Survey on Commercialisation of Broadway Musicals

Hey! I go on this preamble in the form itself but so you know what you're getting into(!) - I'm a music student at the University of Oxford writing my undergraduate dissertation on the commercialisation of Broadway musicals, with a particular focus on the 2017/18 season. As part of this I want to get an idea of how audiences and fans feel about this topic, to compliment what I've taken from critical responses to these shows and the more academic reading I've done. As a longtime lurker on these messageboards I know you guys are all pretty opinionated about that kind of thing so your responses would be greatly appreciated!

You can fill in the form here! Thanks in advance :)

i was able to follow the link and fill out your survey, but i don't think i am much help because i feel that broadway is a business and thus all shows are meant to be "commercial".

LLW2 said: "scarlet721 said: "i was able to follow the link and fill out your survey, but i don't think i am much help because i feel that broadway is a business and thus all shows are meant to be "commercial"."

Same here. I started to take the survey but found I was unable to complete it for that very reason. It's all commerce, i.e., commercial."

It's all about that $$$ on Bway.

Actually, those in themselves are very helpful answers and very much in line with my opinions on the matter based on all the research I've done so far & my own personal experience! I obviously didn't want to let my own opinions flavour the survey itself because there are a lot of other people who do think musicals can vary wildly in terms of how commercial they are (and what a "commercial" musical even IS) and the real point of this survey is just to try and get a broader sense of how people define "commercialism" in the context of musical theatre. In hindsight I probably should have added a question along the lines of whether people believe musical theatre is an inherently commercial artform!

Scarlet Leigh said: "Some shows that are created using an idea that is a commercial idea but are handled with care and a passion and create something that is perhaps selling itself on the name but if it didn't have that name it would still be a good work on its own. Meanwhile you have OTHER things that are commercial simply because "LOOK AT THIS POP CULTURE THING YOU LIKE COME SEE IT WE KNOW IT SUCKS BUT YOU ARE GONNA SEE IT ANYWAY CUS POP CULTURE!" Something like... well I will use a current show as an example, Beetlejuice. I find this to be the latter and not the former kind of commercial theatre because of all the reports that they didn't really change any of it's flaws from out of town to Broadway. They didn't take care with the work in the FIRST place and then didn't care to improve it or feel they needed to improve it because it's selling itself on the name."

I feel like there are two issues here. First of all, almost all Broadway musicals are commercial to some degree, because they are based on a known property. The Bands Visit, Kinky Boots and Waitress were all based on fairly small and obscure movies, but enough people knew about these films to generate initial interest in the adaptations. And revivals (even ones as creative and imaginative as Once On This Island) could be considered commercial as well, because they are sold on their familiar songs and characters. The few Broadway productions not based on a film tend to be either based on a book (Hamilton, Be More Chill), a public domain story (Hadestown) or based on history (Come From Away). The few which aren't (The Book of Mormon, Dear Evan Hansen, The Prom) tend to be promoted on the basis of their writers, composers and directors, who tend to be quite well-known on Broadway...

In addition, most of the people behind commercial productions take their work very seriously - maybe too seriously. There are few productions on Broadway more commercial than Frozen, but during the promotional tour, director Michael Grandage talked endlessly about how it could be compared to Shakespeare. His more reverential approach turned out to be a liability - Frozen's biggest weakness has always been its story, and Grandage ended up exacerbating its flaws. However, his belief that Elsa could be compared to Hamlet and Anna to Rosalind demonstrates that commercial musicals and "high art" are not as far apart as we would like to think...