Black box space on Broadway — Page 2

I still think that you have the idea that Broadway and Off-Broadway are streets/areas. Also the Public has spaces that are all less than 300 seats, thus disqualifying it as being considered as a Broadway House if it were located farther uptown. It is not the job of the city to make these spaces, it is the job of the producers and companies to get creative like Natasha or Punchdrunk did.

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Updated On: 12/18/13 at 01:54 PM

I can't help it.

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And so the true agenda is revealed.

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Then maybe you should take this idea and bring it somewhere it can make a difference and not on some message board on the internet. I admire your passion but putting it hear with people who really cannot do a thing to help, is not going to get it done.

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This would never happen. Commercial producing on Broadway is a risky, expensive FOR PROFIT venture. Owning real estate on Broadway is an even larger FOR PROFIT venture. There is no PROFIT in erecting a black box theater of experimental plays and musicals of that size. It is simply not practical and for someone who claims to run his own business, I thought you would understand that most. This is why there are site specific venues, and temporary tents, and small Off-Broadway houses, and not-for-profit organizations like The Public. They do this and do it very well much of the time. To expect that success to translate on Broadway, in a FOR PROFIT world, with 500+ seats, is ludicrous.

Artc3--
Almost nothing is literally impossible, but your original question was not about someone doing the impossible but about rational people doing this. You've been given lots of explanation for why no rational person would do this, so you now have wandered into Don Quixote territory.

As I said, what you are proposing (while I understand the motivation) is illogical, and financially impossible. The renovation of 42nd Street, by contrast, was astute and phenomenally financially rewarding for all parties involved (except maybe the hookers and drug dealers and common criminals). Is it possible that some billionaire will throw away $150 million on this folly? Theoretically, yes; but what you are suggesting is not some run of the mill "dream."

I'm not sure I understand why people got so angry about this subject! We've had two examples of theaters that need non-traditional spaces to work with Here Lies Love and Natasha, etc. in the past year. The desire to transfer them to Broadway is a result of the belief that Broadway designation carries some sort of cache. Tony eligibility, more review attention, etc. Maybe those sorts of shows aren't going to keep coming around that often. Or maybe they're a sign of things to come. The idea of having a large flexible space that is designated a Broadway theater doesn't seem that insane to me. Or impossible. Maybe all it would take would be retrofitting Circle in the Square to be even more flexible. If there continue to be shows like the two I mentioned that people think could make them more money if a more flexible space with Broadway designation existed, then it would become commercially viable. Maybe not soon, but eventually.

Artc3, I think it is very admirable that you have started this thread for which I have enjoyed reading so far. As this is a message board primarily for light hearted discussion to discuss all the merits, pros and cons on everything to do with theatre, which nothing is off limits.

Now I have always thought that that a theatre based on a expanded Donmar Warehouse in London, which would sit about 650 people, which no seat would be more than 12 rows back, also attached to the theatre would be a top class Michelin star restaurant, where guests could enjoy top class food with some of the finest wines and then be entertained with either one of the best play or musical on Broadway.

ArtC3, What you are saying about the 42nd Street revitalization is not correct. Yes, there were naysayers-plenty of them-regarding whether 42nd Street would ever "come back." But the redevelopment work there was based on detailed studies and urban planning going back more than a decade before Disney reopened the New Amsterdam. That work plotted a course that was not guaranteed (just as Broadway shows are not guaranteed to be successful) but it was based on well-thought out planning. There is only one major fiasco that has resulted from all that work-the Little Shubert-and interestingly enough, if you look at what went wrong there, it's the same thing you are proposing for this black box-f formula that won't work even if everything goes right.

What you are suggesting is akin to a show that comes to Broadway that someone fell in love with, but that will never recoup. Except that you have to add an extra zero to all the numbers. I admire your interest in this-I don't disagree it's something that would be nice to have-but the costs are stacked against it, and if you do a budget for a show, it'll make the major flops look like successes. Moreover, the 2 shows that keep getting mentioned don't inspire confidence that they would fill a Broadway size house (even a small one.) Natasha is not selling out a much smaller venue, and the Public apparently wasn't able to make the numbers work for an off-B transfer-so why think a Broadway transfer would be anythiing other than Passing Strange redux? But most importantly, even if you had this 500ish seat black box you want, and these shows sold it out, they would still lose money. No one builds theatres to fail.

Sauja-I basically answered your question above-those 2 shows do not have the sort of mojo that it would take to work on Broadway. I'm not angry (maybe some are) and I wish it would work, but this is a numbers game and the numbers tell all.

follow up... I guess what I'm saying is this... If there was a Broadway space that could comfortably hold 500+ people and the HERE LIES LOVE production requirements, why wouldn't The Public take the risk? Upsizing that environment and running that show would not be any more prohibitive than mounting a proscenium version.

What are your thoughts?

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ARTc3, I agree with you 100% and it's frustrating to read the obtuse, closed-minded petulant replies of so many of the posters on this thread.

The sad matter is that I have had your exact idea and talked about it to people in real life who I thought would like it, and have gotten basically the same response as on here.

I think when people hear "black box" they think "small". I absolutely agree with you that there could be a Broadway-sized space seating between 750-1350 people configured in something other than a traditional proscenium. Basically you just need electrical power capacity, high ceilings and enough open space between structural columns. "Broadway" is defined as a theatrical piece being performed under a Production Contract in a League-designated space with more than 500 seats and in the geographical grid between 40th-54th St and 6th - 9th Ave.

There is no reason why an enterprising producer could not decide that his/her show would benefit from a more environmental staging, find an appropriately-sized space within the boundaries, use more than 500 seats, hire everybody under the prevailing Broadway agreements, and present it as a Broadway attraction, eligible for Tony Awards among other things, and also with the "cache" or the "imprimatur" or being a "Broadway" show, which like it or not makes a huge difference in the public's perception.

Why would the rent on such a space have to be prohibitively more than what the Nederlanders take if your show is in one of their houses? If it's the same number of seats, the same ticket prices, the same salaries, why would it be financially all that different than any other Broadway show? I'm sure a brilliant designer would gleefully accept the challenge of designing not only the playing space, but also integrating 1000-odd audience members into it.

Roseland would be a great space. I had a pipe dream that maybe the Virgin Megastore space could have been a Broadway-sized environmental house. It would solve the problem of where to put "Here Lies Love" or "Natasha etc." Producers may be more inclined to produce shows that would play well in a large space and have a broad appeal but don't work best in a proscenium space if there were a place to do them.

I'm sure had BWW been around in the '60s we'd have people screaming about how you can't have Air Conditioning in a theatre, the buildings are too big for it to work well, the contraptions are too loud, and people go away for the summer and shows close down, anyway. People aren't going to Broadway in the summer, they're going to things outdoors or Summer Stock Melody Tents and so forth. It's economically unfeasible to air condition an entire Broadway theatre, not to mention it would require structural overhauls to some of the buildings as they didn't leave room for A/C ducts when they built the buildings. People have gone to the theatre since the beginning of time without air conditioning, there's no reason a Northern city with harsh winters needs to equip its theatres with expensive, useless equipment to cool them off during the brief time of year no one goes anyway. It makes absolutely no financial sense and no one will ever do it.

Let's bookmark this thread somewhere on our computers and if BWW is still around in 10 years let's look back and see how foolish the naysayers look when there have been multiple environmental Broadway productions in non-traditional spaces, and possibly one or more permanent venues for them.

And for fun, I've been looking for an excuse to share these. I snapped a couple of pics of the "Dude" set as they appear in a newspaper article about the construction. They're not great quality - I wish I had a good scanner. I grabbed these at the Lincoln Center library.

Basically, they removed all the seats from the Orchestra section at the Broadway, and build an elevated stage floor in its place, making the Mezzanine the main level. They also built a second section of seating basically above the existing stage, behind the proscenium arch.

Here's a pic where you can see them building the new stage floor. This pic is taken from the back of the balcony, House Left. You can see the proscenium and how low the opening is, giving you some indication how high up the stage floor was.



Here's the set closer to finished, taken from the balcony House Right. You can see the front rail of the mezzanine pretty clearly.



And here's a "fisheye" view of the finished set.



I wish there were better pics out there that show the set - these are all I've ever found. At the time, some people wondered why they needed to tear apart a theatre to do that and couldn't they have just gone into an empty space and built it up?