Broadway Lights to Dim for Gavin Creel

Broadway’s theater owners, facing criticism for their decision to dim the lights outside fewer than one-third of the 41 theaters in honor of the musical theater performer Gavin Creel, have succumbed to the public pressure and agreed that all their venues would acknowledge his death.

In addition to Creel, a well-known and well-liked actor who died on Sept. 30 at age 48, the theater owners said they would also dim the lights of all theaters to honor Maggie Smith, the British stage and screen star, as well as the actor Adrian Bailey, both of whom died last month. The lights for Bailey will be dimmed Oct. 17; the dimmings for Creel and Smith will be scheduled in consultation with their families.

In an email on Wednesday, the theater owners described their decision via the Broadway League, the trade organization that represents them and speaks on their behalf.

The lights-dimming ritual, which goes back decades, has been an increasingly fraught one for the nine entities that own and operate Broadway theaters. That small group decides not only which Broadway alumni merit such public recognition when they die, but also how many buildings should go dark, based on how those landlords evaluate the theatermakers’ contributions.

In other words: Stephen Sondheim, James Earl Jones and Chita Rivera were recognized with lights dimmings at all theaters, but memorializing accomplished but less-universally known individuals with partial dimmings has been fraught. Those decisions have often been followed by pushback from artists and audiences: over whether to dim lights at all for the comedian Joan Rivers (the theater owners at first decided no, and then yes), and how many theaters should dim lights for the performers Jan Maxwell (at first one, then two), Marin Mazzie (at first six, then all) and Hinton Battle (at first nine, and then all).

When the Broadway League announced, on Friday, that the theater owners had decided on a limited dimming for Creel — at first 11, and then 12 theaters after they added the Eugene O’Neill, where Creel starred in “The Book of Mormon” — a backlash arose on social media.