UPDATE:Now's the time to plan transitioning theatre to worldwide audiences. — Page 2

The streaming juggernaut will be hard for Broadway to evade. Disney yesterday shook up the film biz a bit by announcing that its new films would be targeted at streaming and at rental from online sites. Release to film theaters would be on a case by case basis, where you can read "case by case" to mean dollars.

The streaming music broadcasters have also millions of subscribers, but no original product to send out. to listeners. The companies that own the royalties to 85% of the music played on Spotify have a monopoly on this music.

I acknowledge that Broadway theater really only exists in Broadway Theaters. But I sure wish I had seen Phillip Barry's play by "The Philadelphia Story" in in 1920. The film starred Katharine Hepburn, who actually bought the rights so she could resurrect her film career. The result was one of my favorite films. Since I can't see it live, I would gladly fork over some bucks to see a filmed production.

Broadway stars are usually more talented and disciplined than typical film and television stars. Kelli O'Hara (OK a favorite of mine and Brantley) , is an unknown among most in the country and even in the City.. Matthew Morrison, of whom I think it would be fair to say is not considered a top tier star in New York, became an instant star on television. More money and recognition is due to many on Broadway.

I would never approve, however, of any streaming or rental that directly competed for viewers with the live Broadway show.

Updated On: 10/16/20 at 02:05 AM

@OlBlueEyes You are sitting atop of the fault line as are many people but let me underscore one key difference: none of the other examples you mention have a live alternative as a part of their revenue stream. What Disney is maneuvering is what size screen optimizes their revenue, and although there is of course live music, the lion's share of revenue from recordings does not flow to music makers and those who reap that revenue generally do not have a significant stake in live performance.

Regarding seeing old plays, of course, no decision anyone makes today is going to bring that about, any more than we can do anything that will prompt George Gershwin to write one more tune. (I would also note that the number of people who would be willing to fork over some bucks to see a film of Hepburn on stage is probably not enough to violate the current restrictions on crowds.)

Finally, I bristle at the notion that stage stars are "better" than film stars. It's like saying that basketball players are more athletic than baseball players. They are more talented and disciplined in a different discipline. Some of my favorite stage actors clearly don't "get" the camera.

@Princeton2 It sounds like you are talking about differences during pandemics, not in general. As I have written elsewhere, what we do during the pandemic may not be a model we will want to follow after it is over but the OP's proposed "transition" is not about the pandemic. During the pandemic, productions can try to find other ways to make money, but good luck with that. Commercial Broadway productions (of successful shows: no model is going to make lousy shows profitable) were not enticed by alternative revenue streams before the pandemic and there is no basis to think they will be afterwards.

Princeton2 said: "I was referring to the comment about theatre surviving past pandemics and that it will again, my point was it may have done in the past but theatre is not the same now. There is far more money involved and the business models have changed. Productions have high investment and running costs. That may not be viable moving forward. There is every reason to think further pandemics will happen, this has been warned by scientists. For producers to invest in putting on shows in the future they are going to have to consider the fact that at anytime they maybe forced to close. Either productions will have to be much cheaper for quicker returns, or they will need to consider alternative revenue streams at the same time."

OK, so our starting points are very different. While it is reasonable to think that there will be pandemics in "the future," there is no reason (IMO, obvs) to think they will become a more frequent occurrence just because we finally had one that seeped into the American consciousness. There is no scientific consensus suggesting what you are envisioning (although, again, believe what you will). I also hope we will be better prepared, like many in Asia were this time around, rather than being sheep to a fool again. So from my perspective there is nothing about the current model that will require adjustment because of this pandemic, which is not to say there may not be independent reasons to consider changes to that model. I would be delighted by more art and less commerce, both in the theatre and beyond.

Actually I’m not in agreement with the OP to the extent that he may want the film of the Broadway show distributed around the world while the show is still running on Broadway. Broadway reigns supreme as long as attendance might be affected by the release of a film. And this also means that the film can’t come out so close to the end of the run that it might also affect the attendance. I expect that instead of filming the show and distributing it what would happen is that the show would be streamed live instead.


Hogan you don’t object to the way that the revival of South Pacific was streamed live during its last week of running, do you? That event gave praise to the show, to the creators of the show and to the creators of this revival that ran 1000 performances. The only mystery is why great performances has buried that production instead of making it available for resale. Probably due to some restrictions in the contract.

As to Temms post, Is it news that a film of a Broadway production is not the same thing as the Broadway production? A film of a Broadway production falls between the live show and nothing, just as affordable housing lies between the penthouse at the Waldorf and a park bench. Each may not be the best but they are far superior to nothing.


In this era of inclusiveness Hogan wants to restrict any experience of a particular Broadway production to only a small area of Manhattan Island in New York. And even then it is restricted to New Yorkers who can pay $150 for a ticket, get their butt into a seat 20 inches wide, get their daily exercise by standing up and down a dozen times as their aisle mates may require, wait online to use the restroom for 16 minutes of the 15 minute intermission and pay 50 bucks for a cocktail.

The future of filmed Broadway productions may lie with the reception given to the film Wicked when it finally arrives. Although that may not be a good example since it is one of those shows like Cats that has evolved beyond Broadway show into its own life form.

But we have an example of a hit show that was filmed while it was running and was released afterwards in The King & I. This was a hit on Broadway but not a megahit as it played about 500 performances. What harm has been done to anyone by this film and production that allowed so many to affordably enjoy it afterwards. Apparently in Great Britain at least the film met or exceeded financial expectations.

The filmed presentation of the West End revival of The King and I has become the highest selling theatrical cinema event of 2018 after the worldwide premiere screening November 29. According to the film's distributor Trafalagar Releasing, the film is expected to take $2.5 million at the box office, with an estimated attendance of more than 135,000. The one-day screening was also the highest-grossing film of the day.

Due to the success of the first screening, Trafalager has scheduled encore showings worldwide

This is all I'm looking for, Hogan. You don't even concede this?

I dictated this instead of using one finger picking on my iPhone. I had to go back and make a number of corrections but on the whole I think I prefer it.

Updated On: 10/17/20 at 10:51 AM

@OlBlueEyes I think there are multiple issues involved. First and foremost to me is the question of whether disseminating filmed versions of stage shows is healthy for the theatre as a genre. Philosophically, I don't think it is. Although it has no effect on you or me, since we appreciate the superior value of live theatre, I believe that the long-term effect of wide-dissemination will be a reduction of live alternatives and a development of the notion that the filmed version is "just as good" or even better. To me, that sells what is unique about theatre down the river.

A second issue has to do with commercial vs non-profit theatre. The overwhelming majority of filmed shows have been non-profit productions, and commercial producers have been and continue to be generally averse to losing the advantage of live performance in an increasingly couch-potato-y world. I understand the distinction, though I still think the non-profits doing this are harming the theatre.

And third, I think special considerations apply during the current pandemic, though I don't like seeing broader proposals that leech out of times of trouble.

A couple of other responses. Re Wicked, is there a film of the stage show? I confess I pay little attention to Wicked but is that being seriously discussed/undertaken? Re limiting exposure to Broadway, there are (or had been pre-covid) a multitude of opportunities for folks everywhere to see live theatre without the need to come to Manhattan, including in particular shows of the type you mention. And yes I would prefer for someone to see a live production of a great local theatre production of My Fair Lady (or whatever) than a film of the Broadway production. In fact, I attribute a good part of the reason that I became interested in the theatre to the extent I did to just such productions.

@chicagodannyd I'd respectfully suggest that none of your ideas are rooted in any possible reality. That is true not only of the direct economics and pragmatics, but also that there is a market for these shows. We have a bountiful harvest of great work created for viewing on a screen. (As I have said before to you I think, the comparison to sitcoms is inapt; do you really have blinders on to the high quality work that is available?) There is no budget that would make sense of your proposal. People do not want to watch some poorly filmed off-off-Broadway show when they can watch all the wonderful stuff on Netflix, Amazon, etc etc etc. that does not suffer from the inherent limitation. In the end, this feeds the very unhealthy process I describe above.

Quite a bit of non-sequitur and a healthy dose of rose-colored recollection going on there, BlueEyes. I'll indulge some of it and try to un-read the rest.

re not getting to see some really swell performances: yep, that's how theatre works; it's ephemeral and that's a part of its magic. We don't get to see Laurette Taylor or Duse or Burbage either. Heck, we don't even get to see John Wilkes Booth.

re The Crucible on TV in the (I presume) 50s: I don't know anything about that but what I do know is that there was plenty of garbage on TV in the early 50s. Yes there was the US Steel Hour et al but there was also My Little Margie and Dragnet and Ozzie and Harriet around the time of The Crucible's debut. Not everyone did culture then any more than they do it now. There was a lot of non-high culture being force fed to the masses.

Finally, your statement of what people prefer to see on the small screen doesn't align with the data, but then again neither does your understanding of history and I have no intention of embarrassing you about that here either.

VintageSnarker said: "I feel like people are talking about different things. Plays and musicals being made into films or shot for broadcast with multiple angles and close-ups like what the Met Opera does brings those works to a worldwide audience. But the theatrical work, the score, the libretto, the actors' performances is different from the experience of being in a theater. And it just seems strange to make the goal filming more stage productions, especially at a time when stage productions are not happening. I get choosing to capture a musical late in its run so it will exist in some form after the production closes. But why would you want to mount a whole production to film something on stage during the pandemic?"

I think you've expressed some things very well. Shooting a show that is not running in a Broadway house is both a pain compared to a sound stage and a few locations added and also does not look all that great, especially to non-theatre people. Just think about the Boys in the Band film compared to a multi-camera shoot in the theatre.

Ah, Hogan. There I thought that we were capable of carrying on a nice discussion with your at times unpleasant personality under check and you throw me over. Since we were talking about filmed versions of plays appearing on TV, I remembered the early days, even before the famous sitcoms of the 50s when the Nets did some extraordinary programming. There were the plays, actually televised live, and there were the series given to the great artists of the time, as in recording there was a Judy Garland show and a wonderful Nat King Cole hour. Don't know what you know about Nat, but he had a style all his own. Can you imagine in the early 50's an hour a week of prime TV time being given to a "Negro." You can bet he had to be special.

My thought was that today with all the viewing choices 19 out of 20 viewers would have skipped The Crucible for The Apprentice, with all the dire consequences that followed. But if they had no choice but to watch fine art such as Henry Miller's play, would they have grown to value it, or would they have abandoned it as soon as The Apprentice was available in its place.

So we still had a good discussion, although you know that you would be in a tight spot defending your belief that the Brits should not have had access to any film of the West End Production. But it is an honest belief and deserves respect. Basta!

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/26/theater/golden-age-live-theater-on-tv.html

Ah, my memory increasingly fails. The Crucible was not presented in 1958, but in 1968, by which time such presentations on television were rare indeed, with airtime having to be dedicated mostly to series like "My Mother the Car."

Updated On: 10/18/20 at 10:25 PM

@BlueEyes If I had a dollar for every time my Italian grandmother said "basta" to me, I could produce The Crucible on Broadway. Or maybe the Henry Miller play you must have secreted from everyone.

Anyway, I rarely listened to her so in her honor I will respond to you, simply to say that I never threw you over or under anything. I just wanted to sort out your info on the TV landscape of the early 50s in relation to most recent times a little. Now it seems it's actually the late 60s (1967 not 1968). That was George C. Scott and Colleen Dewhurst et al and it actually doesn't fit in this thread; it was NOT a broadcast of a play that was otherwise on stage nor was there very much TV force feeding going on then, but oh well. What one can sit home and watch nowadays can run circles around what was on then but believe what you want.

@unclevictor your first statement is one about which there could be a robust discussion were it not off-topic and outside the terms of service here. I'd enjoy it I'm sure. Your latter assertion, I feel certain, would find few here to back you up. Kinda laughable to tell the truth. But have at it.

Jordan Catalano said: "Filmed theater is also a way to not only keep interest alive in a time when going isn’t possible but it, for decades now and will always continue to, will keep getting people interested in performing arts and make sure they still have paying customers."

Nothing replaces the real thing, but for kids who couldn't go to theatre, I have often heard those 80's videotaped productions of "Sunday in the Park" and especially "Into the Woods" on PBS were catalysts in pursuing an interest (and for some working artists a life) in theatre.