Ken Davenport - Opinions from a Broadway Producer: One of the most popular flicks of the last several weeks has been the Brad Pitt produced, Moneyball, based on the book of the same name. Simply put, Moneyball is about statistics . . . and how the Oakland A's used complex mathematical formulas to find some of the most undervalued players on the baseball market, in order to put together a team that could challenge the best teams, for 25% of the payroll costs.
Monday, October 03, 2011
Can we Moneyball Broadway?
Ken Davenport - Opinions from a Broadway Producer: One of the most popular flicks of the last several weeks has been the Brad Pitt produced, Moneyball, based on the book of the same name. Simply put, Moneyball is about statistics . . . and how the Oakland A's used complex mathematical formulas to find some of the most undervalued players on the baseball market, in order to put together a team that could challenge the best teams, for 25% of the payroll costs.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
8 comments:
I am a firm believer in the idea that there is some explanation behind the hits and flops on Broadway. With that said the number of variables that would be needed to calculate that number is large enough that getting a feeling of whether or not a show will succeed might be possible but the accuracy would never be as high as the MLB's statistics. It would however be an interesting topic to look at as a casting director. The idea of looking at the cast in the same statistical terms seems to be a way to find inexpensive talent and make a show a hit in the process. I also feel as though there is an innate calculation done instinctively by the producer which has probably the same accuracy as our calculations would be. Experience can sometimes give better results than equations. Overall it could help it could hurt I do not know how many tries it would take to get the formula right though.
I kind of disagree with the article. I believe there are ways that you could engineer a hit on broadway, and it comes from giving the audience what they want. I would love to see some research on this topic and try to identify what the ideal show would be. I don't think anyone has figured it out yet, and I agree with Luke that there are too many variables for normal people to keep track of, but if someone could put it to the test and really identify the contributing factors to a hit, then replicate them all added together, I think it would be a really powerful thing in our industry.
I agree with Luke that when it comes to Broadway success or failure, it can't just be up to chance. However, I also agree that a given two shows are never as uniform and similar as say, two baseball games: a game may last 3 hours, but it always has 9 innings, 9 players on the field, etc. Regardless of how much the players make, it's still difficult to see whether it's worth spending exorbitant amounts on a promising player, vs. whether your show is going to be popular enough to pay your cast of 40 weekly. The trend is still towards smaller shows, but baseball teams aren't changing sizes...so I guess it all depends. I do however wish that more stats on theatre could be gathered, as seeing real numbers might make people more interested in producing, since it's speaking a language that they can use to analyze a show and deem it investment-worthy or not.
As others have noted, it probably is possible to be able to engineer a hit on Broadway, and figure out what kind of things more people would enjoy seeing. To some extent, i'm surprised this idea hasn't been brought up before among Broadway producers. I'm sure there are ways to take polls of audience members and various Broadway patrons, find out what they like to see in shows, and other research along the same lines, then create and engineer a show to cater to those audience members, based on talent, design, etc. It'd be interesting to see if somebody did try this whether it would the same way it did in baseball, or if there really is something different about getting a hit on Broadway.
I think this is an interesting idea, but I question whether it could actually work in Broadway. Most people have mentioned here that one could poll the audience members of Broadway shows to see what they like in order to create an equation that would lead to a hit. What no one has accounted for is that most broadway hits don't just take in the normal theatre audiences, but broaden the scope to bring new people into the theatre. It's what those people want that one would have to look at. Tastes across America also change rapidly. It's likely that by the time one were to gather all of the information and statistics and create a formula that would produce a hit political or economical standings would have changed and people no longer want what they had previously wanted in a show.
While it's not exactly the same, I think that there's a similar process that happens when a season or a large scale show is planned that's comparable to the ideas of Moneyball. Everyone knows that there are some shows that while they may not be the best, they put people in seats and no matter how many times you do them, you get the same effect. At the same time, there are directors, actors, even types of shows that do the draw consistent and sustainable crowds. While it might get in the way of artistic intent, I think there is a methodology that could be applied to theatrical shows to increase sustainability.
This is a very interesting concept but I think there are some limitations. Baseball is full of stats. It is a stat driven game. And the results are based on pure numbers. Whoever gets the most points wins. A pitcher with a low ERA usually wins more games than not. Despite the fluctuations, it is still numbers based. Broadway is so emotionally based. You can put all the best players on the same team and they still may not win. (Spider-man). A playwright may write a successful musical and then never have another one make a dime. There are certain performers who may be box office gold but often they fail in movies and on the stage. There are just too many emotional variables as to what an audience will determine as a quality show. This system might work if one show was up against another show but a show is up against an audience. And the audience is too finiky to use this prediction technique.
The formula for making a hit out of a story has already been done: In mainstream. Hollywood. And look at where that’s gotten us. We have big studios with big statistics and focus groups which sell out to a weak story with high priced talent several hundred times a year. And one cannot evade the fact that the practice of a big studio investing in Broadway hasn’t already happened (How many of you have seen the spectacle that was Wicked?) Why would we want this same plight for Broadway? Isn’t live stage basically the antithesis of artistic formulation? I, for one do not want to live in a world where Broadway imitates Hollywood any more than it already does. If we want to go down the route of having Broadway shows responsible for bringing in big bucks instead of art, then our future is going to be very, very grim.
Post a Comment