StageLync: The ritual of dimming lights on Broadway to honor deceased artists has long been seen as a sacred tradition, a brief and poignant moment when the bustling Theater District comes together to recognize a loss in its ranks. But in recent years, the practice has sparked controversy as the Broadway League—the trade association made up of theater owners and producers which oversees such decisions—has tightened its criteria for who gets this honor.
4 comments:
I feel like the simple solution here is to just have theatre’s dim the lights in honor of every Broadway community member who has passed. There’s something wildly off putting about selecting who was more important on Broadway or the theatre industry than others. Even the article itself uses Tony’s and Grammy’s to justify an actor or designer’s credentials to be honored by the dimming which are awards which many will not receive due to racist biases, elitism, and classism. I think it is an ugly look to debate over deceased people’s worthiness of being celebrated–especially on Broadway which likes to brand itself as a community of artists. It is upsetting to know that there are leaders like St. Martin gets to create clubs that decide the worth of someone based on credentials rather than just being a good person who was involved with Broadway at some point or other.
I agree completely with the argument at the end of the article that the dimming of lights to show respect and remembrance to those within the performing theater community who have passed. It seems like it would be fairly easy to simply implement a moment at the beginning of shows (or even a program insert with no announcement but still a light dim before the show) within the broadway league that lists those who have passed recently instead of needing to verify if someone’s death is worthy of mentioning on a larger scale. As for public displays outside theaters though, it seems that this could be on a more case by case basis for a particular theater owner wherein if a particular performer was very important to that theater, they could do more to highlight them to especially show their respect and remembrance of their work. Ultimately, there is still some kind of want for exclusivity in this practice which is holding it back from being truly meaningful.
This article sums up very well a lot of the sentiment I think many in the industry have been feeling towards the Broadway League and other large organizations like them. There is a deep disconnect between these organizations and the people that they are supposed to be representing. I think a lot of this eventually comes down to a lack of transparency and accountability. The people in the industry don’t know how the decisions that directly affect them are being made or any of the reasoning behind them so they are becoming discontent with the results of these decisions and have no reason to trust the decision makers. I think that with more transparency, a lot of this lost trust could be built back up but it will definitely take a good amount of work to get to that point. I am hopeful though that controversies like this one will force the Broadway League and other organizations of that scale to do some internal reflection.
To me this has always felt like a situation that no matter what criteria there was surrounding who would get the lights of a show dimmed, it was really a popularity contest for who the Broadway League actually wanted to give the privilege too after someones passing. I think this should fall under the category of an all or nothing, they either follow the rules to a T with everyone or no one. In that case, if it was no one and there were no lights dimmed, I'm confident the Broadway community would still find a way to honor these performers. I don't understand what any additional push back could be from the Broadway league. Do they not want fans and patrons (and paying customers) to see that they care about the artists that grace their stages, in this case what are they really losing from a moment of the lights dimming?
Post a Comment