NYMF to shut down

[TheGingerBreadMan]

Posted: 1/2/20 at 5:56pm

This is sad news. It's disheartening that funding is growing so small to the point where it's becoming difficult to support new works.

https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/NYMF-To-Shut-Down-After-Fifteen-Seasons-20200102

[itsjustmejonhotmailcom]

Posted: 1/2/20 at 6:42pm

TheGingerBreadMan said: "This is sad news. It's disheartening that funding is growing so small to the point where it's becoming difficult to support new works.

https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/NYMF-To-Shut-Down-After-Fifteen-Seasons-20200102"

I think this speaks to mismanagement more than funding drying up. There are plenty of non-profits in NY who support new work who are not going anywhere anytime soon. I feel like, especially in recent years, NYMF really lowered the bar and was accepting bad shows. They also took a piece of the show's future profits, and it cost a ton to mount a show in the festival. More than it should for what the shows got out of it. 

[Kad]

Posted: 1/2/20 at 7:33pm

NYMF has not had a good reputation in the industry for a while, and you could tell by the declining quality of the work presented and the shrinking clout and coverage it received.

[ModernMillie3]

Posted: 1/2/20 at 7:40pm

I think this speaks to mismanagement more than funding drying up. There are plenty of non-profits in NY who support new work who are not going anywhere anytime soon. I feel like, especially in recent years, NYMF really lowered the bar and was accepting bad shows. They also took a piece of the show's future profits, and it cost a ton to mount a show in the festival. More than it should for what the shows got out of it. 

Completely agree.

[bk]

Posted: 1/2/20 at 7:52pm

Having done a show at NYMF back in 2007, I can tell you it was a sham then and has only gotten worse over the years.  In what should have been an even playing field for all shows, they allowed producers to game the system, work around the amounts of money that productions were allowed to spend, and it was chaos from start to finish.  The year we did our show, there were absolute union limits as to what you could spend - and somehow every show managed to spend double that and, in the case of one show that year, said show spent over 100K, rented their own theater, which was not supposed to happen, so that they could store their set there rather than the five-foot space that NYMF allowed.  

I'm still glad we did it because we did well and we were picked up by the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization for licensing, which resulted in a lot of productions here and overseas.  For most shows, it was a complete waste of time.

Updated On: 1/2/20 at 07:52 PM

[darquegk]

Posted: 1/2/20 at 9:32pm

My NYMF experience was an up and down mixed bag, but I still am proud of the experience I had there.

[LightsOut90]

Posted: 1/3/20 at 1:11am

didnt they have Time Square billboard ads like 3-4 years ago...?

[chrishuyen]

Posted: 1/3/20 at 11:45pm

It's interesting to hear these other "behind the scenes" perspectives as someone who's only been as an audience member.  While the shows I've seen have been varied in quality, I always thought it was a great place to discover new work and see what new shows might be coming further down the pipeline.  Does anyone have recommendations for other similar festivals that are still going on?

[trentsketch]

Posted: 1/4/20 at 12:12am

As someone who did press the first few years, NYMF has always had problems. I would find out from show creators after their run ended that I had been offered tickets to review their work and was just never told by the organizers.

I also remember when NYMF had to reach out to past participants to see if anyone had the program book and other documents from the first year since they somehow didn't.

Still, I had a lot of fun seeing the shows over the years, and even wound up working on a few productions. It's sad to see a festival that tried to be a platform for new original musicals shutter.

chrishuyen said: "Does anyone have recommendations for other similar festivals that are still going on?"

I know people who have had very good experiences with the New York Theatre Festival. They run Summerfest and Winterfest. It's a similar format to NYMF, only spread out over a longer period of time and for plays and musicals. They're also shorter shows; maximum length is 90 minutes and anything over 45 is considered full length. All productions take place in the same theater (where NYMF was a roll of the dice if you got a nice theater or a rehearsal studio in the back of a theater for the show) and have access to a stock library of sets and props if they choose to use them. Each show gets fewer performances, but all the shows have the same resources and playing space to work with.