Why so few new Broadway plays this season?

The number of new plays has become decreasing for a long time. Something like August: Osage County is becoming a rarity, if not a downright fluke. Revivals are safer, as at least the product is a known quanity.

As a friend pointed out to me many years ago, the majority of theatregoers -- particularly since the end of WWII and the influx tourists -- go to the theatre to be entertained, not to think.

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Updated On: 10/6/08 at 09:07 AM

Accent on Youth probably had some kind of life in summer stock into the 1950's. I think the concern is that Broadway, for whatever reasons, no longer provides a venue for new works of untested value. For example, even in the late 1940's through 1960's, Broadway would countenance a Camino Real for every Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Broadway was friendlier to new playwrights and was willing to give them a second chance -- think Arthur Miller, who started with Man Who Had All the Luck, then gave Broadway All My Sons and Death of a Salesman. And forget about the sort of thing that was going on in the 1920's, when Eugene O'Neill had a big flop (both commercially and artistically) for every hit and producers continued to back him.

I feel that, with the influx of the tourist trade and more ready access to the Broadway stage, there has been a dumbing down to satisfy the broadest audience possible. Taking a chance on a new playwright no longer seems to be a viable option.

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It's shocking to me that a company like MTC would chose to give Richard Greenberg's AMERICAN PLAN a 3rd revival as opposed to a newly commissioned play by NY favorites Adam Rapp or Sarah Ruhl. I was talking to longtime MTC subscribers who saw their first two productions of AMERICAN PLAN who can't figure it out, either.

It's good that they've championed up-and-comers Itamar Moses, Adam Bock, Liz Flahive, and even Lynn Nottage this season, and I'd rather see THE RECEPTIONIST or FROM UP HERE at the Biltmore than AMERICAN PLAN.