The New York Times: Is Broadway facing a bonanza or a blood bath?
The next two months are jam-packed with new productions — 18 are scheduled to open in March and April — while the industry is still struggling to adapt to the new, and more challenging, realities of a postpandemic theater era.
4 comments:
Considering I’m a theater major, I feel like it would be expected I would know more about the general happenings in Broadway then I currently actually do. I haven’t really kept up with much of anything happening over there over the past couple months, so it definitely caught me somewhat off guard to read about the sheer quantity of shows opening this spring. I understand the strategy of it as the timeline relates to the awards season, but I really feel like at a point, the amount of content might end up having a negative effect. A section that stood out to me was definitely the part about how ticket purchases could possibly be overwhelmed by how many shows there are happening all at once, and an opening isn’t as big a deal if there is an opening every night. It is unfortunate that the awards strategy is to try and open right before the nomination deadlines, because ideally, it would be nice if they could be spaced out to make the entire broadway thing less intimidating and let every show have its opening spotlight moment.
I can agree it is kind of worrisome that that many shows will be on at once and thinning out the audiences. However well yes as they mentioned it'll be very helpful for those who like to go see a show as now they have 38 choices however if it also be helpful in my opinion for the people who work on the shows and will now have more shows for people to work on and now can have more people working on them. I highly doubt the audiences will thin too much do not make a profit and I'm not really concerned overall. I do agree however That Broadway isn't fully “back” however I do think this works a very important Turning Point as if we can get this many shows open at once and if we can get them all to have audiences at once I think that would be a pretty good sign for Broadway as a whole
I did not realize just how chaotic this coming Broadway season is. I didn’t realize that the reason April is so crowded with Broadway openings is because of the deadline for the Tony nominations. It makes sense but I think in the end this ends up harming every show. With the season over saturated it will be hard for everyone to get the attention they deserve. There are two shows opening on the same day. That puts a lot of pressure on journalists as well as theater goers. It also hurts everyone. I wish the season was more spread out. I think all this does is result in a lot of closings very quickly. In spite of all that, I am still excited for all the new shows. I’m especially excited for the Cabaret revival. I am going with my Step mom when school ends. I’ve been following this production forever and it looks amazing. I don’t like to get my hopes up too high for anything but I’m so incredibly excited and my hopes are already through the roof.
I’m very curious about how all these new Broadway shows would fare. While I’m excited so much work, especially new work, is coming to Broadway, I’m concerned about how little I’d heard about them. I consider myself fairly well-versed in theatre and follow many theatre platforms on social media. While I’m unabashedly in the Pittsburgh college bubble, I would have hoped I would have heard more about these shows. It seems as though Broadway has a PR issue; why TikTok and other booming platforms aren’t used more confuses me. While I recognize that young people are not the audiences that are going to Broadway regularly, as frankly, we can’t afford them, it seems like such a disservice to a possible audience. The real question is not how many shows open, but rather how many of them stay open. I’m hopeful that Broadway will return to what it was given all the incredible work incoming, but am apprehensive as to why we keep using the same PR systems when they don’t seem to be successful with lower ticket sales.
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