The Washington Post: David Lindsay-Abaire, author of the most-produced play in America this season, is sitting in a Brooklyn coffee shop, marveling at his excellent fortune. It isn’t a mere five or six professional theaters across the nation that are staging “Good People,” which tells of a working-class single mother from Boston who runs into an ex, now a well-heeled physician. No, it’s an astonishing 17 of them.
3 comments:
This is certainly a conundrum facing regional theatres across the country, to pay for the recent Broadway hits, or to do more artistically interesting shows. I think the most relevant point raised in the show as to why this repeat of Broadway shows is taking place across the country is that plays don't go on tour anymore. America is a large country, and it's not often that someone from the midwest or west can go and see shows on Broadway. Tours of musicals that come around can fill the gap, no problem. But, plays don't go on tours anymore. For those not close to New York, there isn't a moral problem for the theatre-goer to want to see these plays that came off of Broadway in the past few years. Sadly, I think that the artistic directors of these regional companies are feeling a moral problem with choosing these shows, mostly because they want to do more creative, and original shows. I think the one theatre company in the article that had a balance of six local playwrights, and three recently off of Broadway shows had the right idea. These companies need the large shows to bring in the money, but they still need to do their job as a regional company, and bring local theatre to the forefront.
Using current Broadway productions too fill a regional theater's season can certainly be a good idea. More people will recognize and be familiar with the production and will be more likely to see it because they will know more about it. But like Kelly said it also takes up space that could be filled with works by local playwrights or smaller more experimental works that regional theaters are more known for. So I suppose its a tradeoff.
Pardon me for being the naive flagbearer for commercial theatre, but is there anything that says New York Broadway theatre isn't "artistically interesting", according to Kelly? There's a really vile association in the public opinion that well-financed, fiscally viable plays that get mass acclaim are "crap art". Good People is not a fluff piece, it's a really strong play. Same with Mountaintop, Clybourne Park, Motherf**ker, etc. - they're amazing scripts that have the added benefit of being commercial (relatively cheap and simple to produce, as a result of cast sizes and unit sets). And if your not-for-profit mission statement calls for contemporary plays of importance to your region, I feel like these plays can be justified, PLUS will be solid sellers.
What gets lost in the middle are the voices of local playwrights, who without the slots in the regional and NFP theatres have less opportunity to have their works presented. That has to be a judgment call on the theatre with regard to the number of submissions and the strength of their works. The new play initiative listed in the article is an attempt at giving some development assistance and a guaranteed outlet for these plays, outside of the regular season. Also, after development, it's possible these plays may become the company's first picks for full season slots.
I suppose I don't want to discount the concern that X% of your season is going to shows that are being pushed out of NYC instead of keeping it in the family, but don't believe for a second that the NYC shows are selected purely on a profitability measure. Put good plays in your season, regardless of where they come from.
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