Posted: 4/26/21 at 12:41pm
Based on my understanding, ACL is thought of as the first "workshop", but this puzzles me a little bit as The 'O Neil had to have been doing staged readings through National Playwrights Conference since 1966 (from what I can tell based on the 'O Neil's website), and National Musical Theatre Conference since 1978. From what I can gather from ACL's Wiki page, it looks like the first "tape session" was January 26, 1974--so from there, I deduce that there was at least one "workshop" between then and opening night at the Public which was April 15, 1975. This would pre-date NMTC by a few years, but not NPC, which would've been around close to ten years at that point.
I guess my question is this--based on my understanding of theatre history, for most commercial theatre ventures, it seems common that shows would either transfer from university productions (see: Godspell, Pippin), or would go straight to trying out of town--why were producers so quick to stage things, presumably before they were ready to be seen? Surely backers auditions date back to around the 30's and perhaps even earlier, but am I to understand that the traditional trajectory of shows used to be:
backers auditions (sometimes maybe having concurrently with private, closed door table readings?) -> out of town try out -> broadway/off broadway?
While out of town still happens, it definitely is no where near where it used to be. I credit some of this to the internet and heavy production costs, but I can't understand why back in the day producers would bankroll entire plays and musicals without having some sort of an idea as to how they were going to be staged. I guess the economy wasn't really as bad back then, but still!
Given the many stories over the years of disastrous out of town tryouts (which I am of course so grateful for), I don't understand why producers wouldn't have come to a consensus that shows needed longer reading/workshop processes--surely this would've weeded out quite a few flops back in the day. Can someone help me understand this logic? Am I missing something here? Was it maybe more of a case-by-case basis where some shows went straight from backers auditions right into rehearsals, or were some of them actually formally workshopped more? I just can't imagine this being the case for infamous disasters such as Prettybelle, Portofino, Lolita My Love, Rachael Lily Rosenbloom, Into The Light among many, many others.
Apologies if something like this has already been posted.
