Update: AIN'T NO MO extended thru December 23! Yay! — Page 7

The Distinctive Baritone said: "Remember when people could disagree with each other and still be kind and respectful? Different times, eh?"

Sad that that ship has sailed on here. When discussion keeps going back and forth between two people they should just stop. DO we all really care?

It seems pretty much to be the same people that seem to rant.

Updated On: 12/12/22 at 02:01 PM

If anyone is interested in catching this for the next week, I posted the link below. The code is ANMMP for tickets starting at $39 in the Mezz and $77 for Orchestra. Enjoy!

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Huss417 said: "The Distinctive Baritone said: "Remember when people could disagree with each other and still be kind and respectful? Different times, eh?"

Sad that that ship has sailed on here. When discussion keeps going back and forth between two people they should just stop. DO we all really care?

It seems pretty much to be the same people that seem to rant."



Some people seem to believe that moral outrage is the same as morality. It's not. It's just anger, which as history as proved, is the most useless emotion.

I appreciate those who are simply acknowledging the obvious fact that this is commercial theatre. The entire business model of Broadway (and Hollywood, for that matter) is that in order to make money, the product has to appeal to a large cross-section of people. It's just economics.

I wonder if perhaps the theatre industry needs to stop seeing Broadway as the be-all-end-all greatest achievement one can accomplish. Most of the recent flops had previous incarnations Off-Broadway -- acclaimed ones at that. What exactly was the point of them transferring to a commercial Broadway run? The hope of a Tony Award? Bragging rights? Certainly none of these producers really thought much money would be made from these productions. Maybe the way in which Broadway needs to change is how people perceive it.

This piece in the Hollywood Reporter just came out. Does it bug anyone else that they are now saying "the eviction" was a metaphor because the original post made it sound like they were blaming the shuberts.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/arts/aint-no-mo-jordan-e-cooper-saving-broadway-play-1235280568/

The eviction remark was obviously a tongue-in-cheek joke. And ANM was transferred to Broadway presumably because it had a successful run at the Public and Lee Daniels was willing to put $$$ into it.

I hope the takeaway from this discourse is a level-headed analysis of what happened with the marketing and development of these particular shows (ANM and KPOP - there is a really good, balanced KPOP post-mortem in American Theatre), and not the idea that new work by writers of color cannot succeed on Broadway.

From Jordan's recent Hollywood Reporter interview with Caitlin Huston:

What kind of marketing would you like to see?
(Laughs.) I want planes. I want buses. I’ve never seen a subway poster for it. I’ve never seen a billboard. And not just in Manhattan, but in Brooklyn, around churches in Harlem. The same way the government knows where to put a liquor store, we need to know where to put a Black play. (Laughs.) The same way they know where to put a prison. We need to know where to put a Black play. That is the energy and that is the intentionality that needs to happen in order for these works to survive in this kind of environment.


This is the kind of thing that makes the blood boil for anyone with experience marketing shows. This stuff doesn't move the needle. We know that because it's been tried on countless other shows. A billboard with the title of a play people know nothing about is a waste of money. Similar to a takeover in an airport terminal. These are costly and hard to engage a qualified audience. The whole “I don’t personally see advertising, that means it doesn’t exist” is infuriating. I bet most of their spend has been on targeted digital advertising –– a smart move for a show of this scale. (I believe they DID do a subway ad campaign...)

The more crucial part of his interview is this: we also have to go to the people who would rather spend $400 on some Jordans than spend $150 at a Broadway show.

This is true across a wide swath of Broadway shows, because it's really tough to convince people to spend top dollar on tickets to something they aren't familiar with, even if they've heard it's great from a couple of friends. It demands a level of buzz that very few new shows have.

His show, like many others, probably engaged in "community outreach" to the Black community (churches, influencers/social, Harlem week, poster campaigns in largely-BIPOC neighborhoods, publications, etc). But again, it's hard to communicate that a new play is worth spending $150 or even $75. And if you comp heavily, data indicates that word of mouth isn't as strong when people don’t discover it on their own and buy tix. That’s capitalism, but it’s the structure under which all of Broadway exists.

I may regret dipping a toe into this conversation, but I work in marketing (not for theatre) and just wanted to say that I got the mailer for ANM several weeks ago, opened it (the language of 'a premise so scandalous we can't print it on the outside' was a great teaser), and remember reading the inside and saying "this isn't for me." That was the first I had heard of the show, and in talking to a few theatergoing friends in the same demo as me recently, they hadn't heard of it at all until this closing notice.

I'm a white (Jewish) 40-year-old woman and genuinely love seeing shows that aren't necessarily for or about people like me - that's how we learn and grow - but there was something about the language they used in the marketing for this one that made it seem, as another commenter said, like "medicine." Life has been exhausting lately and with a set theatre budget I just am not in the mood for spending it on lecture theatre right now.

Something like A Strange Loop, on the other hand, did a great job marketing the relatability of the story even though it was very much about a character that I wouldn't, on paper, personally relate to. So I bought a ticket. And I ended up learning from it in a way that didn't feel like medicine. (To be fair, this is a little apples/oranges as I have a music background and 3/4 of what I see are musicals, so a play really needs to be "must-see" or have a cast member I love for me to buy a ticket.)

For the sake of the cast & crew's jobs I feel terrible when anything closes, but in hindsight I think a different tone and nuance in the marketing - leaning into more universally relatable humor, and leaning more into social - would've helped this one quite a bit. And if the show itself really is not relatable to anyone other than a specific demo (in this case objectively a smaller demo just based on US population %)... it's going to struggle in a crowded field regardless of its marketing.

Also doesn't help that this show has zero known names in the cast and they for whatever reason waited forever to announce it was coming back with the entire original cast

Also this is another instance where the title tells you nothing about the play...

I finally saw a GREAT one minute promo reel on Jordans instagram today and honestly where was that 3 weeks ago?

There is neither one of those things in the article, but the ignorant comments in this thread from people who didn't even see this amazing show says it all. Attacking this show because it was not written for white people in mind and having people losing their collective minds on this thread because of it is truly the funniest thing I've ever witnessed here.

I think what we’re witnessing right now on Broadway is that it’s hard for shows of color when you don’t have a celebrity lead, and you’re not based on any sort of intellectual property and you don’t have a Britney Spears song or a Katy Perry song or a Backstreet Boys song somewhere in your show, because right now people are buying tickets for sure bets.

If they see Denzel Washington is in something then it’s like yeah, we don’t care what the play is, we just want to see Denzel Washington, right, or on the opposite, it’s like we don’t know who’s in but we know it’s about Michael Jackson so we’re going to go see it, right? That’s what’s happening right now, but you know somebody had to go see Denzel in A Soldier’s Play in the ‘80s in order for Denzel to become Denzel, right?

For shows like Ain’t No Mo’ that don’t have the upper hand of having a celebrity, or of having an IP attached, it takes time, especially when you’re a show of color, especially when you’re a Black show, it’s takes time to find your audience because people don’t know who you are.

Great points, brilliant artists. Love them so much.

Deadline Article

I really don't want to get back into this but just a quick note on producers and producing. In my view, Daniels is to "blame" because he chose the wrong people to (actually) produce this show and they more or less robotically flipped the same switches they always do in bringing in the needed marketing and publicity resources. Perhaps you blame them too, but if someone asks you to prepare a French dinner for them and you hire an Italian chef, you can't blame the chef.

If only Will and Jada had bought out TWO performances...ah well.

The whole campaign to save it... I don't understand. It's still closing on Sunday right? They should stop selling tickets to future dates.

Updated On: 12/13/22 at 05:33 PM

I stand corrected. The only thing I know about marketing is what I've seen on Mad Men and I guess that doesn't really apply here, ha ha.