A&E - Boston.com: Decades before he took on the chairmanship of the National Endowment for the Arts, Broadway producer Rocco Landesman approached his friend Robert Brustein about doing a musical at Brustein’s artistic home, the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge. Brustein liked the idea, and the show, “Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” opened there in 1984. It would go on to run for more than 1,000 performances on Broadway, win seven Tony Awards, including the coveted best musical, and earn the ART well over $300,000 for having premiered the piece.
6 comments:
I dont believe that there is much of a danger for having nonprofit theaters gain sponsorship. That fact remains that many productions require good funding and I do not believe that not for profit theaters would become inauthentic and loose their values. I honestly do not believe that theaters hold "values" that would make them loose money or not except productions from commercial sources. I dont even believe that this should be a real debate because honestly the nature of our business is that we do what we do because we WANT to. But on that same note shows and theaters need to make money and produce high end shows so that people can keep doing what they(we) love.
I also do not believe that there is that much of a danger for being tied to nonprofits. I believe that these instances where ART has produced musicals and plays that have moved to Broadway have been very successful. It is a fantastic opportunity to test out shows before they are able to go to Broadway. I don't think that there is much of a danger at all with these connections between theaters and producers.
With the poor economy, and struggling theaters, I think this is issue that should be considered. With the larger nonprofits sending shows to Broadway, who is to say they aren't playing to what producers are looking for. ART sent both "Porgy and Bess" and "Sleep No More" to New York in recent years. l would argue that there are productions mounted on the regional level that are planned to transfer from an early stage. How does that change the production approach? Is that an advantage or disadvantage?
As the article suggests, I believe there's a lot of good that comes out of the "enhancement money" that's afforded to nonprofits from commercial producers - not only are they likely to be producing a big project with good chance of box office returns, but the commercial producers are supporting the theatre through both seed money and residuals on future productions. Michael Maso from the Huntington addresses the caveat, in that there is only a problem with partnership when building and presenting the project goes against the theatre's pre-determined mission statement and artistic goals. Papermill could just have easily produced the My Little Pony: Live production as they could Newsies, but it was up to the artistic leadership of the theatre to make the justification.
This summer, I had the opportunity to work on a project at a non-profit Small Professional Theatre which does not have a very big budget for its productions. In several situations, big Broadway stars take a cut in salary just because they love the company and the people there. But this summer, we got a project in that had a commercial producer attached, and they funded both the production itself and the ability to bring in several big Hollywood names to perform. As a result, every performance was sold out, and the project got a chance to workshop with some really high-caliber artists at the helm. For this project, both the writer and producer and the theatre company saw major benefits from the partnership.
People get confused with the term not for profit and something that doesn't make money. We are in the business to make money. Our product is the art. Our consumer public is our audience. Our market is the region surround our building. Theater companies get caught up in their mission statements, they get trapped behind dramaturgical jargon and community kiss-assery. Non profit theater isn't soley about the mission statement or catering to their communities it also about supply and demand, laissez faire economics. In a market economy where producers have some influence on who to bring their product to, regional theaters should be in bed with Broadway. It brings the arts to the masses and helps balance the budget back at home. Do people go see farm teams because they like baseball? No, they want to see what is up and coming, what may some day be the next big thing. They want to lock it down now. I don't think nonprofit theaters are close enough to commercial producers. Regional theater is a breeding ground, a petri dish for the future. Give people what they want - a good show here and now and also a money maker later.
Sponsorship is a wonderful way for a theatre to keep a season afloat and add additional programming (outreach) to their schedules. Larger non-profits have always been sending shows to Broadway (I mean, you have to workshop somewhere!) why shouldn't the final producing organization(s) be involved from the start? If they are not involved then the show they want to put on Broadway is not being workshopped, some other version of said show is. When Oleanna went to Broadway a few years ago it played at the Mark Taper Forum first with the same cast and production team. It was on the season as a trial for Broadway. The Alliance did not pick up Bring It On solely because it was the absolute perfect fit for their season, but because it was going to be a big Broadway show. And it is. It helps get the name of the theatre out and it helps to have these large shows which go on and return on the investment (residuals, et cetera) to support the rest of the season, which is more flexible when finances are less tight.
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