Category: theatre

London’s West End theatres offer the kind of dramatic range and diversity that Broadway can only dream of. The West End generates more than $2 billion of economic impact each year. About 12 million people attend West End productions every year, and there was a 3.2% rise in attendance last year – a remarkable statistic considering the current depressed states of the economy and tourism.” Still, there are some problems, not the least of which is the shabby condition of West End theatres.

After dropping ticket prices for younger patrons, several Sydney theatre companies report record increases in ticket sales – as much as 400 percent at one theatre.

Touring Broadway shows use scaled down sets, smaller casts and smaller orchestras. The lower budgets make the touring possible. But there are artistic compromises, and even though audiences will pay to see smaller versions of Broadway shows, it would be a mistake to think that Broadway itself could scale down and hold its allure. “What’s troubling about the settlement of the musicians’ strike is that the top level of Broadway entertainment and artistry, the brand-name level, has been subject to a watering down that may eventually inform the expectations of an audience.”

Broadway might have fended off the virtual orchestra, but what about traveling Broadway shows? Sure there’s a pit and it’s got 10-15 musicians working away. But the electronic juice is liberally applied. “It’s rare that you don’t see a pit orchestra with two if not three synthesizer players, because there’s just a whole world of string parts, percussion parts (supplied by the synthesizers).”

Cleveland Play House said it would announce next season’s lineup of plays this Monday. Trouble is, the company began this season with a $3.5 million deficit, and its last two productions haven’t done well. And…well…it hasn’t exactly figured out what plays will be on next year’s lineup. When you start putting play X with play Y and balance it with how many tickets you need to sell, but then you want to accomplish this artistically but can only afford that much risk and…well… there’ll be a season…

The Broadway musicians strike may be over, but Broadway is facing a number of other headaches. Like more trouble over broadcasting the Tony Awards. And those pesky “theatre restoration” fees theatres have been tacking on to the cast of tickets – turns out the fees are “a violation of New York’s Arts and Cultural Affairs Law 25.29.”

So what are the lessons from last week’s Broadway musicians strike? Frank Rizzo has made a list. At the top is respect for the stagehands union. The stagehands work and musicians lose. The stagehands walk and there’s no show. Say it again – the stagehands rule. Other lessons: people inherently like musicians, but distrust producers…

Broadway’s making music again. But “most musicians employed by Broadway musicals thought the union settled too quickly, for too little. Producers felt demonized, and argue they weren’t trying to kill off live music on Broadway, even though Broadway tours in particular rely increasingly on virtual-orchestra ‘enhancement’ of increasingly tiny pit bands.” One thing’s sure – the virtual orchestra isn’t going away. “Ten years from now, they probably are going to be able to put us out of work.”

After a period in which political theatre seemed to have disappeared for awhile, politcal theatre is back in America. “Indeed, responding to a number of political exigencies — among them the elevation of George W. Bush to the presidency by the Supreme Court, the Sept. 11 attacks, the looming war in Iraq and more generally the perceptible shift to the right in national perspective — American stages have been reasserting the theater’s traditionally liberal bias with an almost vengeful fervor.”

“Last month, in a sharp cost-cutting move, the administration [of Mills College, a small liberal arts school in Northern California] voted to eliminate the dramatic arts department in 2004… For reasons both pragmatic and symbolic, the disappearance of drama from the academic program at Mills reverberates in especially pointed and powerful ways. Beyond the loss of classes, student productions and jobs for the small department’s four nontenured, ‘semi-permanent’ faculty members, the decision puts larger issues about women and theater — and the way women get seen and heard in the world at large — into high relief.”