Is Long The New Short on Broadway?

“Do you know the four best words in the English Language?” said one Tony Voter to another.

“No, what are the four best words in the English Language?” asked the second.

“90 minutes.  No intermission.”

Ba-dum-dum.

This is a real joke I’ve heard over a dozen times over the last few years, from industry and non-industry folks alike.  And there’s no question that shorter shows have been “in” as the attention span of our consumers has shrunk since the days of the three-act play.

In fact, we proved that shows have been getting shorter in this post (complete with graphs and everything!).

And then there’s this season.

We’ve got a two-part, over seven-hour Angels in America that’s doing heavenly numbers.  Then there’s the two-part, over two-and-half-hours each Harry Potter that’s working its box office magic.  Not to mention the nearly three-hour musical revival up at the Lincoln Center and another ol‘ classic carouseling in at a similar time down here, plus that almost 4 hour Iceman has cometh again.

And they’re all doing just fine.

It would be a common sense thought for a writer or producer in 2018 to think, “My show has to be short.” But this season is a perfect reminder that there are no hard and steadfast rules in the theater, or in any business, for that matter.  The moment you think one way, here comes a disruptor to make you think another.

So if your show is in 16 parts and runs 13 and a half weeks, that’s fine.

It just means that your show has to be that much better, and your word of mouth that much stronger, in order for you to overcome this pain point for a potential customer.

 

April 19, 2018 Musicals, Plays, On The Blog 4 comments

GUEST BLOG by Nathan Johnson: Elevating the Brand of Broadway

I didn’t grow up a Broadway fan. I wasn’t the kid that collected Playbills and hung them on my walls. I didn’t take holiday trips with my family to New York when I was young to take in a show. We typically found ourselves running away from the freezing Minnesota winters to warmer climates. Occasionally I would see a traveling Broadway tour (which I almost always enjoyed), but between family, friends, and extracurriculars, my life seemed pretty full. I was quite alright without adding “Broadway” to the mix.


So, in 2007 when I married the love of my life, actress Laura Osnes, and we moved to NY, that all changed.  Laura is a “Broadway Baby” through and through. She doesn’t like Broadway, she LOVES Broadway. Needless to say, my education started immediately.


Over the course of the next few years, I had some incredible experiences in the theatre. I assume if you’re reading Ken’s Davenport’s blog, I’m preaching to the choir. You probably already know that good theatre can challenge, inspire, develop empathy, and even cause us to just escape with a good laugh.  There’s just something about experiencing live theatre at that level that is impossible to get elsewhere.


While I felt at home in a Broadway house, many of my friends and acquaintances outside of the theatre community didn’t seem to care about taking the time to go to sit through a show. Their lives were full. From their perspective, Broadway seemed like something that was for the older generations, tourists, and for the super-committed thespian fan. Their perspective sounded a lot like me before meeting my wife. I couldn’t help but see that there was a major glitch in how Broadway was perceived by much of my demographic.


I am a photographer and business owner. After a brief stint of acting, and realizing it wasn’t for me, I began photographing a lot of actor headshots and portraits and eventually began shooting Broadway campaigns. I was fortunate enough to work with Ken on his incredible production of Spring Awakening…a production that made me ugly cry in my seat.


Five years ago I opened a photography studio in West Chelsea called Drift Studio (driftstudionyc.com), and have developed a great client list, including most of the major publications (Vogue, GQ, Harper’s Bazaar, Nylon, Billboard, Hollywood Reporter, Esquire, to name a few). Each of these companies do a pretty bang-up job at creating the level of content that cuts through the noise to reach a younger adult audience to bring them the newest of Hollywood, fashion, and music goings on (ignore the fact that the print divisions are going the way of the dinosaur). Why wasn’t Broadway included in the mix? You might see the occasional feature on one of the theatre elite, but it was a rarity. Why wasn’t anyone creating the type of Broadway content using Broadway talent to reach my peers? Why was almost all of the content that I was seeing so fan-focused?


Over the course of the next few years, I was fortunate enough to connect with others in the industry who felt the same way and wanted to do something about it. So we began to team up to create the kind of content that we wanted to see. Through a series of companies and brand partnerships, we have worked to create hundreds of photo editorials, feature stories and even events to try and make a connection with a new audience. Currently, much of our original team is at TodayTix, of which I am a Creative Director of a new venture called The X (cultureliveshere.com).


It is my hope that we, along with other outlets, elevate the brand of Broadway in a way that is exciting, glamorous, relevant and sexy and engage a new demographic of theatre-goers who deserve to know the power of the live theatre!


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Nathan Johnson is a NYC based photographer and founder of Drift Studio.

April 18, 2018 Marketing, Producing, Shows, On The Blog No comments yet

Broadway Grosses w/e 4/15/2018: No snow, but still some slippage.

The following are the Broadway grosses for the week ending April 15, 2018.
The Broadway grosses are courtesy of The Broadway League
Read more here:

April 17, 2018 Broadway, Musicals, Broadway Grosses, Plays, Producing, Shows, On The Blog No comments yet

Why movie attendance has dropped, while Broadway’s has risen.

Movie attendance dropped by almost 6% last year, returning it to a number that hasn’t been seen since 1992. (No wonder why so many Hollywood stars are looking to Broadway to make a buck.)

Butts in seats at your local cineplex has been on a decline for years . . . while Broadway’s jumped a few year’s back and has been holding steady for the past few.

What’s the problem with movies that super-expensive Broadway seems to avoid?

Two things:

First, movie theaters got pummeled by other distribution methods for their content.  Here comes YouTube, Netflix, iTunes, OnDemand, and more delivering an endless supply of movies for your enjoyment in your own home, or on your laptop, or on that 2×2 inch screen in your pocket.  Sure, sure, you may not get the absolute latest release, but with the “long tail” of content available, consumers had plenty to keep their nights busy.

Second, the technology of home theaters and those laptops and yeah, those even ‘smarter’ phones in your pocket has advanced at such a rapid pace, the viewing experience at home can rival that in the theater.  So “seeing it on a big screen” isn’t as much of an argument to get your a$$ to the multiplex.

What’s the takeaway for the theater?

Spoiler alert, it’s a good one.

See, as more and more distribution methods for Hollywood’s content pop up, and as technology for the consumption of that content advances, our content, live content, becomes even rarer.  And when something is rarer, it becomes more valuable.

There is no alternative distribution method for live.

There is no technology to replace the live actor, on stage, crying her eyes out while belting out a tune.

Nothing beats it.  And nothing ever will.

It’s why the theater is still hopping after thousands and thousands of years, and the invention of the radio, the TV, and yeah, the internet.

So theater ain’t no “fabulous invalid” anymore.

We just might be saying that about Hollywood soon enough.

 

April 12, 2018 Economics, Musicals, Plays, Producing, Shows, On The Blog 2 comments

GUEST BLOG by Tim Donahue: What a strange 100 years it has been for theater prizes!

In 1918, the first Pulitzer Prize for Best Drama went to a forgotten—and forgettable—comedy entitled “Why Marry?” Two years later the prize went to a female playwright, because the Jury thought it would be a “handsome” thing to give the prize to a woman, although they wrote, “It is not a great play but it is original and interesting.”

The Pulitzer Drama Prize was so often laughable that in 1935 a group of Broadway reviewers formed the New York Drama Critics Circle expressly to give better awards. One of the founders, Brooks Atkinson, summed up the Circle’s accomplishment almost thirty years after its beginning, writing, “The average taste of the Critics Circle is no more discerning than the average taste of the Pulitzer judges. Neither the Circle nor the Pulitzer prizes can be intimidated by genius; both of them have on occasion preferred commonplace plays to classics.”

In the late 1940s, the Tony Awards began as a small event for the theater community sponsored by the American Theatre Wing, a charitable group from the war years. The presentation happened at a banquet with dancing in a hotel ballroom, with the prizes chosen by an ad hoc handful of people. In the first year, a Tony was given to Vincent Sardi, Sr., in thanks for Sardi’s Restaurant!

Twenty years later the Wing was in financial trouble and it joined with the Broadway League to continue the Tony Awards. Within a year, the ceremony morphed into a big television event. That changed everything about the Tonys and a lot about Broadway theater.

Still, being on television hasn’t prevented the Tony Awards from making major gaffes.

There have been past seasons when the resulting prizes, Tony Awards and others, can still provoke healthy argument. For example:

• Harvey won over The Glass Menagerie
• Hello, Dolly! won over Funny Girl
• The Music Man won over West Side Story
• Nine won over Dreamgirls
• The Sound of Music won over Gypsy

These competitive years make one wonder what best play and best musical awards mean.

Today, there are six major, very different organizations giving best play and best musical awards, for diverse reasons, chosen by very unalike procedures. It feels great if your show gets one, but does it have any sure, lasting meaning?

In short: so many prizes; so little to celebrate. Even after 100 years.

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Tim Donahue is the author most recently of Playing for Prizes: America’s Awards for Best Play and Best Musical. He is the co-author of Stage Money: The Business of the Professional Theater and three other books on theater.

April 11, 2018 Plays, Writing, Musicals, Producing, Shows, On The Blog No comments yet

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