With concerns about Covid on the wane, aging theatergoers returned to Broadway last season, according to a new report by the Broadway League.
As the audience shrank modestly for every age group under 50 years old, ticket buyers who are 50 and up increased, according to the trade association’s new demographic study.Continue Reading
While working as an arts reporter for Bloomberg News, I met Caroline Prugh in March 2006 at the now-defunct Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, Kentucky. She was there on behalf of the revered producer and general manager Stuart Thompson. Just 32, Caroline seemed to know everything about theater, commercial and nonprofit, past and present.
Keenly insightful and quick to laugh, Caroline later left the safety of Stuart Thompson’s office to go to graduate school and become a playwright. During the pandemic, she created interactive video dramas with her close friend David Carpenter. Continue Reading
Donald J. Trump, the former president who received a Broadway producing credit in 1970, was convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a sex scandal.
For further information about the Manhattan jury’s historic verdict, see The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post.
Paris is Out!, a comedy by Richard Seff that ran 96 regular performances in 1970 at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, was produced in association with Trump, according to the Internet Broadway Database.
In an era of ever-bigger Broadway budgets, the pressure is on newly minted Tony Award-nominated productions to capitalize on the buzz.Continue Reading
Capitalized for $22 million, the David Byrne-Fatboy Slim musical Here Lies Love dramatizes the rise and fall of the Marcos regime, in a Broadway theater repurposed as a discotheque.
Last week, it was outgrossed by $35,000 by a little-known comic on an open stage with three stools. Just for Us, Alex Edelman’s monologue about antisemitism and identity that ended its run on Saturday, was capitalized for $2.25 million.
In an era of mammoth Broadway budgets and huge losses, one-person shows have been a relative safe haven for investors. Prima Facie, James Bierman’s $4 million production of Suzie Miller’s one-woman play starring Jodie Comer, is the only show from 2022-23 to announce that it recouped.Continue Reading
As lead producer and landlord of Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite, Ambassador Theatre Group has bragging rights to the most commercially successful play of the 2021-22 Broadway season.
The average ticket price for the Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick revival was $213 the week ended May 29, behind only The Music Man and Hamilton. Pairs go for as much as $2,051, which includes Piper-Heidsieck Champagne and Ladurée macarons served in a semi-private lounge at ATG’s Hudson Theatre.
The U.K.-based conglomerate isn’t crowing. “ATG does not control, and cannot provide comment about” Plaza Suite, an ATG spokesman told Broadway Journal in an email. Continue Reading
If MJ The Musical becomes a box office sensation, Paris Jackson, Bigi Jackson, Prince Jackson and the executors of their father’s estate stand to enjoy a bonanza.
Typically, half of a Broadway show’s adjusted net profit is shared among the lead producers. The other half goes to investors, who also qualify for some lead producer profits by raising or investing large sums. On MJ, however, “the entire 50% share of Adjusted Net Profits [due the lead producers] will be paid to the Estate,” according to an investor operating agreement obtained by Broadway Journal.Continue Reading
The self-described “world’s No. 1 live theater company” has taken a drubbing.
The parent company of U.K.-based Ambassador Theatre Group reported a pretax loss of $202 million for the 12 months ended in March 2021. The holding company attributed the results to Covid-19, which decimated rental income when its theaters shuttered in March 2020.Continue Reading
If and when The Book of Mormon resumes performances on Broadway, the take-no-prisoners musical will reconsider its mission.
In a video call last summer organized by lead producer Anne Garefino, co-writers Trey Parker and Matt Stone assured Black cast members that they were eager to take a fresh look at the 10-year-old blockbuster and were open to making changes, a person familiar with the conversation said. The call came in response to a letter from the actors — both original and current cast members — outlining their concerns regarding the musical, which is about inept Mormon missionaries in a Ugandan village ravaged by AIDS and civil war. Among other issues, the letter addresses the challenges of differentiating between racial stereotyping and satirical storytelling, especially in moments of the show when African characters are treated as “props and punchlines.”Continue Reading
Broadway seeks givebacks from the industry’s unions before performances resume, the head of the trade group that represents commercial producers and theater owners told an online industry conference Monday.
“There have been general conversations [with unions] about what the contracts might look like, what might be changed,” Broadway League President Charlotte St. Martin said during the final day of The TheaterMakers Summit. “We’ll have to get to the changes, if any, toward wages and work rules and all of that to get open, because the producers will have to figure out if they can reopen. If you reopen at 50 percent of your previous attendance, nobody even comes close to recouping at 50 percent of the theater being open. So we’ll have to talk about things.”Continue Reading
