Broadway Journal

BROADWAY DUMPS ON TRUMP, EXTOLS CIVIL LIBERTIES

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NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman

UPDATE, with responses to Melania Trump’s speech: Jayne Houdyshell said last night that she didn’t mind missing Melania Trump’s live speech at the Republican National Convention, which conflicted with the New York Civil Liberties Union’s summer fundraiser. “Theater people are my peeps, and I don’t know a single Trump supporter,” Houdyshell said at NYU minutes before the benefit. Actors’ objection to Trump: “We know acting when we see it.”

Houdyshell knows acting better than most, as she won a Tony Award last month for her role in the Stephen Karam drama The Humans. “I never heard Donald Trump say anything that rang true to me,” Houdyshell continued. “His thoughts and beliefs seem to change moment to moment, depending on who he is talking to.”

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CULTURE PROJECT, DOWNTOWN INSTITUTION, FILES FOR BANKRUPTCY

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EXCLUSIVE: The Culture Project, a 20-year-old, perennially cash-strapped East Village theater company that’s best known for the anti-death-penalty drama The Exonerated, filed for bankruptcy protection this week.

The June 29 filing was under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy code, generally referred to as “reorganization bankruptcy.” “It’s a dispute with the landlord and we hope to resolve it in the bankruptcy case,” Culture Project  lawyer Joel Shafferman said in a brief phone interview. He declined to elaborate, but said the filing won’t affect Simon Says, a commercial production about a psychic starring Brian Murray that’s renting the Culture Project’s 199-seat Lynn Redgrave theater. It’s scheduled to begin previews on Wednesday.

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BISHOP EARNED $912,000 IN 2014 ATOP LINCOLN CENTER THEATER

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Andre Bishop and Katherine Farley, chairwoman of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Photo: Amanda Gordon/Bloomberg

EXCLUSIVE: Andre Bishop, Lincoln Center Theater’s longtime leader, earned pay and benefits of $911,670 in 2014, one of the richest compensation packages at a U.S. nonprofit theater.

Among the components listed in the organization’s latest tax return, Bishop’s salary increased by $99,000, or 16 percent, from a year earlier to $719,621. The return valued his benefits, including retirement and other deferred pay, at $192,049. His compensation more than doubled in nine years as the budget was little changed.

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FROZEN COMPOSER’S A CAPPELLA MUSICAL ‘IN TRANSIT’ SEEKS EXPRESS TRAIN TO BROADWAY

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A musical without musicians is an untested concept on Broadway. Janet B. Rosen, the freshman lead producer of In Transit, a long-gestating a cappella romantic comedy circling Broadway, says she’s undaunted. 

In Transit employs the subway as a setting and plot line and is arranged by Deke Sharon, the arranger and music director of the a cappella movies Pitch Perfect and Pitch Perfect 2 (worldwide gross $400 million). A national a cappella tour he oversees, Vocalosity, appears to be selling well. And Kristen Anderson-Lopez — who wrote In Transit  with Sara Wordsworth, James Allen-Ford and Russ Kaplan — co-wrote Disney’s Frozen ($1.3 billion). “We are ready to take it to Broadway,” Rosen, who holds the rights to In Transit, told Broadway Journal  last night at a concert presentation at Feinstein’s/54 Below. She said it would be Broadway’s first a cappella musical. “A cappella is huge right now.”

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‘BEAUTIFUL’ REAL ESTATE AIDS ROUNDABOUT REVIVAL

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Todd Haimes at the Tony Awards/Photo by Philip Boroff
Todd Haimes at the 2015 Tonys. Photo: Broadway Journal

EXCLUSIVE: On September 15, 2008, hours after Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, the Roundabout Theatre Co. signed a lease to take over a third Broadway house. Given the expense of producing and its thinning ranks of subscribers, some in the business questioned whether the company, founded in 1965, overextended itself.

Seven and a half years later, the Roundabout can make a convincing case that adding the Stephen Sondheim Theatre inside the Bank of America tower constituted shrewd investing in a downturn.

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STING’S ‘LAST SHIP’ PREVIEW BUOYS PUBLIC THEATER COFFERS

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EXCLUSIVE: The Last Ship, a failure on Broadway, was a hit for the Public Theater . 

In the fall of 2013, a year before the musical’s brief run at the Neil Simon Theatre, Sting played ten concerts of its songs at the downtown nonprofit, coinciding with the release of his album The Last Ship. According to the Public’s latest tax return, its benefit income after subtracting for direct expenses surged 60 percent to $3.2 million. That suggests a roughly million dollar gain in 2013-14 from the Sting engagement. (As in previous years, the Public also held a gala in Central Park.)

The Public paid $900,000 to Sting’s Steerpike Productions, according to the return. A theater spokeswoman said the star performed for free and the money covered rehearsal, performances, travel and lodging for his 14-piece band, including musical director Rob Mathes.

The concerts helped the Public increase net assets by 14 percent to $41.5 million — a preview of improving fortunes. The theater helped develop the play Eclipsed and the musicals Fun Home and Hamilton, all now on Broadway. Hamilton alone will likely yield many millions for the institution.

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