Industry Pro

It’s no secret that Broadway has not rebounded to pre-pandemic levels. The Thanksgiving week box office gross was $37,475,773, compared to $41,687,333 for Thanksgiving week 2019. (While fewer shows were playing, capacity was also down, as was average ticket price.) The list of reasons for this is long: tourism is not fully back, we have a strong dollar, Covid is still keeping many traditional theatergoers away, at-home entertainment is booming, crime is constantly in the news, etcetera.

With many theatres getting into the swing of things with their holiday offerings, the end of 2022 is now in sight for many companies. The last few years have seen seismic shifts in how the industry operates, andCara Joy David brings us a great piece about how some companies are keeping streaming open as a way to maintain access for audiences.

Streaming helped the industry stay alive through the pandemic. Now, as audiences are again heading to the theater, many theaters are ceasing streaming options. However, some are digging in on their commitment to virtual viewing.

As many theatres get into the swing of their holiday shows and end of year giving campaigns, some good signs for the New York theater industry as tourism continues to rebound from the pandemic. While things still aren’t back to the record setting year of 2019, the city is anticipating ending the year at about 85% of those levels.

The theater we see is not usually a first draft of a work. That seems obvious, but very little press attention is paid to just how a show gets developed. One way has traditionally been through theater development programs. These programs are intensive communal experiences, often pairing the artist with a dramaturg and advisors to develop a piece.

In the US, programs designed to help businesses and producers make it through the pandemic have been winding down or coming to an end over the last fiscal year - but audiences and funding aren’t yet back to their pre-pandemic levels, leaving leaders in a tough position to figure out how to get their institutions back on firm financial footing.

In late September, The Broadway League and Actors’ Equity Association kicked negotiations into high gear for the next Broadway and sit-down production contract. The last contract expired, but was extended while the two groups worked through various pandemic-related issues. Equity, ever the fan of a social media hashtag campaign, this week asked its members to share the hashtag #ItsAboutTimeBroadway along with their support for the union.

Ask anyone working in arts administration right now, and they’ll tell you that the challenges they are facing are numerous and unprecedented. For many regional theaters, audiences are slow to return - but is that individual ticket buyers or season subscribers? Are they concerned about COVID or is it something else?

For many working in the entertainment industry, it can often feel like we’re living in a different economy than everyone else - the hours maintained have long been different from the rest of the working world, the day to day tasks, the workplace cultures. This week, different stories about how broader economic trends are showing up in the arts.

AEA featured prominently in industry news last week - voicing support for a casino project in Times Square, as the subject of a defamation suit from producer Garth Drabinsky, and their efforts to organize the dancers at Star Garden. All as the industry continues to work towards a new normal, while facing tremendous challenges on all fronts.

Last week A SIGN OF THE TIMES -- was announced for a new developmental reading. The release stated the musical had “several script revisions” and the librettist was now Lindsey Hope Pearlman. Absent was any mention of well-known comedy writer Bruce Vilanch, the original librettist, who had been developing the show for almost a decade.

Last week Actors’ Equity announced that it was one step closer to unionizing the dancers at Star Garden Topless Dive Bar—the National Labor Relations Board approved a petition for a union recognition election. In other words, if the dancers (and DJs) want a union, they can join one by voting.

Questions of access continue to be discussed after an incident at Hadestown last week, ultimately highlighting that there is a deep need for more education around the topic for everyone involved. In the UK, educational access for school children is becoming more challenging than ever before with cuts to funding for those trips.

As theatres work to return to the new normal, we continue to find new ways in which the industry needs to find improvements on the way that they treat those that are creating the art - we have arrived at the “rubber meets the road” moment for every theatre that issued statements about their ideals in the past few years.

Settlement was the word of the week on Broadway, with both the Rudin/SpotCo suit and JPP/Wagner Johnson lawsuits finding resolution through settlement - the latter is the subject of a new regular feature for this newsletter from our Industry Editor Cara Joy David.

Stories of transformation highlight the newsletter this week - with two different stories below - one looking at the evolution of Broadway, the other how Regional Theatres are transforming. Both are asking questions in light of racial justice protests that have occured over the past few years, alongside a powerful moment for the labor movement.

With the announced closing of Broadway’s longest running show, questions have risen about tourism (the numbers in New York actually look much stronger than a hot take on Phantom might suggest), about the resiliency of brands (also highlighted by what the future might hold for Second City), and what gets audiences excited to come out to the theater.

Last week, the Board of Directors at Victory Gardens opted to terminate their full staff and change the fundamental direction of the institution. This is the latest development in a sweeping labor reset taking place across the industry.

Theatre companies across the globe continue to grapple with some of the earliest questions posed upon reopening: what to do about masks? As more mixed policies come into play, we continue to see that there are segments of the audience that won’t come with masks, and segments that won’t come without, putting producers in a difficult position.

As summer comes to a close, many regional theaters are preparing to get their new seasons started - for many, this season still carries with it a lot of risk - some of the shows in their season are still shows they had intended to do at some point during the pandemic, and segments of the audience are still hesitant to return to their seats.

Theatres and arts organizations are back to producing seasons in the way that we were used to before the pandemic. However, the audience hasn’t returned in the same way. In multiple articles in this week's newsletter, we examine the question from a few different angles - where has the audience gone, and how do producing organizations get them back?

The industry is in a weird spot right now, and the stories in this week’s newsletter highlight the divergent paths different segments of the industry are going down. As the industry recovers and reforms, we’ll continue to see these kinds of divides on the regional level, and we’ll bring you coverage of those divides as they happen.

Our two Industry Trend stories this week take a look at a few of the different ways that people are trying to bring change to the theatre industry: reforming the work environment that has long been problematic, and the way Princeton is working on developing a new audition process to help bring more people into theatre in an educational environment.

New Diorama Theatre in the UK announced an interesting new season: they won’t be producing any shows until 2023. The company wanted to give their artists the opportunity to rest away from the pressures of constantly producing.

A thought experiment from New Zealand examines a potentially new way to not only make arts funding more equitable, but transparent and with the opportunity for potential patrons to find projects to fund. This future thinking in the industry extends throughout the United States as well, as companies re-imagine what entry level programs look like.