August/September, 2022
CHAPTER: THE PANDEMIC! NOW BROADWAY REBOUNDS??
The numbers also showed that the pre- and post-pandemic gap is shrinking, with just a 10% deficit in ticket sales and a 14% reduction in attendance from the 2019-20 season. A particular bright spot was the week of July 10, when gross sales were only 1% shy of the same week during the 2019-20 season.
Attendance fell just 4% short that week. … Foot traffic in Times Square is also inching up to prepandemic levels; it was down by just 13% in June of this year compared to June 2019.(Crain’s NY Business, August 2022)
CHAPTER 10: PRODUCERS AND INVESTORS
(NY Times Aug 2022) Since Disney asked Julie Taymor to find a way to bring Simba to Broadway, virtually every studio has been going through its archives to see what might transfer from screen to stage. (The opposite had been the traditional course of events.) Disney’s catalog of animated hits, alongside franchise spinoffs like “Wicked” and “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” attract a built-in family crowd. But the scorecard on many recent adaptations has been mixed: “Mrs. Doubtfire,” “Tootsie,” “Pretty Woman” and even Billy Crystal’s “Mr. Saturday Night” are a few that came and went. (Even Mel Brooks followed megahit “The Producers” with “Young Frankenstein,” which sputtered after just over a year.)
Author’s notes: Some Broadway professionals speak of 10-year trends on Broadway. While there are exceptions, of course, many musicals follow this trend nonetheless. Many Andrew Lloyd Weber hits opened in one decade. Many “Jukebox” musicals (“Mamma Mia!” “Jersey Boys”) opened in the same decade. Musicals based on non-musical film titles (“Mrs.Doubtfire, “Tootsie”)… well, let’s see when this trend begins to fade…
CHAPTER 12: SURPRISES
The Actors Fund officially changed its name in 2022 to The Entertainment Community Fund. Five new members were added to its board: SAG-AFTRA Executive Director and Chief Negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, Shubert Organization COO Elliot Greene, producer and philanthropist Sharon Karmazin, writer, director, producer and actor Tyler Perry, and Actors Equity Executive Director Alvin Vincent, Jr.. Brian Stokes Mitchell has also been reelected as Chair of the board, for his nineteenth term of serving in the role.
CHAPTER 15: ACTORS
Yes, even performers have families with positive and negative twists to a child’s upbringing. From actor Martha Plimpton quoted in the Wall Street Journal Aug 16): “My parents met in 1969 while in the Broadway production of “Hair.” My mother, Shelley Plimpton, played Crissy and my father, Keith Carradine, was Claude. Offstage, they dated for about six months. ... [My mother] took me with her to the theater each night. Every now and then, the cast brought me on stage for “Let the Sun Shine In.”
CHAPTER 17: AUTHORS
A church in Texas claimed they had been given the rights to perform their own version of “Hamilton”. Of course, they didn’t but they went ahead and rewrote it with some of their own religious “adjustments.” In addition to the producers sending “stop and desist” letters, the Dramatist Guild sent the following: “#dontchangethewords #dontchangethemusic The Dramatist Guild condemns the Door McAllen Church for its unauthorized production of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s groundbreaking musical Hamilton performed on August 5 and August 6, 2022, in McAllen, Texas. In addition to performing the show without a license, the Door McAllen Church changed lyrics and added text without permission. We hold up the Door McAllen Church’s brazen infringement to shine a light on the problematic pattern of some theatrical organizations performing authors’ work without a license and rewriting the text without authorial consent. No organization, professional, amateur, or religious, is exempt from these laws. No writer’s work, whether they are a student who has just written their first play, or Lin-Manuel Miranda, can be performed without their permission. And it is never okay to change the words lyrics, or notes, without their express consent.”
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