Broadway Stats '08

-International ticket sales for Broadway shows were down (1.88 million).
-Advanced sales were up (39% purchased tickets more than one month in advance).
-Same day sales fell from 27% to 20%.
-Average theatergoer was 41.5 years old.
-Highest percentage of children/teens in 30 years (12.4%)
-Audiences paid an average of $27 more than face value for tickets.
-Total attendance was 12.27 million.
-Internet is the most popular way to buy tickets (40% sold online as opposed to 22% at box office and 10% by phone)
-Women made up 65.9% of the audiences.
-75% of audience were white.
-74% had college degrees.
-Median annual income was $148,000.

The data was compiled from surveys handed out at show. 14,000 were distributed and 7600 were returned.

‘Exit the King’ Enters Broadway Line-up

Geoffrey Rush will star in a Americanized version of
Eugene Ionesco's Exit the King along with Susan Sarandon, Lauren Ambrose and Andrea Martin. Rush starred in the play at the Belvoir St. Theatre in Sydney last year. Australian director Neil Armfield will helm the production which he also translated along with Rush. Performances will begin March 7 at the Barrymore Theatre with an official opening March 26; the limited engagement will run through June 14.

According to the press release, Exit the King "is a hilarious and poignant comedy about a megalomaniacal ruler, King Berenger (Rush) whose incompetence has left his country in near ruin. Despite the efforts of Queen Marguerite (Sarandon) and the other members of the court to convince the King he has only 90 minutes left to live, he refuses to relinquish any control."

China's Broadway

Now that Broadway has closed (9 shows concluded runs on Sunday), who better to take up the baton but China? As reported in Variety, Beijing is constructing a 32-theater complex to the tune of $686 million, which will feature Western musicals and other shows year-round. Being built by Beijing Shibo Real Estate in the city’s Haidian district, the biggest theater will seat 2000 people, while the others will accommodate between 300 to 500 audience members. With the success of such recent imports as The Lion King and Hairspray, the complex expects to produce more than 100 shows a year.

Simon McBurney on 'Watching Theatre'

“The only reality of the theater exists in the mind of the audience. That audience looks collectively at what is going on on the stage and collectively imagines that this is real. ... But what is more fundamental is the notion that when everybody laughs together or, last night, when I heard people around me collectively sobbing, at that moment we are bound together not by our bodies sitting in the theater but by a collective imagination. At that moment we understand the lie that what we think is only our own, that our internal lives are only our own. At that point our collective imaginations become one imagination and my internal life becomes the same as your internal life, which is what Aristotle understood when he analyzed tragedy. It’s a collective act in which we collectively understand something about being a community together. The moment we understand that, feel it, we feel a kind of responsibility in which we must collectively help and take responsibility for each other. That is part of the definition of our humanity and, if you like, if it’s not a contradiction in terms, our animal humanity.”

New York Times; Sunday 26 October 2008

How the Brits Took Over Broadway

It is no surprise to any New Yorker that the British theatre is in command of the Broadway stage. While the foolish Americans greedily produce big, gaudy, movie-based, cotton-candy musicals, the English seem to be more interested in producing quality performances that somehow always wins critical praise and Tony awards. This Sunday, in the London 'Guardian', we're informed as to how this new 'British invasion' took place. Can anyone say Andrew Lloyd Webber? Here's an excerpt and the link to the full article.

According to Eleanor Roosevelt, 'No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.' The former First Lady may have made her famous remark in a different context, but her words resonate today as British art and entertainment again dominate New York's cultural scene. For some American commentators it is as if there is still a collective colonial hangover in Manhattan, with audiences happy to prize talent from across the Atlantic above anything of their own.

Broadway's theatres are packed with UK drama, British music, British performers, even British history. The statistics match even the peaks charted in recent years. As Harry Potter's alter ego, Daniel Radcliffe, triumphs in Peter Schaffer's Equus - directed by fellow Briton Thea Sharrock - could there be more hardcore products for committed anglophiles than Maria Aitken's stylish tribute to Hitchock in The 39 Steps, the high farce of Boeing, Boeing or Robert Bolt's deft approximation of Tudor dialogue in A Man for All Seasons

Broadway's Glass Ceiling

American playwright Theresa Rebeck, writing for the London Guardian, responds to the recent NYTimes article about the upcoming male-dominated season on Broadway. Hilary Clinton may have made 18 million cracks in the metaphoric ‘glass ceiling’, but female theatre artists aren’t having the same commercial luck. “In the 2008/2009 season, as it has been announced, the number of plays written by women on New York stages will amount to 12.6% of the total. Want to know the same figure for the 1908/1909 season? Let's see, it was ... 12.8%!” Read the article here.

TKTS comes to BKLN

Starting July 10, discount tickets to Broadway shows will be offered at the new TKTS booths opening at MetroTech. The Theatre Development Funds already runs two booths in Manhattan, offering tickets up to 50% their regular price. More than 50 million tickets have been sold since it opened in 1973. TKTS doesn’t offer tickets to any Brooklyn events yet, but that is about to change, as BAM and other groups looks to sell at the booths as well. In the 1980s Brooklyn had a TKTS booth, first on Fulton St. and then on Montague St., but after dismal sales, it closed in 1993. TKTS Brooklyn will be open Monday-Friday, 11 AM-6 PM.

Tony Nominations

Though the monster that is the ‘American Musical’ doesn’t seem to have any global competition, the Brits have once again invaded Broadway and given us Yankees a run for our theatrical money. All eight musicals (original and revival) nominated for the Tony Award are ‘Made in the USA’, but only one out of the eight plays is from the States. Laurence Fishburne of Thurgood will be competing with four other Brits for best lead in a play, while on the flip side, Kate Fleetwood of Macbeth will compete with four Americans for best lead actress (though, in my opinion, Amy Morton should have been put in the featured category so that she and Deanna Dunagan can both take home awards). As far as my two cents, August: Osage County and Passing Strange are my personal favorites, though many of the other nominations are quite good. Let’s just all be thankful that crap like Young Frankenstein barely got recognized.

Hollywood Conquers Broadway

Fascinating article in the ‘San Francisco Gate’ yesterday about the relationship between Broadway and Hollywood. Though not strictly about anything international, as the columnist points out, for a long time, NY and LA were considered two different countries.