TABLE OF CONTENTS
FOOTNOTES BEFORE FOOTLIGHTS
WHAT MAKES BROADWAY TICK
1 - The danger is thinking you know more than you do.
2 - The jobs: over two hundred of them per show.
3 - Who's in charge, and what are they in charge of?
4 - Nineteen unions, and what's so unusual about them.SELLING TICKETS / IT'S NOT WHAT IT SEEMS
5 - Marketing vs. press vs. promotion vs. advertising.
6 - What you need to know about opening night, the Tony Awards, and Macy's parade.
7 - What you need to know about merchandising, original cast recordings, and holiday scheduling.
8 - The media, the critics, the New York Times, and other power brokers.
9 - How to sell a big flop, a big hit, or a "moderately well-received" show.THE BIG SURPRISES
10 - Producing and investing: the glory and the gamble.
11 - Unique financials: overcalls, royalty waivers, and royalty pools.
12 - Good and bad surprises.WHAT THE PROS WANT YOU TO KNOW
13 - What the box office wants you to know.
14 - What the press agents want you to know.
15 - What the actors want you to know.
16 - What the stagehands want you to know.
17 - What the director, authors, and designers want you to know.
18 - What management wants you to know.
19 - What the ushers want you to know.
20 - What wardrobe want you to know.
21 - What musicians want you to know.
22 - What the theatre owners want you to know.
23 - Life after 50 on Broadway.BUDGETS
24 - Production and operating budgets from a $15 million dollar Broadway musical.
IN SUMMARY
25 - How do I get here from there? (including thoughts from some of Broadway's major players).
APPENDIX: RESOURCES, MATERIALS, AND WEBSITES
Authors' biographies
Mitch Weiss has thirty-five years of management experience in theatre and music. He has managed over 180 Broadway and off-Broadway shows including Tony Award winners A Chorus Line, The Grapes of Wrath, and Beauty and the Beast, and has also held senior management positions at Disney Theatricals International, New York Shakespeare Festival, Barrington Stage Company, and Big Apple Circus.
Mr. Weiss has served on the Board of Broadway's Association of Theatrical Press Agents and Managers and has been a certified ATPAM manager since 1985. He is an adjunct professor at NYU's School of Professional Studies and mentors future arts administrators through his classes at www.JustLearnSeomthing.us.
Additionally, he is the author of Managing Artists in Pop Music (Skyhorse Publishing/Allworth Press), now in its second edition, based on his years of management for music, sports, and Broadway artists. A graduate of Oberlin College, Mr. Weiss has been a consultant, speaker, director, musical director, composer/lyricist, and producer of a wide variety of shows and events through his New York-based production and management company MW Entertainment Group.
Perri Gaffney adapted her debut novel, The Resurrection of Alice, into a one-woman play that won the 2014 Black Theater Alliance's Best Lead Actress Award (Chicago) and has received many nominations including the 2014 Black Theater Alliance's Best Play and Best Playwright Award categories, Outstanding Lead Actress-Drama by the 2014 Helen Hayes Awards (Washington DC), and Best Solo Performance by the Audelco Awards (New York City).
Perri wrote and performs Josephine, a multimedia monodrama based on the life of Josephine Baker. She wrote and appears in The Consequences, an independent feature-length film, and wrote and narrates C2EA: The Campaign to End AIDS, a feature-length documentary. Ms. Gaffney wrote The Substitute, a compilation of short stories, has written numerous other plays, and has been commissioned to write several poems including Something Marvtastic (a memorial poem for Larry Leon Hamlin, founder of the National Black Theatre Festival) and Kickin' It With My Girl Friends (a celebration for the Ohio Chapter of Girl Friends, Inc.). Ms. Gaffney lives in New York City.