Okay, here's my trump card that could change the circumstances a little... I've worked IN New York, but I'm not based there. My last Off-Broadway show was in 2016; it was a limited run, but it launched the careers of current Broadway mainstays like Shoba Narayan and PJ Adzima, plus gave a boost to the now-beloved Philip Taratula. My home base is actually Pittsburgh, where EVERYTHING is cheaper. I've talked to other producers who only work in NY/LA, and their jaw drops when I tell them that the last five years of development on my show (public staged concert reading, industry workshop, score orchestration/arrangement and composer demo) came in at a total of $7400, give or take.
Being out here, you lose the convenience of being where everyone is at all times, being in the room where it happens. The meetings I take with NYC producers are phone calls or Zooms, not sit-downs with coffee, and while I'm one or two degrees of separation from lots of Broadway greats (sometimes no separation at all), I'm not where they spend most of their time. But what I lack in presence, I've made up in convenience: I have a pair of very gifted record engineers branching into producing, and they want to produce not only the concept album, but an expanded podcast audio drama (a la "Dead Outlaw") of the show, for mere fractions of what it would cost in NYC. I've also got a multimedia artist who (inspired by both EPIC and the YouTube animatics phenomenon) wants to do concept art, illustrations, animation and merch for the album. There's even a prototype of a tarot deck for the show sitting on my desk right now.
Ermengarde, your comment about how only MAJOR names can move the needle makes sense to me. I remember a decade ago, people like Patrick Page would do dozens of these little indie albums: my first exposure to Page was on the reference recording for Richard Oberacker's "The Sandman," but he's certainly not doing these now. Even during the pandemic, people like Alex Brightman would guest on tons of indie theatre projects. What REALLY stands out to me (and this is going to sound like Greek to some of you) is the pandemic era indie animation boom on YouTube, which roped in an absolute rogue's gallery of Broadway A-listers and television B-listers for almost zero-budget indie projects. The most famous of these is obviously Vivziepop's Hell universe, which has a jaw-dropping Broadway roster, but even comparatively small projects like Big Top Burger have pretty surprising casts for being an apparent shoestring budget.
Nothing's ever easy... and even when it is, nothing's ever OBVIOUS. But all signs are pointing to "quit trying to produce a regional or Off-Broadway premiere, and start raising funds to turn a scrappy indie recording into a more impressive multimedia piece."
