The Future of The Non-Musical on Broadway

That is truly sad

Very true, Mimi. They also need something they can take home - again, with the attention span issue, a CD that not only reminds them of their experience but allows them to relive it over and over in order to truly understand what was happening in the show is quite valuable.

And yes, it is very sad. I marvel that GOLDA'S BALCONY is still running. Not because it doesn't deserve to be - it absolutely does - Tovah is so incredible - but because it's a straight play about significant historical events.

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Updated On: 12/7/04 at 02:37 PM

I didnt even begin to think about the fact of the matter that the CD take home allows consumers to get more for their buck. The thing that needs to remembered about Broadway is that it is a commercial venture. The stuff that gets produced is the most marketable work in theatre. We can't expect that there will be many unhighly marketable works that do financially well on Broadway. Producers know this. They don't put stuff up on Broadway unless their believe that there will be a financial return for their investors.

Very rarely, a producer will put a work on Broadway because they simply love the piece and don't care how much money they will loose (Taboo). I propose that there needs to be another forum for untraditional works to have their play.

We americans have really only truely created and cultured few things in our history. The Musical is the one that we can claim as an art form that we created, and do the best. We celebrate that.

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Remember any money donated to a not-for-profit theatre is tax deductible, so no one's really "losing" money contributing to MTC and Lincoln Center, not to mention the great off-Broadway companies like The Public, Playwrights, NYTW, Atlantic, the Vineyard, Second Stage, Signature et al. I would love it if enough donations would pour into any of those companies I just named that would allow them to acquire a 500+ seat Broadway eligible space. They'd obviously need to greatly increase their subscriber bases considerably to make such a space financially feasible, but it would be a wonderful addition to the Broadway scene to have the productions of any of those theatres be able to take on a higher profile and have some of the younger, fledgling playwrights/composers/lyricists that these theatres support get the kind of national exposure that comes with getting a Broadway production.

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Updated On: 12/7/04 at 02:45 PM

Definitly. I didnt mean that it was a loss of money in terms of being a bad thing, but the reality is a non profit adventure is a loosing money adventure. But in those situations making money is not the point.

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There are two problems-
1. Prices-I was truly horrified to see $95 tickets for Democracy (I paid $65.) One solution is the SPF, Summer Play Festival which just completed its inaugural year www.spfnyc.com/ Tickets were $10, and i saw some interesting works. However, a wealthy patron underwrote it, and NONE of the plays have transferred to Broadway/Off-Broadway.
And compare that to the New York Musical Festival also having it's inaugural year www.nymf.org/ Several shows will transfer-Altar Boyz, Trailer Park Musical, etc.
2. American attention spans- no solution there...

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One of my arguments has been that since few plays seem to run more than two or three months anyway, why doesn't that group of a dozen or so producers who seem to be behind all of the money-losing straight plays every season, just get together and form their own not-for-profit company (or toss a lot of money at an already established one)? Together they lose millions and millions year after year on straight plays that simply can't attract enough of an audience to run a year and break even. Fine.

Start a not-for-profit (in partnership with Jujamcyn or the Nederlanders or the Shuberts who could provide a theatre -- for a negotiated price of course) similar in set up to MTC or LCT, where you offer a season of 5 new plays (for, say $200 -- roughly what a membership at the other theatres costs .... $40 a play). Each play does a 8 - 9 week limited engagement (about what most of them would do in a commercial run on Broadway anyway) and with such a limited time commitment, imagine the kinds of actors you might be able to attract (Streep, Hopkins, Irons, Bates, DeNiro -- wonderful stage actors we lost to Hollywood long ago). With major names, they'd have no problem selling subscriptions, plus be eligible for all manner of government and corporate donations, thus greatly reducing the actual financial outlay needed from each producer. However, come Tony time, they'd have five eligible plays in the running, it would have cost them far less than had they produced them commercially and all out-of-pocket is tax deductible.

They might also toss in a less than commercial musical or two each season (the next Caroline or Change or Wild Party or Light In The Piazza).

I know, I know, it's all a pipe dream -- what would make these big bad producers go into the not-for-profit world where there are no PROFITS to brag about. My point is, there don't seem to ever be any profits from straight plays anymore anyway and haven't been for years. If you're still nonetheless committed to producing straight plays and apparently don't mind losing millions a year, then why not get together with all your other rich like-minded pals and get more bang for your buck -- produce five plays under not-for-profit auspices for what it would have cost you to produce two or three plays commercially. It's cheaper for you, cheaper for us the audience, and allows playwrights and directors to be more daring artistically since the pressure's off in terms of having to create a play that's more commercial and that appeals to a broad enough spectrum of the tastes that would allow it to run for a year. And maybe, playwrights can start writing plays that have more than one or two characters again.

Anyway, just a thought. I know my idea's not perfect (and probably not all that original), but somebody better come up with some creative solutions soon, or else more and more tourist-geared crap will end up clogging all of the Broadway theatres, and smart, innovative, challenging plays and musicals will become a thing of the past -- as far as New York is concerned.

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Updated On: 12/7/04 at 03:34 PM

This has been worrying me more and more as the last few years have passed. I recently mentioned to a friend that I was going to NY overnight and seeing "Little Women" and "La Cage". She immediately said that I sure had changed a lot! I was the one who never went to musicals simply because I never found one that came close to the cerebral and emotional experience I could get from a straight play. (Even in those few moments when a musical might 'pull me in', it always succeeded in breaking the mood by breaking into song!)

Thinking back just over the last few years - The Crucible, The Invention of Love, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, An Almost Holy Picture, Long Day's Journey Into Night, Proof, Morning's at Seven, Wrong Mountain, The Tale of the Allergist Wife, No Noise, Death of a Salesman, The Iceman Cometh, The Goat or Who is Sylvia,.... God, I loved these plays!

If they ever did start that not for profit to produce straight plays, I'D SUBSCRIBE. And I don't even live in New York.

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Mamie, I think you and I (and my boyfriend at the time) were the only ones who loved "Wrong Mountain." Every single critic HATED that play but I thought it was very smart, funny and thought-provoking (as well as well acted). I loved your other choices as well.

Let the big all-star revivals of the classics of the canon stay with commercial Broadway -- Raisin, Iceman, Long Day's, Cat, Salesman -- with big movie stars they can compete with the splashy musicals for the tourist dollar and actually turn a profit. But something needs to be done to help the NEW plays find an audience and the new playwrights to survive here before they leave for Hollywood to become overpaid screenwriters and sitcom hacks, or, as Magruder said in an earlier thread, we're not going to have anything to revive (except the same old chestnuts) in 20 years.

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Updated On: 12/7/04 at 06:10 PM

Regarding a couple of your examples:

-- This Is Our Youth played here in NYC off-Broadway twice (NEVER Broadway) with a cast of unknowns, including Mark Ruffalo before his film career took off; Ruffalo gave one of the most natural and accomplished stage performances I'd seen in years and I predicted great things for him then (while I'm happy for his success in Hollywood, I do hope he makes it back to the stage at some point soon). The play only became "Summer Camp for Starlets" years later when it was produced in London with Jake Gyllenhaal et al......

-- Proof ran on Broadway for over two years starring Mary-Louise Parker (later replaced by Jennifer Jason-Leigh and Anne Heche) and proved to be one of the few major nonmusical hits on Broadway in the last several years. Parker was deemed too old to repeat the role on screen which resulted in Paltrow being cast in the film (the release of which is now held up indefinitely, apparently)

-- Angels in America was a VERY unique phenomenon. It began at Eureka in San Francisco, received an acclaimed production in London and by the time it arrived in New York, it had already been hailed as one of the greatest plays written in half a century on BOTH sides of the Atlantic (Frank Rich of the Times reviewewd the London production and raved so that it became THE event of the theatrical season when it finally opened here in 1993). I saw each part multiple times and it was indeed one of the greatest things I've ever seen in my life. It's success had nothing to do with celebrity (Ron Leibman was the closest thing to one in the cast and he was hardly famous) or "remembrance", it had to do with being THE EVENT that every so-called cultured person (and anyone who liked to think of themselves as one) within a 100 miles of NYC felt they HAD to see -- one of the few MUST SEE nonmusical events on Broadway in the last decade or two (the 8 hour Nicholas Nickelby in the early 80s was probably the last one before that). Neverthess, Angels still lost $1.1 million during its original Broadway run (it recouped that loss during the subsequent road tour).

-- The Laramie Project played Off-Broadway at the Union Square Theatre (NEVER Broadway) and sold well for a time because a stellar slate of reviews, but only ran about 6 months -- serious theatre is a tough sell in this day and age and the subject matter just never appealed to enough people (and in fact probably repelled quite a few) for the play to be financially successful.

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