Does anyone have a sense of how much time a theater needs to turnover from one show to the next? I figure it varies based on musicals vs plays and how complex the technical elements are, but is a two week load out, 4 week load in a good place to start as far as assumptions go? Just thinking based on what I remember seeing walking around times square (I'm using load in/load out to mean the entire time it takes to get a theater ready, not just the amount of time the physical trucks are outside moving materials)
As you said it depends on if it is a play/musical and the complexity of the set and lighting, but I would imagine a good rule of thumb is a minimum of 2-3 weeks. Including the box office opening, setting up the marquee, and technical elements.
A few years back, the Patrick Stewart/Ian McKellen plays in rep at the Cort (closed March 30 2014) turned over to Cripple of Inishmaan in less than a month (first preview April 12). That's the fastest I can remember.
What's the longest a theater has sat dark? Specifically more recent examples. I know it was common for theaters to be vacant for long periods of time before the 90's.
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The Ambassador was empty for five years, from the closing of The Circle in 1990, to the opening of Buttons on Broadway in 1995. It wasn't closed or abandoned. No one wanted it.
The Nederlander was empty for around 3 years between a short run of a Jackson Browne concert in 1993 and the opening of Rent in 1996.
Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop.
Union rules for each country are different. I'm guessing tech guys here have more breaks.
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The long periods of a theatre sitting dark between shows is not due to union rules, but just the fact that producing on Broadway is far more expensive than it is producing in London. So even though we do occasionally see a show come together super fast to nab an unexpected vacancy it is not the norm.
I don't think you're going to find a "rule of thumb" here. It depends on the set, lights, etc. It depends on how much time they have. It depends on how many stagehands the producer is willing to hire, etc.
But we should keep in mind that national tours and professional stock houses regularly put in sets and lights as complicated as those on Broadway--and they do so in 24 to 48 hours. Of course, they rehearse taking out and putting in, and even if the sets look the same as those on Broadway, they may be much lighter, built only to last six months or so rather than the years a Broadway show may run.
One fact I can give you: when I worked in Miami Beach, it took 40 stagehands five full days to erect the set for A CHORUS LINE because Michael Bennett insisted that the "permanent" Broadway set be used at every site. (As most will recall, ACL only has 3 looks: black, mirror, gold finale, each created by rotating trapezoids upstage. But there were also hard legs rather than the traditional curtains.)
At the same theater, we regularly put in much more complicated looking sets in a fraction of the time.
The exception to all of the above, as others have noted, are instances where the house is essentially rebuilt for the show: COMET, CANDIDE '74, CATS, etc. But these are sui generis and tell us nothing about the "average" take in.
ETA I should have also pointed out that since the vast majority of Broadway shows are new productions, set may go up and then come down again because the director or producer decides they are wrong and must be replaced. This of course adds to the take in time.
There are two major factors in how much changeover time is needed. First is the complexity of the show itself (which can vary from a simple single set play all the way to a production that might require making structural changes to the building). The second factor is how much overtime a producer is willing to spend to get into the theatre faster. If time allows, a production always wants to schedule the load-in to avoid overtime but on occasion when a production comes together with a star having limited availability, the producer may be willing to pay to have the production be able to open sooner (or possibly to make an awards eligibility date)
^^^ Well said. My point above about the long take-in for A CHORUS LINE is that appearances may be deceiving. Our season that ended with ACL began with the pre-Broadway tour of Zero Mostel's 1977 revival of FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, a much more complicated looking set.
Yet the plane delivering the sets was delayed and we loaded in the Act II pieces while opening night of Act I was already in progress. (Fortunately, we had a very deep stage.) And we were working with what would become the "Broadway" set for the revival.
Some of the theaters in New York that have sat empty for six months or longer have done so because of renovation work inside. Others have sat empty for periods of time because producers have a "hold "on the space but perhaps are still raising money for the production they are bringing in. Depending on the deal with the theater owner, they still may be paying rent while the theater is empty. And sometimes it's just a matter of timing. If say "In Transit" closed next week at Circle in the Square, you would unlikely see anything open there much before the summer because it's too late in the season to open another production by the Tony deadline.
But regardless of whether there is a tenant or not, almost every theater has a list of productions waiting in the wings trying to get in. The days of a theater sitting empty for five years because nobody wants it are long gone.
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I have no idea what some of you think you are saying because it is nonsense. One does not have to have physically loaded in a Broadway show (I promise I have never loaded in so much as a paper clip) to be well aware of the challenging logistics vis-a-vis most tours. Forgetting contracts and the like, most Broadway theatres are loaded in manually off relatively small trucks, from the street, in tightly permitted traffic lanes and across public sidewalks, often into the lobbies or seating areas of the house, and with no storage space or staging areas once inside.Without even getting into any of the more nuanced differences, these major (and time-consuming) differences are things that even a casual observer would be aware of if they applied their brain to the question. That, of course, seems to be a lot to ask for around here some times.
Miss Saigon, which was built to tour and move in 12 hours, just took us over three weeks to load in.
FOH cable pulls in the Neil Simon take 6 stagehands approximately 4 hours, whereas virtually any road house would take 20-25 minutes.
Generaly speaking, tours are "all about the loadout." Everything is temporary. Broadway is the exact opposite. Everything is an installation. It takes a lot of time. And all of that is separate from the very different politics.
EDIT: while I wasn't personally involved with this one, we can use the Motown return engagement as another exhibit. It was a compete tour package that had been moving across the county for years. A well-oiled machine by the time it toured into the Nederlander, and that was still a week+ loadin.