Broadway Journal

SECOND STAGE BORROWED $16.5 MILLION FOR HELEN HAYES, BACKED BY PROSPECTIVE ‘FROZEN’ LANDLORD

August 19, 2016 by Philip Boroff

Screen Shot 2016-08-01 at 11.25.45 PM — Proposed Facade of Helen Hayes/Rockwell Group via Landmarks Preservation Commission

EXCLUSIVE: Second Stage Theatre has less than two years to repay a $16.5 million mortgage on its new Broadway home.

In April 2015, the nonprofit completed its long-awaited purchase of the Helen Hayes Theatre. The “amazing moment,” as Artistic Director Carole Rothman put it, should help raise the profile of the 37-year-old company and the contemporary American plays and musicals it produces, which have won three Pulitzer Prizes since 2010. But in buying Broadway’s smallest venue, Second Stage accepted a big burden.Continue Reading

PRESERVING CAST RECORDINGS IN THE AGE OF FREE MUSIC

August 8, 2016 by Philip Boroff

Laura Benanti recording *She Loves Me* at Avatar Studios. Photo: Jenny Anderson.

As ticket prices for Broadway musicals consistently rise, independent record labels like Sh-K-Boom, which preserves musical theater scores, must grapple with the proliferation of free music: specifically, web services such as YouTube and Spotify that cannibalize CD sales and iTunes downloads.

“There have to be the purchases,” Sh-K-Boom President Kurt Deutsch said Aug. 3 at the Upper East Side Barnes & Noble, before a concert promoting his new Broadway cast recording of She Loves Me. His company has put out about 100 cast recordings since 2002, beginning with Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years.

BROADWAY DUMPS ON TRUMP, EXTOLS CIVIL LIBERTIES

July 19, 2016 by Philip Boroff

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.”

‘HAMILTON,’ ‘EVAN HANSEN’ PERFORMERS EXPLORE PRISON & POLICE ABUSE AT CIVIL LIBERTIES BENEFIT

July 16, 2016 by Philip Boroff

Summer is the off-season for Manhattan fundraising. But with headlines consumed by hate crime, police conduct and race relations, the New York Civil Liberties Union says its July 18 Broadway-themed benefit is timely in the extreme.

“This is a very charged and heightened time in politics and civil liberties,” said Susan Blackwell, a performer and writer who will host the event, Broadway Stands Up for Freedom, at NYU’s Skirball Center. “It’s easy to get bogged down and overwhelmed.”

CULTURE PROJECT, DOWNTOWN INSTITUTION, FILES FOR BANKRUPTCY

July 1, 2016 by Philip Boroff

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.

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

June 29, 2016 by Philip Boroff

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.

ANOTHER CRITIC SILENCED (FOR NOW) AS JEREMY GERARD EXITS DEADLINE.COM

June 21, 2016 by Philip Boroff

Jeremy Gerard, a prolific and widely read arts reporter and critic, was laid off by Deadline.com two years and two months after the news outlet hired him to oversee its expansion of New York media and theater coverage .

Gerard, who was executive editor and chief theater columnist, said in an email that he was told that Deadline.com, otherwise known as Deadline Hollywood, is focusing resources on film and television coverage. Mike Fleming Jr., co-editor in chief, didn’t return an email. Gerard said: “I have loved working at Deadline and will miss my great colleagues there.”

‘HAMILTON’ WINS 11 TONYS AS ‘HUMANS,’ ‘COLOR PURPLE’ TRIUMPH

June 13, 2016 by Philip Boroff

Hamilton won the Tony Award for best musical and dominated the evening as Scott Rudin joined Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeffrey Seller in the winner’s circle.

It was indeed a coronation for Miranda’s hip-hop-infused musical, which won for his score and book (and inspired an acceptance sonnet and rap), as well as for orchestrations, choreography, costume and lighting design, direction, featured actress and actor and lead actor Leslie Odom Jr. The bounty should help sell many $849 tickets that producers introduced last week. So should the telecast’s four Hamilton numbers, including a parody of the musical’s title song that introduced host James Corden. Corden, a CBS late night host and Tony winner himself, opened the show by expressing solidarity with the victims of the Orlando mass shooting. “Hate will never win,” he said. “Together, we have to make sure of that.”

TONY AWARDS DEDICATED TO ORLANDO SHOOTING VICTIMS & FAMILIES

June 12, 2016 by Philip Boroff

THEATERGOERS, BROKERS SCOOP UP $849 ‘HAMILTON’ SEATS

June 12, 2016 by Philip Boroff

Ladies and gentlemen, start your bots. Hamilton tickets go on sale to the general public at 11:10 PM, according to Ticketmaster, presumably minutes after it wins the Tony Award for best new musical.

There’s no evidence that producers over-reached last week with the record $849 tickets they introduced, at least with the best seats, notwithstanding the public relations fallout and implications for theater and elitism. In a “presale” to American Express cardholders, theatergoers and brokers have snapped up many of the $849 tickets near the stage in the center orchestra of the Richard Rodgers. There’s wider availability for $849 seats by the sides and towards the rear. The block is from Jan. 31 to May 21, 2017. (Producer Jeffrey Seller said he’s also increasing the number of $10 seats available via daily lotteries.)

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