Broadway Journal

ACTORS’ EQUITY NETS 3% ANNUAL RAISE; MUSICIANS REACH DEAL

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The strike talk is over. Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians reached a tentative deal early this morning for a three-year contract with the Broadway League. The union said in a press release that the pact includes increases in wages and contributions to its health fund, but didn’t share specifics.

Yesterday, Actors’ Equity Association gave its members details about its tentative production contract agreement reached Saturday morning with the League.

The minimum salary for performers on Broadway would rise 3% annually for three years. Should the union ratify the terms, the minimum will immediately increase to about $2717 a week from the current $2638, per my calculations. Broadway Journal reviewed a summary of the changes that Equity shared with its roughly 51,000 members, who include stage managers as well as actors and dancers. Continue Reading

‘OEDIPUS’ & MUPPETS GET TAX CREDIT REPRIEVE

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EXCLUSIVE: New York State extended a prized theater tax credit for another six weeks, benefiting the incoming Broadway shows Rob Lake Magic with Special Guests The Muppets, Oedipus and the new musical Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York).

Empire State Development, which supports economic growth in the state, will now accept applications for the New York City Musical and Theatrical Production Tax Credit for shows having their first paid performance by Dec. 1, according to an email from the Broadway League to its members. This is the second recent extension: Oct. 20 and Sept. 15 were previous deadlines for the first public performance. Continue Reading

BROADWAY TAX CREDIT POOL IS DEPLETED

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EXCLUSIVE: A key subsidy for commercial plays and musicals is out of money.

The Broadway League held a video meeting with members on Tuesday afternoon to disclose the depletion of the four-year-old New York City Musical and Theatrical Production Tax Credit program. Shows that begin public performances by Sept. 15  may still receive the subsidy — of up to $3 million for Broadway productions. Shows that start later won’t be eligible.Continue Reading

‘OUTSIDERS’ WIN TONY RUMBLE; ‘SUFFS’ SCORES TOO

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The Outsiders  may have had the inside track at the Tony Awards after all.

In awarding Best Musical to the $22 million adaptation of the S.E. Hinton novel and Francis Ford Coppola movie about an ill-fated gang of teenagers in 1967 Tulsa, Oklahoma, voters rewarded Danya Taymor’s meticulously staged production over the propulsive glitz of Alicia Keys’ Hell’s Kitchen, the presumptive favorite in the category going into the evening.Continue Reading

TONY OVERLORDS HOLD FIRM ON CO-PRODUCERS STAGE BAN

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Tony Award leaders today affirmed their decision to bar Broadway co-producers from the stage of the David Koch Theater on June 16, while offering the investors and bundlers a consolation prize: live shots of them elsewhere in the theater on Broadway’s big night.

According to a Tony Awards memo circulating this afternoon, a “Voice of God” in the Koch Theater will announce a specific category during a commercial break and invite co-producers to gather in the lobby off the first tier. When a winning show is named, the triumphant cluster will congregate on a riser for their live moment on primetime television.Continue Reading

TONY AWARDS TO BAR CO-PRODUCERS FROM STAGE (EXCLUSIVE)

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The Tony Awards are enmeshed in a high-stakes dispute over who gets stage time on Broadway’s big night.

Some co-producers — whose primary role is to invest or raise money for shows — have been informed by Tony Award staffers that they aren’t welcome onstage at the David H. Koch Theater on June 16. In recent years as production budgets swelled, swarms of co-producers have taken the stage when awards were handed out for the categories of best musical, play, musical revival and play revival.Continue Reading

BROOKE SHIELDS ELECTED ACTORS’ EQUITY PRESIDENT

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EXCLUSIVE: Celebrity prevailed over experience at Actors’ Equity Association, where Brooke Shields was elected president of the labor union representing about 51,000 actors and stage managers.

Shields got 2794 votes, vs. 1940 votes for stage manager Erin Maureen Koster and 834 for Chicago-based actress Wydetta Carter, according to a tally shared with Broadway Journal.Continue Reading

BROADWAY LEAGUE CHIEF ABRUPTLY EXITS

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Charlotte St. Martin, who’s led the Broadway League trade association since 2006, will step down on Feb. 16. The sudden departure occurs amid an industry changing of the guard as Broadway struggles to recover from the pandemic and respond to calls for greater diversity.Continue Reading

‘STEREOPHONIC’ & PAPER MILL ‘GREAT GATSBY’ ON DECK FOR MUSICAL-HEAVY 2024

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Producers are working on two high-profile additions to the busy 2023-24 Broadway season: Stereophonic, an ecstatically reviewed play with music about a fictional mid-1970s rock band creating an album; and The Great Gatsby  via Paper Mill Playhouse, one of two Broadway-bound musicals based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Roaring ’20s novel.

John Johnson, Sue Wagner and Greg Nobile are in discussions to move Stereophonic to the John Golden Theatre, following a sold-out, two-and-a-half-month run at Playwrights Horizons off-Broadway, people familiar with the plans said. Continue Reading

BEHIND THE BIG PROFITS AT ‘LITTLE SHOP’ (EXCLUSIVE)

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After opening red hot in October 2019, Little Shop of Horrors at the Westside Theatre had a rough second half of 2022.

Box office sales fell short of the revival’s $180,000 to $200,000-a-week running costs in 27 of the final 31 weeks of the year. Operating losses for Alan Menken and Howard Ashman’s plant-based off-Broadway musical comedy, set in a Skid Row flower shop, totaled $734,000 over the seven months ended Jan. 1, 2023.

Such shortfalls can lead to closing notices. Instead, the producers distributed $1.2 million of profit to themselves, their investors and co-producers. That was on top of $1.9 million of profit paid out over the previous 15 months.Continue Reading

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