OMG, Scott. It's like our conversation was just revisited 3 years later. How many time and ways did I try to explain this was the shift happening? But, we also have a severe difference of opinion regarding the savior of theater in America. I surely do not think educated students of theater know how to run a successful business. It is painfully obvious that the artists are the inmates running the asylum. And to answer your question, why would any artist want to take over a wheezing dinosaur, that is painfully obvious: opportunity. They assume that the problems will magically go away when the right financial genius arrives to bail the company out - so they can solely practice the only thing they care about: self-expression. (Well, and maybe, public adulation.) I haven't the time to get back into this conversation, but I left it convinced that there were lessons to be learned from the theater shift that occurred in 1920-30s - when the Shuberts and the Nederlander's realized that theater wasn't about producing new works, it was always about real estate: keeping the buildings leased and funding an occasional artistic project that might provide ticket sale (lease) returns and income from the ancillary rights (theatrical licensing elsewhere, movie, book, music score, LP, CD, DVD and TV.) Regional theater was their way of getting additional licensing revenue on titles they co-produced. And to succeed, they made sure that the entire country came to believe the only professional theater was in NYC (maybe Chicago for a time - no not even LA - that was an out of town tryout to work out kinks) and that all new theatrical art had to start there, be made legitimate and then licensed out to all regional companies - where they continue to mount seasons of past Broadway titles. Few regional companies produce original material because they can't get their audiences to respond to titles they have never heard of. Too may regional audiences only respond to seeing shows that are nationally made famous from their time on Broadway. The Broadway business community made sure of that. (A fine production of Hands on a Hard Body is suffering 60% houses here right now. No one knows the show or even understands the show title.) Regionally, the BAA bus and truck shows bring a recent closed Broadway musical and will sell out 10-20 performances at 3000 seats while a local theater producer could mount the same show (if they could even get the license) and die trying to get 250 seats filled for a 16 performance run. Regional audiences will pay $125 seat for a bus and truck show with no names on the marquee and the local company can't get $55 average for a seat. So then, when you get moronic local artistic leaders spending $100k to produce a 4 person (Equity) play with custom music, set and costumes and they are averaging a gross ticket sale of $55k for the run, well, it's apparent they aren't business people running the show. I stopped caring about looking for answers. Musical Theater will go the way of European opera eventually. The only question is when - how may generations does it have left? Media technology and their conglomerates are going to make live theater a relic too expensive to produce or buy a ticket for. Audiences are staying home and watching entertainment on their $255 65-inch Smart TV - with hundreds of channels to choose from - let alone pay streaming services. Playwrights will be screenwriters, the best spinning out product with the aid of AI. And AI is going to fundamentally change the economics of Film and TV production too. LA is already lost a giant share of production to other locations around the globe. Now the localized artists will be replaced by global services. (Not the actors - but writers, composers, musicians, etc.) The best lighting and set people I know of, have left theater for greener pastures in national-regional TV production. Ah, yes, the times, they keep a-changin'.
OMG, Scott. It's like our conversation was just revisited 3 years later. How many time and ways did I try to explain this was the shift happening? But, we also have a severe difference of opinion regarding the savior of theater in America. I surely do not think educated students of theater know how to run a successful business. It is painfully obvious that the artists are the inmates running the asylum. And to answer your question, why would any artist want to take over a wheezing dinosaur, that is painfully obvious: opportunity. They assume that the problems will magically go away when the right financial genius arrives to bail the company out - so they can solely practice the only thing they care about: self-expression. (Well, and maybe, public adulation.) I haven't the time to get back into this conversation, but I left it convinced that there were lessons to be learned from the theater shift that occurred in 1920-30s - when the Shuberts and the Nederlander's realized that theater wasn't about producing new works, it was always about real estate: keeping the buildings leased and funding an occasional artistic project that might provide ticket sale (lease) returns and income from the ancillary rights (theatrical licensing elsewhere, movie, book, music score, LP, CD, DVD and TV.) Regional theater was their way of getting additional licensing revenue on titles they co-produced. And to succeed, they made sure that the entire country came to believe the only professional theater was in NYC (maybe Chicago for a time - no not even LA - that was an out of town tryout to work out kinks) and that all new theatrical art had to start there, be made legitimate and then licensed out to all regional companies - where they continue to mount seasons of past Broadway titles. Few regional companies produce original material because they can't get their audiences to respond to titles they have never heard of. Too may regional audiences only respond to seeing shows that are nationally made famous from their time on Broadway. The Broadway business community made sure of that. (A fine production of Hands on a Hard Body is suffering 60% houses here right now. No one knows the show or even understands the show title.) Regionally, the BAA bus and truck shows bring a recent closed Broadway musical and will sell out 10-20 performances at 3000 seats while a local theater producer could mount the same show (if they could even get the license) and die trying to get 250 seats filled for a 16 performance run. Regional audiences will pay $125 seat for a bus and truck show with no names on the marquee and the local company can't get $55 average for a seat. So then, when you get moronic local artistic leaders spending $100k to produce a 4 person (Equity) play with custom music, set and costumes and they are averaging a gross ticket sale of $55k for the run, well, it's apparent they aren't business people running the show. I stopped caring about looking for answers. Musical Theater will go the way of European opera eventually. The only question is when - how may generations does it have left? Media technology and their conglomerates are going to make live theater a relic too expensive to produce or buy a ticket for. Audiences are staying home and watching entertainment on their $255 65-inch Smart TV - with hundreds of channels to choose from - let alone pay streaming services. Playwrights will be screenwriters, the best spinning out product with the aid of AI. And AI is going to fundamentally change the economics of Film and TV production too. LA is already lost a giant share of production to other locations around the globe. Now the localized artists will be replaced by global services. (Not the actors - but writers, composers, musicians, etc.) The best lighting and set people I know of, have left theater for greener pastures in national-regional TV production. Ah, yes, the times, they keep a-changin'.
Yes, we do have a difference of opinion. We did when I wrote it, and we still do.