was brought home to me years ago during my time as managing director of Geva Theatre in Rochester NY. Geva was by far the largest theatre in Rochester; its peers were the former Studio Arena Theatre in Buffalo, 60 miles to the west, and Syracuse Stage, some 80 miles to the east. Each city had its own theatrical microclimate, with only the smallest sliver of die-hard theatre fans traveling among all three, an effort hampered by a snowfall season that ran from November to April.

Having come from Connecticut theatre, where a daytrip to New York was commonplace for professionals and audience alike, I wasn’t used to working on “last year’s hits” (though Geva’s seasons were certainly much more varied than that). In Connecticut at that time, doing work recently available in NYC was redundant. Frankly, what had been a source of pride at the places I’d worked had become a sign of elitism in my new setting, and I had to adjust my thinking accordingly – a mindset that has stayed with me as I ventured back into Connecticut and then to Manhattan.

This year, Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop has been one of those frequently produced plays; on the east coast alone I know of productions in Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington DC without even looking at schedules; I could just look at the Amtrak Northeast Corridor schedule for that rundown. Some might call this copycatting, especially after its Broadway run the prior season, but based upon reviews and reports of sales, The Mountaintop has been meaningful at each venue where it has appeared, presumably without overlapping audiences. And on a personal note, I have to say that even in a production compromised by a labor dispute, I found the Philadelphia incarnation to be even more affecting than the Broadway one.

Even as I lobby for artistic directors to be ever more committed to a wide range of essential criteria, I acknowledge the difficulty of their task. Aside from taking into account the questions I highlighted in the first paragraph, they also have to consider issues like budget, educational commitments, work that might prove especially meaningful to their audience or their community. Many have to do that with only five or six shows in a given season and it may not be possible to hit every desired mark.

A national survey across a range of criteria will certainly show us trends in production at the country’s institutional theatres, and I avidly support such an effort. But as we look theatre by theatre, we might allow, slightly,  for what else could be happening at other theatres in the same city, and perhaps for how each theatre’s season does (or doesn’t) make improvements in diversity year over year. We also have to accept that in meeting one of many goals, a theatre might fall short on another; watching how they trend over time will be the most telling indicator. And while we need more and more platforms for truly new work, if a show with a New York imprimatur is a genuine part of a season striving towards meeting a range of goals, it is not necessarily a cop-out.

A final word for the theatres that face this new scrutiny, from playwright Stephen Spotswood during yesterday’s water cooler chat on Twitter: “Dear theatres whose seasons people are complaining about: This means we care and are invested in you. Start worrying when we stop.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*   *   *

America: Terry Teachout, The Wall Street Journal 

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

Atlanta: Wendell Brock, Atlanta Journal Constitution

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

Baltimore: multiple critics, City Paper

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

Berkshire County MA: Jeffrey Borak, The Berkshire Eagle

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

Boston: Carolyn Clay, The Phoenix

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

California: Lisa Millegan Renner, The Modesto Bee

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

Cleveland: Andrea Simakis, Cleveland Plain Dealer

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

Chicago: Catey Sullivan, Chicago Magazine

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

Chicago: Bob Bullen, Chicago Theatre Addict

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

Chicago: Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune

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

Chicago: Kris Vire, Time Out Chicago

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

Columbus: David Ades, The Other Paper

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

Dallas: Elaine Liner, Dallas Observer

Essay,  “The Year in Dallas Theatre.”

Dallas: Arnold Wayne Jones, Dallas Voice

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

Halifax, Nova Scotia: Kate Watson, The Coast

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

Hartford: Frank Rizzo, The Hartford Courant

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

Kansas City: Robert Trussell, Kansas City Star

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

Las Vegas: staff writers, Las Vegas Weekly

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

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

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

London, Matt Wolf, The Arts Desk

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

London, multiple critics, The Guardian

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

London: Susannah Clapp, The Observer

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

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

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

Miami: John Thomason, Miami New Times

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

Milwaukee: Mike Fischer, Journal Sentinel

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

Minneapolis: Rohan Preston and Graydon Royce, Star Tribune

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

New Jersey: Bill Canacci, Courier Post

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

New Jersey: Ronni Reich, Newark Star Ledger

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

New York: Matt Windman, AM New York

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

New York: Mark Kennedy, Associated Press

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

New York: Robert Feldberg, The Bergen Record

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

New York, Jeremy Gerard, Bloomberg News

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

New York, Thom Geier, Entertainment Weekly

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

New York: David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter

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

New York: T. Michelle Murphy, Metro

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

New York: Joe Dziemanowicz, New York Daily News

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

New York, Elisabeth Vincentelli, New York Post

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

New York: John Lahr, The New Yorker

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

New York, Scott Brown, New York magazine

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

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

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

New York: Jesse Oxfeld, The New York Observer

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

New York: Richard Zoglin, Time magazine

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

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

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

Orange County CA: Paul Hodgins, Orange County Register

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

Philadelphia: J. Cooper Robb, Philadelphia Weekly

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

Portland ME: Megan Grumbling, The Portland Pheonix

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

San Jose: Karen D’Souza, The Mercury News

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

St Louis: Dennis Brown and Paul Friswold, Riverfront Times

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

Toronto: J. Kelly Nestruck, Globe And Mail

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

Toronto: Jon Kaplan and Glenn Sumi, Now Toronto

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

Toronto: Toronto Star

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

Washington DC: Peter Marks, The Washington Post

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

as of 12/30/12  11:00 am

It’s hardly surprising to learn about a hit Off-Broadway show moving to Broadway. It’s been happening for years, both with shows that began at not-for-profit companies or as commercial ventures. Open small, get great reviews and sales, move beyond the confines of a much smaller theatre to reap the recognition and rewards of a Broadway berth, which then secures a long life for the show in regional, international and amateur and school markets.

In most cases, the Off-Broadway to Broadway transfers happen pretty quickly, to seize upon momentum. If they don’t happen in the same theatrical season (vaguely defined by awards timelines), then they turn up the following year. The lag-time between the Playwrights Horizons production of Clybourne Park and its Broadway run was longer than the norm (with numerous regional productions blooming in the gap).

But when Beth Henley’s The Miss Firecracker Contest was announced for Broadway this spring, it joined a subset of shows that took protracted paths to the Great White Way. In the case of Miss Firecracker, it took more than 25 years – and it also marks Henley’s Broadway return after a hiatus of 30 years, ashocking gap for a major author.

This ultra-late path to Broadway is a slow-building trend to be sure, but in the past dozen or so years, some 20 shows that met with acclaim and countless productions after their Off-Broadway success have turned up on Broadway for the first time. In most cases, by the time they get there, they’re considered part of the theatrical repertoire to the extent that they’re revivals making their Broadway debut. In many cases, the Off-Broadway hits spawned movie versions, without a Broadway imprimatur.

Some of the examples: Margaret Edson’s Wit, Athol Fugard’s The Road to Mecca, David Mamet’s Oleanna, Donald Margulies’ Collected Stories, Terrence McNally’s Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune, Alfred Uhry’s Driving Miss Daisy, Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls, Robert Harling’s Steel Magnolias, Richard Greenberg’s Three Days of Rain and Eric Bogosian’s Talk Radio. Even the musical Little Shop of Horrors finally made its way from downtown to uptown, but after a hiatus of more than two decades.

What’s driving this stealth trendlet? There are several factors. One is simply that over time, even without Broadway status, the shows have grown so much in recognition that they’re not necessarily the risky prospects they once were (Wit, for example, sought a Broadway house back in the day, but no one would book it). Though most weren’t star vehicles in days gone by, a number were star-makers; Miss Firecracker launched Holly Hunter to stardom, just as Daisy did for Morgan Freeman; now that they’re recognized as having roles stars covet, which explains Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones in the recent Daisy run. And with the aforementioned recognition that has built up, especially after film adaptations, the titles are simply more “marketable,” meaning producers don’t have the same uphill climb that they might with a wholly new work – although the fact that the movies are so indelibly etched that shows compete with those, rather than original productions.

Another key factor is that the environment that enabled shows like these to run for several years commercially Off-Broadway has largely evaporated. That’s not to say there are no commercial play productions Off-Broadway, but the prevailing wisdom is now that you can only succeed financially by taking a hit from The Atlantic or The Public to Broadway; that the economics simply don’t favor an intra-Off move.

I don’t have any particular reservations about this practice, since it’s typically one or two shows a year at most. It is worth noting that the majority of these plays had very small casts and required minimal scenery; by enlarging them to the scale of a Broadway house, there’s always the risk that the intimacy which may have helped them become hits in the past may be lost along the way.

What would prove truly exciting would be if producers looked beyond the iconic Off-Broadway successes and explored works which, for one reason or other, didn’t have long runs and didn’t move anywhere, despite being praised in their day.  I bet a quick read of Theatre Worlds (or my Playbill collection) from the 80s and 90s could turn up a number of forgotten gems. It’s worth remembering that John Guare’s The House of Blue Leaves, originally produced Off-Broadway, only found its place in the canon of major works after the Lincoln Center Theater revival in the 80s; Sam Shepard’s True West suffered from a troubled production at The Public in its New York debut, only to be a hit less than 10 years later when the Steppenwolf production came to town, though in that case, again Off-Broadway.

When Miss Firecracker was announced yesterday, I spotted several comments in my Twitter feed from those who were pleased for the opportunity to see the play on stage for the first time, and indeed it’s less of a known quantity than most of the shows I’ve cited. Their comments reminded me that I’ve been around long enough that these are, for me, unquestionably revivals, as I saw many of the original productions. I recall going into Miss Firecracker unaware of Holly Hunter and walking out with a serious crush; when I saw Rosemary Harris in The Road To Mecca last year, I often confused people by mentioning having seen Julie Harris in the same role in a regional production almost 20 years ago.

So today’s Broadway is now, on occasion, a home for yesterday’s Off-Broadway hits. There’s a certain irony baked into that, as well as a longing for the bygone Off-Broadway environment, but I’ll look on the bright side: these plays are proof that you don’t always need Broadway to be a success. But that opens up new questions as well: what other shows might be rediscovered, and 20 years from now, will today’s Off-Broadway prove to have been comparably fertile?

P.S. Cloud Nine, anyone?

Hilda Cronje (left) and Bongile Mantsai in ‘Mies Julie’ at St. Ann’s Warehouse.

“Is that fog or haze?”

St. Ann’s Warehouse artistic director Susan Feldman asked that question to set and lighting designer Patrick Curtis, less than 72 hours before the first performance in the company’s new venue at 29 Jay Street in Brooklyn. It seemed like a mundane question with a major deadline approaching, but it was evidence of how smoothly everything was going elsewhere.

Her smoke-based question pertained to a special effect for the space’s opening production, “Mies Julie.” A South African adaptation and expansion of August Strindberg’s sexually charged “Miss Julie,” the play is reset from 19th century Sweden to present day in the barren karoo, where the restless daughter of an oppressive Boer farmer escalates the sexual attraction between her and an African worker.

Originally mounted by the Baxter Theatre Centre in Cape Town, “Mies Julie” was a hit at this summer’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival, prompting a quick decision by Feldman to inaugurate the new St. Ann’s space with the production. It opens tonight and will run through Dec. 2.

“It’s very bold, very sexy,” Feldman said. “It captured a sense of South Africa in a way we don’t know in America, and it’s not taken from one point of view or another. Within two weeks of seeing it, we booked it.”

While that may have accelerated the timetable for opening – St. Ann’s had originally planned a “soft opening” with a few concerts, followed by a full launch with “Opus No. 7″ from Russia in January – Feldman thought it would be worth it. “I didn’t want to end this conversation about ‘Mies Julie’ and start again in May.”

As of last Tuesday, there was wet paint in ample evidence in public areas and stencils awaiting paint for signage, even as the “Mies Julie” team was running a dry tech and awaiting the arrival of the actors for the first time (the show had been touring, and so it required minimal rehearsal in Brooklyn). Fortunately, although they had been under an evacuation order from Hurricane Sandy, the new venue was left untouched, requiring only minimal compression of production time on the show.

The 29 Jay Street venue is officially a three-year interim space for St. Ann’s while it works to secure and develop Brooklyn’s old Tobacco Warehouse near its former 38 Water Street home.

“When I went into the church [where the company was founded],” Feldman said, “I had no idea that it would be for 21 years. Water Street was a temporary space for 12 years. We know there’s a future beyond three years, assuming conversion works in the Tobacco Warehouse. But we have made our new theater to work just as our last theater functioned.”

Indeed, the two venues are similar, and similarly flexible. While the stage and seating for “Mies Julie” echoes that used for Daniel Kitson’s recent show, the layout for “Opus No. 7″ will resemble the expansive playing area of “Black Watch.”

“When we packed up Water Street, we realized that we’d only built one and a half walls there. It helped me not to feel tremendous loss,” Feldman said.

The new venue required steel work in order to hang a lighting grid, curtains and support future scenery, a new set of exit stairs and the rehanging of heating units. Unlike more polished arts complexes, the work on Jay Street was economical. “The fit out here took between $900,000 and $1 million,” said Feldman, adding that was exclusive of rent. It did result in some adjustment, such as a merging of the box office and production office into a single space, or, in Feldman’s compression, “the prox office.”

Despite producing in an untested space, the adapter and director of “Mies Julie,” Yael Farber, said that she wasn’t subjected to restrictions, comparing the space to a “widening aperture.” “The conversation was always ‘how does the space accommodate the work’,” said Farber, upon arrival for the first time at St. Ann’s. “Not ‘how does the work accommodate the space’.”

The move is only a few blocks from St. Ann’s previous space at 38 Water Street, and its potential future space at the Tobacco Warehouse. While there is the potential for audiences to feel a sense of dislocation, Feldman said that’s not the case, given the very public wrangling over the company’s search for a new home, necessitated by new development of the Water Street site.

“There was a lot of drama over the Tobacco Warehouse, so when we told our audiences [about 29 Jay Street], there was great relief and joy, especially from this side of DUMBO,” she said.

As mirrors and strip lights were being installed in makeshift dressing rooms (flexible dressing spaces being standard for all St. Ann’s productions) on Jay Street, the company’s executive director Andrew D. Hamingson said they had already begun the design process for their next home at Tobacco Warehouse, pending full approval of the site.

“The conversion process begins this month, and will take from six to nine months,” he said. “We are the designee for the land, which will be converted from parkland to land for private use, within Brooklyn Bridge Park. Then we can go forward with the lease. We expect the process to be favorable.”

This follows what was originally expected to be a more direct move to the Tobacco Warehouse, with the company operating on an itinerant basis for perhaps a year, that was scuttled when park regulatory issues came to light.

But perpetual change, show by show, and now perhaps theater by theater, seems to be the standard for St. Ann’s Warehouse. Describing the past few months, Feldman said, “We went from ‘Festen,’ to our Puppet Lab, to moving out, directly into our build here. It’s been an intensive six months for the staff and crew.”

From the perspective of an audience member attending only the second performance, on Friday evening, the transition was seamless, right down to the signs greeting patrons with the warning, “Theatrical haze and fog effects will be used in this production.”

See the article at the Wall Street Journal here.

Life and safety are most important. A place to live comes next. Then jobs, business, livelihoods. In the wake of the storm that just slammed New Jersey and New York, these are the priorities, first and foremost.

But it’s my nature to turn to thoughts theatrical, and there’s no question that every manner of live performance in the affected areas will feel a strong and lingering impact in the days and weeks, perhaps months, to come. Even venues that were spared any direct damage from the storm will have to grapple with having artists, staffs and audiences cut off from theatres for days or even weeks; the minds of ticketholders and potential ticket buyers are not focused on their next evening out, but instead on the priorities of my first paragraph.

Yes, we all heard that Broadway was shut down on Sunday night and has yet to announce the reopening of shows as I write. But Broadway is just the tip of the iceberg, the headline that efficiently communicated, pre-storm, that New York was hunkering down. Off and Off-Off Broadway, theatres outside of Manhattan, and outside of New York all shut down as well. Rehearsals, tech, workshops, showcases, readings – all were hit, from Virginia northward, and westward too.

On the internet, snide remarks on Sunday and even Monday played off of “The show must go on,” as if heeding safety alerts and protecting patrons were somehow a dereliction of duty, instead of a prudent decision to insure that no one took undue risks. These are the same people who are probably complaining about lack of mail service today.

The immediate suspension of productions will no doubt have a financial impact on every venue, commercial or not-for-profit. Movies may get more attention, but they are fixed art; perhaps their theatrical runs may be curtailed by loss of marketing momentum, but they won’t cease to be. TV ratings may take a hit because of major markets without power, but reruns, Netflix, Hulu and the like will make certain that programs don’t go unseen.

In theatres throughout the region, shows that were already at financial risk may see their demise hastened; shows in previews or rehearsal may see their production schedules altered and face challenges in luring audiences, even after transportation returns to normal, because focus and priority won’t be on entertainment. Even successfully running shows will take a sustained hit.

This is a natural disaster, not terrorism. But as the ripple effects of 9/11 went far from ground zero, for an extended period of time, this storm will pass but its memory and its impact will linger. Theatres in the mid-Atlantic and northeast will have to convince audiences to return once again, and it won’t be about conquering justified fears, but conquering physical and financial realities which will impede that process. It will take a long time to get past this.

As a final word, precisely because the relighting of Broadway, when it occurs, will again capture headlines, I’d like to remind everyone who cares about live performance that the performances and companies at greatest risk are those that are not as high profile, those without extensive financial resources, those that operate from small venues in locations somewhat less traveled. Yes, the relighting of Broadway houses has an impact on the many industries that benefit from the influx of audience members to those shows, but that same situation is played out in microcosm at every performance venue, in every neighborhood affected.

Let’s do all we can to help our families, our neighbors and those we don’t even know heal and rebuild. But when each of us is able, let’s also look to the arts, so often an afterthought in the minds of so many, and make sure that we can gather together in theatres large and small very soon, and support with our labor, our money and our presence this area of endeavor, at once an artistic pursuit and a vital industry.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The lesson of our journey, the moral of our story.

Just as Clybourne Park (premiered at Playwrights Horizons) and Once (workshopped at American Reportory Theatre, premiered by New York Theatre Workshop), with victories at The Tony Awards, prominently reaffirmed how central this country’s not-for-profit theatres are to new theatrical work, we learned that The Goodman Theatre’s production of O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh  (not a new work) will not be brought to New York by producer Scott Rudin (though others may yet step in). Just as I confess to being pleased about the first two works being anointed last night, I also confess that I am not disappointed by the prospect of Iceman remaining a Chicago phenomenon (even though those involved in the production may be).

Now perhaps it’s easy for me to say that about Iceman because I went to Chicago to see it, and therefore its potential inability to transfer doesn’t leave me out in the cold. But I wouldn’t mind it being seen only in Chicago because it further reinforces the notion that superb theatre exists around this country and that a transfer to New York should in no way be the sole arbiter of artistic success.

Despite protestations to the contrary, America does have a national theatre. We simply don’t restrict it to the work of a single company. America’s national theatre exists across the country and a centralized company or facility would, by necessity, be insufficient. Unlike Europe, where the dimensions of the major countries are simply smaller than the U.S., and therefore it is possible to have a National Theatre that is theoretically available to all, any such venue here would be inaccessible to most of the population. Iceman is a production of America’s national theatre, as was the other show I saw on my jaunt, Timon of Athens at Chicago Shakespeare.

The Iceman phenomenon put me in mind of Hartford Stage’s Peer Gynt in the late 80s, for which I was the publicist. This was a rare full-length Gynt, in a new translation that retained Ibsen’s rhyming verse; it ran six hours in two parts and while the audience was wary at first, it became a smash, running eight weeks (the longest run at that theatre before that time and, I believe, ever since). There was talk of a New York transfer, with particular interest from then-prolific producer Roger Stevens, but it was not to be. Yet despite lasting only eight weeks in Hartford, without New York imprimatur, it is a show still spoken of in artistic and audience circles. I continue to meet people who tell me of their travels to see it, and its enormous impact on them. It too was a beacon of America’s national theatre.

What if Jordan Roth had not rescued Clybourne Park when the Broadway production faltered? Would New Yorkers have been deprived, since only a relative few had been able to see it at Playwrights Horizons? Yes. But would America have been deprived? No, because the play had already been seen at numerous regional theatres and had begun international production. Our national theatre had embraced it.

I could cite example after example. But the juxtaposition of the Tonys and the recent news about Iceman (which, again, is hardly the last word on the topic) prompts me to proclaim my own credo about theatre in America and about my theatre going: there is great theatre everywhere in this country and countless opportunities to see it. We may not always gather in vast numbers in stadiums or arenas for our entertainment, but we gather constantly for our theatre.  We gather on Broadway, in storefronts, in resident theatres and in school auditoriums. No one can see all of it; we will always be disappointed in that which we can’t see, but only in the very smallest of communities, only from economic limitations or distress, might we have to go entirely without.

Yes, despite living in one of the world’s theatre capitals, I am driven to seek work in other cities (a topic I hope to explore in greater length one day soon); I am the exception. As we heard as children, at the end of a beloved film, sometimes what we’re looking for is right in our own backyard. We only need to appreciate it for what it is and know that while there may be magic and grandeur elsewhere, there’s plenty to satisfy us in America’s national theatre, which is located wherever you live.