Saturday, October 20, 2007
The Business Of Bway
One NYC StageHand: "I’d be more inclined to protect these investors if the investors had a little better sense of theatre. If they knew more of David Merrick and less of Rupert Murdock we wouldn’t be loading in shows the likes of Festen, Lestat, or The Pirate Queen. Never heard of them. It’s because they didn’t last very long, They weren’t very good. As the Broadway expression goes, “people stayed away in droves.”"
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4 comments:
Now, I do agree that to be a good producer you have to really know theatre, this article makes it sound like all producers are ignorant and thats why shows fail. Some shows work and some shows just don't and its hard to predict that before a show goes into previews. Also, a producers job isn't really to make good theatre, there here to make money and make investors money. So they are going to try to produce the shows that will draw the biggest crowds, not necessarily the shows with the most intellectual meaning. Maybe this what the author of this article is having a problem with.
I agree with this article in the sense that sometimes producers do come off in this light. It seems that some producers, not all, but some just produce shows to make money and nothing else. It's true that no one in the end knows wheather or not a show will end up a big hit or a flop, but it seems with some producers it really doesn't matter. With shows that end up on the list of "bad theatre" it always comes across that the people working on these shows do not understand theatre and it's meaning. When I think that in the theatre business there is no right or wrong, so who is to tell what will make it and what won't. It is hard to tell the difference between a producer trying to produce good theatre and failing and just a producer that is in for the money.
Quite a lovely little tidbit. It's really true though. There are some shows which even though they lack any substance, still make money, and then there are the ones that just don't have money-making quality even. I find it amusing that two of the shows mentioned, Lestat and Pirate Queen, were the shows that the BSMC featured last year. So the sound quality may have been great but clearly that is not enough for audiences these days. Now by chance I did see Pirate Queen because a friend at NYU had an extra ticket (which thank God none of us had to pay for) and it was a pretty stupid show, but it was technically very beautiful and had some great dancing and singing, but yeah, it was just really dumb. So basically the lesson is - it has to be SO bad and have NO good qualities, like Legally Blonde in order to make money, or have it all.
But truly - if the people putting money into these shows really knew theatre, we'd be producing a hell of a lot of better shows, flops or not.
This reminds me of something we did one day in summer stock. The director of the program had us do a mock production meeting, and when she explained each role she said the producer is usually someone who knows nothing about the theater. Its sad that the only people who have enough money for these things are business tycoons rather than knowledgeable theater goers.
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