Chris Jones: What went right — and wrong — on Broadway in 2022

The unsavory “Chinese tourist” comment aside, I found this to be the part I most agreed with:

The industry bosses really should have better used the great rise of the understudy in 2022. Instead of keeping critics away from them (I kept getting canceled from shows, all year long), the industry should have thrown away its hierarchy and celebrated who had shown up on the night and given them some ink and maybe even a Tony or two. Audiences love to feel their performance is special.

Sure, that would have offended some elite players. But more stars might have been born. And, based on all of the above, Broadway sure still needs ‘em.

Part of the reason I’ve attended A STRANGE LOOP as many times as I have is because of the understudies and how much of the show’s dynamic changes when one is on. When it’s a different Usher, the interactions with Thoughts are unique. When the Thoughts are different, the interactions between themselves and Usher are different. It’s a new show any time the understudy board goes up.

Honestly, Kyle Ramar Freeman would have some hardware on his shelf if they awarded understudies.

As far as the article, I agree with a lot of what he said. I've been thinking a lot about the potential audience for Aint No Mo and his article got me thinking

If somebody feels I'm wrong on what you're about to read, please correct me. I'm white and saying this only as an observer, but also as someone who studies politics and is very poll and data savvy.

One thing that I've been thinking about a lot with regards to Aint No Mo is that the Black audiences en masse and the super progressive Black artist cohort seem to be just as much, if not even more, out of sync than white audiences and our super progressive artist cohort or audiences and progressive artists overall.

For example, it's very clear that Jordan E. Cooper has quite a bit of contempt for both the Obama and Biden administrations. That's totally within his prerogative and it's totally within his prerogative to make art about that. However, polls show that Black people en masse don't agree with him at all. Even at his lowest national approval rating in 2010 and 2014, Obama never dropped below 80% approval among Black people and, as of the most recent YouGov polls in December, Biden's approval among Black people was at 77%, with Harris (who is also the target of some bits in Aint No Mo) trailed him only slightly at 70%. This is just one example of a larger issue of the audience and creators being out of sync.

Then that is blamed solely on the inability of Broadway to market to people of color. I'm not saying that's not an issue (it's clear to me that there were also marketing and producing missteps with this show), but it's hard for me to take that with a straight face as the sole reason the show wasn't a success when, 8 blocks away, MJ has been at 100% capacity for 28 of the last 29 weeks (it turned in a meager 99% one week in November) with an EXTREMELY diverse audience.

It's not exactly the same as what Jones was talking abut, but I think they go hand-in-hand as broader indications of producers not understanding the market.