The Lion Doesn't Sleep Tonight

[Phantom of London]

Posted: 11/22/12 at 12:18pm

The Lion King doesn't rely on personalities, but relies on excellent athletic actors, but the show doesn't really need names to sell tickets.

So saying that what is to stop The Lion King King employing more Swings, this would ensure that cast members would only do 8 shows a week but would alternate, this would enable the show to do a extra 2 shows a week, therefore doing 10 shows a week. Would this be possible?

[broadwaydevil]

Posted: 11/22/12 at 12:53pm

No on many levels. Equity would never allow it. Exceptions are occasionally granted for shows to have special 9 performance weeks for holidays etc. but Equity would never approve a show to consistently have 10 shows per week. Plus, even if there are swings, etc. there would be no way to make this work without having some actors, crew, etc. consistently work more than 8 times per week.

From a cost perspective, this would be a tremendous financial burden to a show and would severely increase running costs. Also, when do you propose they add performances? Lion King is a hot ticket that makes a huge amount of money every week. Why dilute the product, increase costs tremendously, and take a huge risk on a show that's a huge cash cow?

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 11/22/12 at 1:35pm

Also, swings and alternates are two different things.

[Phantom of London]

Posted: 11/22/12 at 6:06pm

Okay I could see this point being very controversial,which IMO makes it more interesting. I only could see The Lion King being the only show on Broadway being able to pull this off.

But in the past Disney has been anti union and are much bigger than Equity.

The Lion King could easily do a Friday matinee and a Saturday morning 11 am performance and I am positive the shows would sell out and pull in $400k - $500k a week.

[Yero my Hero]

Posted: 11/22/12 at 6:47pm

It's not just Equity, it's all the unions. Disney would have to either pay every single crew member and musician overtime, which would be a huge expense, or hire a second person for every single position behind the scenes. If Disney decided to override the unions and just do this, eery single union member in that theater would strike. Theatrical unions tend to back each other up.

You're talking about basically paying to run an entire second show, for only two extra performances worth of income. Based on last week's Grosses, the potential income per performance is only $200,000. It would cost more than that to pay everyone for an extra show.

Finally, Disney won't add additional performances for the same reason THE BOOK OF MORMON won't move to a larger theater. If you have fewer seats available to sell, it creates more demand.

It's not "controversial," it's just not good business sense and it would never happen.

As a side note, when GRINCH played Broadway, they worked out a nine-performance schedule with the unions, but that was a very short run over the holidays, and a 90-minute show, so an extra performance or two wouldn't be that much more time.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 11/22/12 at 7:15pm

Bottom line: you're talking about doubling the payroll costs while increasing the potential gross by 25%. (And not just payroll. The theater rental and artist royalties are based on percentage of gross, so those would increase as well.)

It would seem to make more sense (if indeed the demand is sufficient) to add a second company at a different theater. That way you could double your potential gross as well as doubling your payroll costs. (Multiplexes do this with movies all the time.)

But you might just end up shortening the run of the show, selling tix now at the expense of selling tix in the future.

[Phantom of London]

Posted: 11/22/12 at 7:30pm

I don't think you would need to employ a extra cast to cover another full production, that wouldn't be viable, for the extra performances you would need 8-10 extra performers (swings) and a extra stage manager, 2 stage hands and a wardrobe assistant, as I said you are still employing your personnel to do 8 shows a week, so you can spread the days off through all the other performances. It is a easy show to duplicate roles. There already is a lot of duplication on stage and back stage as the show needs a lot of extra people to cover every eventuality, than risk a performance cancellation.

So therefore adding 15/20% to the wage bill, also employing extra staff, so the unions should be happy as there members are being employed.

For the record Grinch played up to to 15 performances a week.

Updated On: 11/22/12 at 07:30 PM

[bdn223]

Posted: 11/22/12 at 7:43pm

Grinch also double cast all the non-principal roles as well as it was a limited run that had made special arrangements with the unions to enable the 15 performances a week for 2 weeks.

[dramamama611]

Posted: 11/22/12 at 7:47pm

Even if your scenario made sense, what happens when you need a swing to actually cover for someone that is sick or on vacation? It would throw off your numbers.

Frankly, if it could work for one show, it could work for others as well == but this won't happen, and it' shouldn't.

[Phantom of London]

Posted: 11/22/12 at 7:54pm

What does the show do now if someone is sick or on vacation?

[broadwaydevil]

Posted: 11/22/12 at 8:22pm

Have an understudy or swing like every show on Broadway but when you start scheduling swings into a performance (which, as someone pointed out above, makes them an alternate,) you've messed up the entire system. Not sure where you're getting this number of 8-10 swings from.

Bottom line: it doesn't make sense and it's not going to happen.