Theater turnover

As you said it depends on if it is a play/musical and the complexity of the set and lighting, but I would imagine a good rule of thumb is a minimum of 2-3 weeks. Including the box office opening, setting up the marquee, and technical elements.

And a few years before that, also at the Cort, A View from the Bridge closed on April 4 and Fences started previews on April 14.

The Ambassador was empty for five years, from the closing of The Circle in 1990, to the opening of Buttons on Broadway in 1995. It wasn't closed or abandoned. No one wanted it.

The Nederlander was empty for around 3 years between a short run of a Jackson Browne concert in 1993 and the opening of Rent in 1996.

Why do theatres on Broadway stay dark for so long?

in London, a show moves in swiftly once a show is dark, they pull something in from tour or the fringe, theatre is never dark here.

Look at Lincoln Centre, that was dark nearly a year until Oslo comes in for a limited run.

The long periods of a theatre sitting dark between shows is not due to union rules, but just the fact that producing on Broadway is far more expensive than it is producing in London. So even though we do occasionally see a show come together super fast to nab an unexpected vacancy it is not the norm.

I don't think you're going to find a "rule of thumb" here. It depends on the set, lights, etc. It depends on how much time they have. It depends on how many stagehands the producer is willing to hire, etc.

But we should keep in mind that national tours and professional stock houses regularly put in sets and lights as complicated as those on Broadway--and they do so in 24 to 48 hours. Of course, they rehearse taking out and putting in, and even if the sets look the same as those on Broadway, they may be much lighter, built only to last six months or so rather than the years a Broadway show may run.

One fact I can give you: when I worked in Miami Beach, it took 40 stagehands five full days to erect the set for A CHORUS LINE because Michael Bennett insisted that the "permanent" Broadway set be used at every site. (As most will recall, ACL only has 3 looks: black, mirror, gold finale, each created by rotating trapezoids upstage. But there were also hard legs rather than the traditional curtains.)

At the same theater, we regularly put in much more complicated looking sets in a fraction of the time.

The exception to all of the above, as others have noted, are instances where the house is essentially rebuilt for the show: COMET, CANDIDE '74, CATS, etc. But these are sui generis and tell us nothing about the "average" take in.

ETA I should have also pointed out that since the vast majority of Broadway shows are new productions, set may go up and then come down again because the director or producer decides they are wrong and must be replaced. This of course adds to the take in time.

Updated On: 2/17/17 at 10:30 PM

The Hudson ceased operating as a legit theater in 1968 and just reopened this week. A 49-year dry spell.

^^^ Well said. My point above about the long take-in for A CHORUS LINE is that appearances may be deceiving. Our season that ended with ACL began with the pre-Broadway tour of Zero Mostel's 1977 revival of FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, a much more complicated looking set.

Yet the plane delivering the sets was delayed and we loaded in the Act II pieces while opening night of Act I was already in progress. (Fortunately, we had a very deep stage.) And we were working with what would become the "Broadway" set for the revival.

HogansHero



As it was shown by people who have done load in an load outs on tour, clearly what you're saying is not with merit and doesn't hold water at all.

HogansHero said: "With all due respect, doing something on Broadway and doing it elsewhere is apples and oranges. For more reasons than I can count."

This is absolutely true. The politics and logistics of Broadway compared to a tour are completely different.

trpguyy said: "Islander_fan said: "HogansHero



As it was shown by people who have done load in an load outs on tour, clearly what you're saying is not with merit and doesn't hold water at all. "

Citation please?

other posters in this thread gave examples of personal experience with the process.



"

I have no idea what some of you think you are saying because it is nonsense. One does not have to have physically loaded in a Broadway show (I promise I have never loaded in so much as a paper clip) to be well aware of the challenging logistics vis-a-vis most tours. Forgetting contracts and the like, most Broadway theatres are loaded in manually off relatively small trucks, from the street, in tightly permitted traffic lanes and across public sidewalks, often into the lobbies or seating areas of the house, and with no storage space or staging areas once inside.Without even getting into any of the more nuanced differences, these major (and time-consuming) differences are things that even a casual observer would be aware of if they applied their brain to the question. That, of course, seems to be a lot to ask for around here some times.