Industry Trends Weekly

We are officially done with the Broadway season. And, this season, there have been a lot of complaints about the spring crush.

This week for the award show series, I look at two award shows that do not consider Broadway: the Lucille Lortel Awards and the Obie Awards. 

In this column, I write about the development of one of this spring’s jukebox musicals, The Heart of Rock and Roll. My old friend, Gordon Greenberg (represented off-Broadway earlier this season with Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors), is directing it, and I recently chatted with him about his decade-long involvement with the show.

Every once and a while I see a performance and wonder if there is some stage magic involved. That is how I felt while watching Dead Outlaw. Andrew Durand—giving what The New York Times referred to as a “wow of a performance” —stays so still for such a large portion of the musical that I wondered if a beta blocker was utilized.

Throughout my career, I’ve tried to stay attuned to the ticket-buying experience. I walk through the process online at the major retailers. I’ll stop by rush lines or in-person lotteries to talk to folks. And, last week, I woke up early a few days to talk to people on/participate in the standing-room-only line for Hadestown.

In the summer of 2022, Canadian-based producers David Galpern and Charles Roy launched ArtsDistrict Brooklyn in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. But I’ve spoken to over a dozen people—some only on background because of potential legal implications—who allege they are owed money related to work they performed for the venue.

In recent years, we’ve talked a lot in the theater about influencers. There is good reason for this—in terms of the broader landscape, influencer marketing has grown to an over $20 billion industry. But I’ve long wondered whether influencers are directly selling theater tickets. And, in my polling of 200 theatergoers, the answer was: “No.”

We’ve all heard about the shuttering of media outlets and the departure of entertainment journalists from publications still in business. In the last couple of months, I’ve been thinking a lot about how the dearth of theater coverage is changing our perception of the art form.

One thing that has been pivotal to theater’s return in New York City is the New York City Musical and Theatrical Production Tax Credit, which is a New York State program, despite what the name might indicate. It was expanded to apply to both Broadway and off-Broadway. I can’t tell you how many producers have told me it was pivotal in getting their shows off the ground.

Every once and a while I like to do litigation updates because one of my pet peeves is how the media sometimes reports when a case is filed and then drop it. One such case is Chad Kimball’s lawsuit related to his departure from Come From Away. Another is the one bartenders at Shubert Organization theaters brought against the theater chain and others.

It’s been almost a week, but I’m still having trouble processing the loss of Chita Rivera. I expected to see her onstage again. What always struck me about Rivera, the ultimate gypsy (a term she clung to after others eschewed it in the name of political correctness), is, even in later years, she still seemed like a dancer first, a star second.

I like to do one topic per week, but on rare occasions, so much happens that a subdivided column is necessary. This is one of those times. Appropriate is a revival. The Tonys will have a new spokesperson. Jewish leaders are fighting against antisemitism.

Last week, the Broadway League announced that Charlotte St. Martin would be “retiring” after 18 years. An email went out to League members shortly before the release. And I’m not sure I’ve ever received quite so many theater-related communications before noon.

Many folks have read in the last couple of weeks that Broadway is suffering from a suburban theatergoer drought. That is true. Two things are important to note related to that. First, this impacts more than simply pure overall attendance numbers. Second, this isn’t totally unique to New York.

Last year, I spent a lot of time at stage doors. I wanted to write about what it was like. I wrote about my experience at the stage doors of straight plays and the installment about musicals was supposed to follow quickly thereafter but kept getting bumped. I could not let it sit too far into 2024 however, so here it is.

Late last season a musical came to Broadway from an unusual tryout city with a marketing campaign tied to a fruit. Shucked will leave Broadway in a month, though seemingly not because of either of the oddities I just mentioned.

Gutenberg! The Musical! has been one of the few 2023-2024 season bright spots at the box office. And I admit, it has outpaced my expectations. But, it’s almost 20 years old, and so the Tony Awards Administration Committee has deemed it should compete in the Best Revival category.

As his Here Lies Love played its last week of performances on Broadway, producer Hal Luftig scored a significant victory in court. The Bankruptcy Court of the Southern District of New York recommended confirming the reorganization plan for Hal Luftig Company, Inc.

New York energy company Con Edison, a longtime local supporter of the arts, is the latest corporation to back away from funding them. Dwindling local corporate giving has been a problem across the country, as I’ve previously written. But this Con Ed move is surprising given that the company reinforced its dedication to the arts in recent years.

This week we learned the last Broadway performance of Here Lies Love would take place on November 26. To some, it seemed rather shocking that a show that took so long to get here would run for so short a time.

It is a rare week when two topics related to set design interest me. But that is what happened last week. The first topic involves social media and AI. The weekend before last, people kept sending me a TikTok clip or related posts about The Wiz allegedly using AI to generate its “backdrops.” The second topic involves a terminology change.

Bill Kenwright, who passed away last week, was an old-school dedicated leader. He committed totally to his projects. He knew more about them than anyone. And he often knew more about other people’s projects than even the people involved with those projects.

Last week, London’s National Theatre announced that starting in February 2024, select Tuesday and Thursday performances for new productions will begin at 6:30pm. Is it a good idea? Should the West End or Broadway adopt 6:30pm curtains? It’s hard to know, but it could pay off.

This week, I’m going to answer a couple of questions I received in the past few weeks. I wrote in my column a couple of weeks ago about the change in ticket buying habits. Post-pandemic Broadway research has shown people buying tickets later. The question posed to me was: 'Why?'

Last week the venue for the 77th Tony Awards was announced—The David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. For the second year in a row, we will have a new venue for theater’s biggest award show. And those I spoke to in the industry were split on the choice.