Broadway League

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in Theater

      Broadway Theater Owners and Producers Start Campaign to Bring Back Locals

      by

      The trade association representing theater owners and producers gets an assist from Oprah Winfrey as it seeks to drive ticket sales beyond the buzzy September reopenings.Broadway producers and theater owners, concerned about whether fans are ready to return as dozens of shows prepare to start or resume performances, have banded together for an industrywide marketing campaign aimed at persuading Broadway’s core audience to purchase tickets.Gone are the days when the booming industry was focused on expanding its reach to tourists from China and Brazil. Now, as the longest shutdown in history nears an uncertain end, an anxious industry is more focused on bringing back fans from New Jersey and Connecticut.On Monday, the Broadway League will begin a “This Is Broadway” campaign that it plans to roll out on screens not only across the five boroughs — at subway and bus stations, in taxis and Wi-Fi kiosks, and on a giant electronic cube in Times Square — but also through social and news media platforms with a broader geographic reach, including YouTube, Facebook, Hulu, Condé Nast, CNN, The New York Times and more. The campaign, aimed squarely at people from the East Coast who before the pandemic enjoyed seeing Broadway shows, seeks to serve as a reminder of all that Broadway offers.The campaign is anchored by a 2.5 minute video, featuring snippets of 99 shows, such as “A Chorus Line” and “Hamilton,” and narration by Oprah Winfrey. The spots will be excerpted in 30 second, 15 second and 6 second digital ads.The marketing material points consumers to a new website, thisisbroadway.org, that features, describes and links to sales sites for every Broadway show that will be onstage this season; two shows, “Springsteen on Broadway” and “Pass Over,” are already running, and 15 more plan to start performances in September. The site also features recommendations based on user interests, and information about safety protocols (all shows are requiring that patrons be vaccinated and masked).“The goal is to let the world know we’re back, and, specifically, to drive ticket sales for the first six months from the Northeast corridor and the Eastern Seaboard, which is where we believe is our best opportunity to put people in seats,” said Charlotte St. Martin, the president of the Broadway League, which is a trade association representing theater owners and producers. The League has set aside $1.5 million for the campaign, but says that the campaign will have a broader reach, which they estimate will be worth more than $3 million in advertising value, thanks to discounted ad rates and support from other organizations.The campaign is unusual for Broadway because individual shows usually do their own marketing. But this is an unusual time, when concerns about the Delta variant have made an already precarious reopening seem even more risky. The League, citing the atypical nature of this season, says it will not disclose box office grosses, but St. Martin said the industry’s September sales are strong..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“There will be shows, as there always are, that don’t do well, and I’m sure they’ll blame it on the pandemic,” St. Martin said. “But I’m very encouraged.”Theater owners agreed to pool consumer data from a period of five years, including 17 million ticket sales in the Northeast, to improve the campaign’s targeting, and multiple unions agreed to allow the use of archival video for advertising. Collectively the spots feature 113 shows, 735 performers, and one dog (Sandy, from “Annie,” of course).In addition to the video, the campaign will call attention to the industry in other ways as well. On Aug. 30, the Empire State Building will be lit up to celebrate Broadway’s reopening. In collaboration with Audience Rewards, there will be a contest in which one person can win four tickets to all 38 shows now on sale. And, in collaboration with Playbill, there will be a mid-September festival and concert in Times Square.The League has been determined since the start of the Broadway shutdown in March 2020 to find a way to promote Broadway as it returns, but the focus of the campaign has shifted as the Delta variant has rattled consumers.“The hypothesis had been that the core audience is going to come back, and we should focus on the casual theatergoer,” said Andrew Lazzaro, a consultant who helped design the campaign for the Broadway League. “But over the course of the summer, as the Delta variant took hold, positions changed — a lot of our data started to suggest that the core audience wasn’t coming back at the level we needed, and we were able to pivot.”Lazzaro said their strategy is primarily aimed at a million people living between Maine and Virginia who, before the pandemic, were reliable theatergoers, interested in seeing what’s new on Broadway, and accounting for a disproportionate share of ticket sales, but who now may need a bit of encouragement to resume the habit.The campaign is scheduled to run through the end of the year. It overlaps with a $30 million promotional campaign by the city’s tourism agency to lure visitors back to New York City. More

    • 150 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      As New York Reopens, It Looks for Culture to Lead the Way

      by

      Broadway is planning to start performances of at least three dozen shows before the end of the year, but producers do not know if there will be enough tourists — who typically make up two-thirds of the audience — to support all of them.The Metropolitan Opera is planning a September return, but only if its musicians agree to pay cuts.And New York’s vaunted nightlife scene — the dance clubs and live venues that give the city its reputation for never sleeping — has been stymied by the slow, glitchy rollout of a federal aid program that mistakenly declared some of the city’s best-known nightclub impresarios to be dead.The return of arts and entertainment is crucial to New York’s economy, and not just because it is a major industry that employed some 93,500 people before the pandemic and paid them $7.4 billion in wages, according to the state comptroller’s office. Culture is also part of the lifeblood of New York — a magnet for visitors and residents alike that will play a key role if the city is to remain vital in an era when shops are battling e-commerce, the ease of remote work has businesses rethinking the need to stay in central business districts and the exurbs are booming.“What is a city without social, cultural and creative synergies?” Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo asked earlier this year in an address on the importance of the arts to the city’s recovery. “New York City is not New York without Broadway. And with Zoom, many people have learned they can do business from anywhere. Compound this situation with growing crime and homelessness and we have a national urban crisis.”When “Springsteen on Broadway” opened its doors again in June, the fans flocked back. George Etheredge for The New York TimesAnd Mayor Bill de Blasio — who could seem indifferent to the arts earlier in his tenure — has become a cultural cheerleader in the waning days of his administration, starting a $25 million program to put artists back to work, creating a Broadway vaccination site for theater industry workers and planning a “homecoming concert” in Central Park next month featuring Bruce Springsteen, Jennifer Hudson and Paul Simon to herald the city’s return.Eli Dvorkin, editorial and policy director at the Center for an Urban Future, said, “The way I look at it, there is not going to be a strong recovery for New York City without the performing arts’ leading the way.” He added, “People gravitate here because of the city’s cultural life.”There are signs of hope everywhere, as vaccinated New Yorkers re-emerge this summer. Destinations like the Whitney and the Brooklyn Museum are crowded again, although timed reservations are still required. Bruce Springsteen is playing to sold-out crowds on Broadway and Foo Fighters brought rock back to Madison Square Garden.Shakespeare in the Park and the Classical Theater of Harlem are staging contemporary adaptations of classic plays in city parks, the Park Avenue Armory, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and a number of commercial Off Broadway theaters have been presenting productions indoors, and a new outdoor amphitheater is drawing crowds for shows on Little Island, the new Hudson River venue.Haley Gibbs, 25, an administrative aide who lives in Brooklyn, said she felt the city’s pulse returning as she waited to attend “Drunk Shakespeare,” an Off Off Broadway fixture that has resumed performances in Midtown.“I feel like it’s our soul that’s been given back to us, in a way,” Gibbs said, “which is super dramatic, but it is kind of like that.”But some of the greatest tests for the city’s cultural scene lie ahead.Hunkering down — cutting staff, slashing programming — turned out to be a brutal but effective survival strategy. Arts workers faced record unemployment, and some have yet to return to work, but many businesses and organizations were able to slash expenses and wait until it was safe to reopen. Now that it’s time to start hiring and spending again, many cultural leaders are worried: Can they thrive with fewer tourists and commuters? How much will safety protocols cost? Will the donors who stepped up during the emergency stick around for a less glamorous period of rebuilding?“Next year may prove to be our most financially challenging,” said Bernie Telsey, one of the three artistic directors at MCC Theater, an Off Broadway nonprofit. “In many ways, it’s like a start-up now — it’s not just turning the lights on. Everything is a little uncertain. It’s like starting all over again.”The fall season is shaping up to be the big test. “Springsteen on Broadway” began last month, but the rest of Broadway has yet to resume: The first post-shutdown play, a drama about two existentially trapped Black men called “Pass Over,” is to start performances Aug. 4, while the first musicals are aiming for September, starting with “Hadestown” and “Waitress,” followed by war horses that include “The Lion King,” “Chicago,” “Wicked” and “Hamilton.”Many of Broadway’s biggest hits will reopen in September.George Etheredge for The New York TimesThe looming question is whether there will be enough theatergoers to support all those shows. Although there have been signs that some visitors are returning to the city, tourism is not expected to rebound to its prepandemic levels for four years. So some of the returning Broadway shows will initially start with reduced schedules — performing fewer than the customary eight shows a week — as producers gauge ticket demand.And “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” a big-budget, Tony-winning play that was staged in two parts before the pandemic, will be cut down to a single show when it returns to Broadway on Nov. 12; its producers cited “the commercial challenges faced by the theater and tourism industries emerging from the global shutdowns.”“What we need to do, which has never been done before, is open all of Broadway over a single season,” said Tali Pelman, the lead producer of “Tina — The Tina Turner Musical.”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Safety protocols have been changing rapidly, as more people get vaccinated, but there is still apprehension about moving too fast. In Australia, reopened shows have periodically been halted by lockdowns, while in England, several shows have been forced to cancel performances to comply with isolation protocols that some view as overly restrictive.“On a fundamental level, our health is at stake,” said Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of “Hamilton,” which is planning to resume performances on Broadway on Sept. 14. “You get this wrong, and we open too soon, and then we re-spike and we close again — that’s almost unthinkable.”Some presenters worry that, with fewer tourists, arts organizations will be battling one another to win the attention of New Yorkers and people from the region.The tourism drawn by Broadway is an essential part of the restaurant and bar economy in Midtown.George Etheredge for The New York TimesWill audiences return in the same numbers as prior to the pandemic is a question that producers are pondering. George Etheredge for The New York Times“There’s going to be a lot of competition for a smaller audience at the beginning, and that’s scary,” said Todd Haimes, artistic director of the Roundabout Theater Company, a nonprofit that operates three theaters on Broadway and two Off Broadway.Another looming challenge: concerns about public safety. Bystanders were struck by stray bullets during shooting incidents in Times Square in May and June, prompting Mayor de Blasio to promise additional officers to protect and reassure the public in that tourist-and-theater-dense neighborhood.The city’s tourism organization, NYC & Company, has developed a $30 million marketing campaign to draw visitors back to the city. The Broadway League, a trade organization representing producers and theater owners, is planning its own campaign. The Tony Awards are planning a fall special on CBS that will focus on performances in an effort to boost ticket sales. And comeback come-ons are finding their way into advertising: “We’ve been waiting for you,” “Wicked” declares in a direct mail piece.The economic stakes for the city are high. Broadway shows give work to actors and singers and dancers and ushers, but also, indirectly, to waiters and bartenders and hotel clerks and taxi drivers, who then go on to spend a portion of their paychecks on goods and services. The Broadway League says that during the 2018-2019 season Broadway generated $14.7 billion in economic activity and supported 96,900 jobs, when factoring in the direct and indirect spending of tourists who cited Broadway as a major reason for visiting the city.“We’ve pushed through a really tough time, and now you have this new variant, which is kind of scary, but I still hope we’re on the right track,” said Shane Hathaway, the co-owner of Hold Fast, a Restaurant Row bar and eatery whose website asks “Do you miss the Performing Arts?? So do we!!” “We’re already seeing a lot more tourists than last year,” Hathaway said, “and my hope is that we continue.”The Metropolitan Museum of Art on a  Saturday in July. It reopened last August on a reduced schedule and officials there say the visitor count has dropped.George Etheredge for The New York TimesAt the tourist-dependent Met Museum, attendance is back, but not all the way: it’s now open five days a week, and has drawn 10,000 people many days, while before the pandemic it was open seven days a week and averaged 14,000 daily visitors. Plus: more of the visitors now are local, and they don’t have to pay admission; the Met continues to project a $150 million revenue loss due to the pandemic.If the Met, the largest museum in the country, is struggling, that means smaller arts institutions are hurting even more, particularly those outside Manhattan, which tend to have less foot traffic and fewer big donors. The Brooklyn Academy of Music, for example, is trying to recover from a pandemic period without when it lost millions in revenue, reduced staff and had to raid its endowment to pay the bills.The city’s music scene has faced its own challenges — from the diviest bars to nightclubs to the plush Metropolitan Opera.According to a study commissioned by the mayor’s office, some 2,400 concert and entertainment venues in New York City supported nearly 20,000 jobs in 2016. But the sector has had a hard time.Many are waiting to see if they will get help from a $16 billion federal grant fund intended to preserve music clubs, theaters and other live-event businesses devastated by the pandemic. But the rollout of the program, the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant initiative, has been slow and bumpy. Some owners, including Michael Swier, the founder of the Bowery Ballroom and the Mercury Lounge in New York, were initially denied aid because the program mistakenly believed they were dead.Elsewhere, a music and arts space with a 1,600-person capacity in the heart of hipster Brooklyn, cut its staff from 120 people to 5 when the pandemic arrived. After the state lifted restrictions on smaller venues in June, it reopened and began hiring back some workers, but its owners fear it could take a year or two to return to profitability.The bar at Elsewhere on a July Saturday in New York.George Etheredge for The New York TimesMore party people packed in at Elsewhere.George Etheredge for The New York TimesThe club got help in the form of a $4.9 million shuttered venue grant from the federal government, which it said would be used to pay its debts — including for rent, utilities, and loans — and to fix up the space and pay staff. “Every dollar will be used just to dig ourselves out from Covid,” said one of the venue’s partners, Dhruv Chopra.And the Met Opera is still not sure if it can raise its gilded curtain in September, as planned, after the longest shutdown in its history. The company, which lost $150 million in earned revenues during the pandemic, recently struck deals to cut the pay of its choristers, soloists and stagehands. The company is now in tense negotiations with the musicians in its orchestra, who were furloughed without pay for nearly a year. If they fail to reach a deal, the Met, the largest performing arts organization in the nation, risks missing being part of the initial burst of reopening energy.Some cultural leaders are already looking past the fall, at the challenge of sustaining demand for tickets after the initial enthusiasm of reopening fades.“We have a lot of work to do to make sure that people know that we’re open,” said Thomas Schumacher, president of Disney Theatrical Productions, “to make people comfortable coming in, to keep the shows solid, and to get through the holidays and get through the winter.”Laura Zornosa contributed reporting. More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Theater

      Special Tony Awards Go to 'American Utopia,' 'Freestyle Love Supreme'

      by

      The Broadway Advocacy Coalition, “David Byrne’s American Utopia” and “Freestyle Love Supreme” win special Tonys.The Tony Awards, long delayed by the pandemic, announced on Tuesday the first recipients, honoring the Broadway Advocacy Coalition, an organization started five years ago by a group of actors and others as a tool to work toward dismantling racism through theater and storytelling.The other recipients were “David Byrne’s American Utopia,” an intricately choreographed concert by the Talking Heads singer, and “Freestyle Love Supreme,” a mostly improvised hip-hop musical that was created, in part, by Lin-Manuel Miranda. These honors, called special Tony Awards, were presented to three recipients that the Tony administration committee thought deserving of recognition even though they did not fall into any of the competition categories, according to a news release.The recipients were announced more than one year after the ceremony had originally been expected to take place. During the coronavirus pandemic, the ceremony was put on indefinite hold. The awards show — a starry broadcast that will celebrate Broadway’s comeback — is now set to air on CBS in September, when Broadway shows are scheduled to return to theaters in almost full force. Most of the awards, however, will be given out just beforehand, during a ceremony that will be shown only on Paramount+, the ViacomCBS subscription streaming service.The award for the Broadway Advocacy Coalition is indicative of how deeply the American theater industry was affected by the mass movement for racial justice set off by the police killing of George Floyd last year.In a statement, Charlotte St. Martin, the president of the Broadway League, and Heather A. Hitchens, the chief executive of the American Theater Wing — the two organizations that present the awards — said that the coalition has provided an “unparalleled platform for marginalized members of our theater community and tools to help us all do better as we strive for equity.”Among the organization’s projects is Theater of Change, a social justice methodology — developed with Columbia Law School — that brings together Broadway artists, legal and policy experts and people whose lives have been shaped by forces such as the criminal justice, immigration and educational systems to collaborate on storytelling as a means to advocate “just policies.”This year’s ceremony for the Tonys, formally known as the Antoinette Perry Awards, will be the 74th such event and will recognize work performed on Broadway between April 26, 2019, and Feb. 19, 2020.Broadway’s 41 theaters have been closed since March 12, 2020; right now, the first planned performances are for “Springsteen on Broadway,” the rock legend’s autobiographical show, which is set to open this Saturday at the St. James Theater. As of now, the next show scheduled to open is “Pass Over,” a play about two Black men trapped on a street corner, on Aug. 4 at the August Wilson Theater.“American Utopia,” which opened on Broadway in October of 2019, is planning to restart performances on Sept. 17. “Freestyle Love Supreme,” which opened that same month, is scheduled to play again for a live audience on Oct. 7. More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in Music

      Some Venue Owners Get a Federal Lifeline. Others Are Told They’re Dead.

      by

      The first applications for the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program, offering $16 billion in federal aid, were approved.As the emails finally started arriving late last week, some business owners got the good news they had been long awaiting: They would be awarded a piece of a $16 billion federal grant fund intended to preserve music clubs, theaters and other live-event businesses devastated by the pandemic.But other applicants ran into fresh obstacles — including the discovery that the government thinks they’re dead. It was the latest bureaucratic mishap for the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant initiative, an aid program created by Congress late last year that has struggled at nearly every turn to disburse badly needed relief funds.Derek Sitter, the owner of the Volcanic Theater Pub, a 250-capacity music and performance venue in Bend, Ore., was at home on Saturday watching a British soccer game when an alert popped up on his phone: “Congratulations,” ran the subject line of an email from the Small Business Administration, which manages the grant program.Mr. Sitter ran outside to tell his wife and daughter the news, with tears swelling in his eyes. “My heart rate increased,” he recalled in an interview. “But it was a good increase.”The Volcanic was awarded about $140,000, Mr. Sitter said, though the funds have not yet arrived. (The size of the grant is pegged at 45 percent of a venue’s gross revenue from 2019.) Just how many venues have learned that their applications have been approved is unclear, but members of the network of small venues — which became a tightly connected hive during the pandemic — say they have heard of only a few so far. The Small Business Administration has not released details on how many claims it has approved.Bobby McKey’s, a piano bar near Washington, is stuck in bureaucratic limbo. Bob Hansan, the venue’s managing partner, said that his application was stalled because the government thinks he is dead. Charles King/C King MediaOther applicants got grimmer news. Bob Hansan, the managing partner of Bobby McKey’s, a piano bar near Washington, received a cryptic email Tuesday afternoon that began: “Your name appears on the Do Not Pay list with the Match Source DMF.”A few minutes of frantic Googling revealed that was a reference to the government’s Death Master File, a record of more than 83 million people whose deaths have been reported to the Social Security Administration.Mr. Hansan immediately called Social Security’s headquarters, which referred him to his local office, which told Mr. Hansan that they could find no record of his name anywhere on the death list. The office agreed to send him a form affirming that he’s alive, but the document can only be sent by mail, he was told — a process he worries will be slow.“It’s this continual drip-drop of delays,” he said.Michael Swier, the founder of the Bowery Ballroom and the Mercury Lounge in New York — and a prominent figure in the independent music world — also received notification early Wednesday that he was considered dead, and said that he was beside himself trying to understand how to correct the error.“What do I do? What kind of proof do they need?” Mr. Swier said. “Can I say over the phone, ‘It’s me’?”Representatives of the Small Business Administration did not answer questions about the erroneous death data.Michael Swier, the founder of the Bowery Ballroom and the Mercury Lounge in New York, was told he was considered dead. (He is alive.) “What do I do?” he asked. “What kind of proof do they need?”Michal Czerwonka for The New York TimesThe glitches were the latest to bedevil the program, which has suffered many delays, including a complete failure of its online system on the day it tried to start taking applications. (The application system finally opened in late April.)Some 13,000 people applied, seeking a total of $11 billion. The Small Business Administration has not yet released details on how many it has approved.In Facebook groups and on Twitter, frantic business owners have been swapping tips and trying to glean where in the application process their own claim might be.Some venues are beginning to get good news.Hugh Hallinan, the executive producer of Downtown Cabaret Theater, a nonprofit venue in Bridgeport, Conn., spent weeks checking the S.B.A.’s grant portal each day, and last Thursday learned that his theater had been approved for a $541,000 grant.On Tuesday the theater held a news conference with Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut.“We’ve been in Bridgeport for 41 years, and we’ve never gotten recognition like this,” Mr. Hallinan said in an interview. “I just thought, ‘We’re going to soak it all up right now. We’re going to bask in it.’”Downtown Cabaret came close to shutting down last year. Downtown Cabaret Theater, in Bridgeport, Conn., which came close to shutting down, learned that it had been approved for a $541,000 grant. Richard Pettibone“If all patrons who had tickets called in and said, ‘I need a refund,’ it was game-over time,” Mr. Hallinan said. Instead, many opted for a credit on their account, and about a third of donated the cost of their tickets back to the venue, Mr. Hallinan said.The funding has not yet started flowing to Broadway. A spokeswoman for the Broadway League, a trade organization representing producers and theater owners, said that none of its members had notified the group about receiving application approvals. Charlotte St. Martin, the group’s president, had said last month that officials had told the group that money would start coming in by the end of May, but that deadline has now passed.And several major performing arts organizations in New York City that are planning summer or fall reopenings are also still waiting. Carnegie Hall, the New York Philharmonic, New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theater, the Public Theater and the Metropolitan Opera have not yet heard. Many will not be eligible until a later round of awards.Mr. Sitter, in Oregon, said he had no idea why the Volcanic got its award so early. Like many applicants, it had lost at least 90 percent of its revenue during the pandemic, which qualified the Volcanic for the first round of grants. Others who lost less will be eligible for awards in mid- to late June.The Volcanic received some federal money last year from an earlier round of federal pandemic relief. That got it through 2020, Mr. Sitter said. But by last month, the Volcanic was down to its last few thousand dollars, not enough to cover its rent and monthly bills for June, Mr. Sitter said. He was considering whether to sell or shut it down.With the shuttered venue grant, the Volcanic can stay open until next year, when Mr. Sitter expects its pipeline of shows to be back to normal. This weekend, it is planning to put on its first shows since last summer, at 50 percent capacity.“There’s certainly not a lot of profit going to be made here,” Mr. Sitter said. “This is simply to lift the spirits of people, to say, ‘We can kind of do this, we’re doing good, and there is a way out.’” More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Television

      Broadway’s Tony Awards, Delayed by Pandemic, Set for September

      by

      Most of the prizes will be announced on the Paramount+ streaming service, followed by a starry concert celebrating Broadway on CBS television.The long-delayed Tony Awards, honoring the last set of shows to open on Broadway before theaters went dark, finally have a plan: The ceremony will take place on Sept. 26, timed to bolster a pandemic-hobbled industry as shows begin to reopen.Three of the 25 competitive awards — best musical, best play and best play revival — will be presented live during a television program, broadcast on CBS, that will primarily be a starry concert of theater songs. But the bulk of the awards, honoring performers, writers, directors, choreographers and designers, will be given out just beforehand, during a ceremony that will be shown only on Paramount+, the ViacomCBS subscription streaming service.The organizers’ current expectation is that the event — awards and performances — will be live and in-person, taking place inside a Broadway theater.The three jukebox shows vying for best musical — “Jagged Little Pill,” “Moulin Rouge! The Musical” and “Tina — The Tina Turner Musical” — will each be invited to perform on the television broadcast. Many details — like which theater will be used, whether there will be a host, and who will perform — have not been determined.The two-platform structure, running a total of four hours, was arrived at during lengthy negotiations between the Broadway League and the American Theater Wing — the two organizations that present the awards — and CBS, which has broadcast the ceremony since 1978. CBS pushed to emphasize entertainment value, particularly in a year when viewership has plunged for many awards shows; the theater organizations wanted a way to honor the artistry of the abbreviated 2019-2020 season.“The ground was shifting under our feet the entire time, but our goal was to get as much celebration of the community and all the nominees as possible,” said the League’s president, Charlotte St. Martin.In a joint interview, St. Martin and the Theater Wing’s chief executive, Heather Hitchens, said they were pleased with the outcome.“Everybody wanted to create something that would celebrate the community, help sell tickets and be appealing to a national audience,” Hitchens said. “There were really good, thorough and passionate discussions about how best to achieve those three things.”They noted that it has been years since all Tony Awards categories were viewable nationally. For six years, starting in 1997, some of the awards were presented on a PBS special that would air just before the CBS broadcast, but in recent years, many of the design and writing awards have been presented off the air.“One of the things we’re proudest of is we got Paramount+ for all of our awardees, and the celebration of these awards on a major platform is a huge achievement,” Hitchens said. “That’s something we’ve wanted for years.”The broadcast segment is being described in a news release as “a live concert event, featuring superstar Broadway entertainers and Tony Award winners reuniting onstage to perform beloved classics and celebrate the joy and magic of live theater.” Asked for more detail, Hitchens said, “It’s going to be jam-packed with entertainment that is about Broadway. More to come on that.”The two-platform plan is similar to that used by the Grammy Awards, at which the majority of the prizes are announced at a preshow ceremony, followed by an entertainment-focused television broadcast. Some of the Tony Award winners named during the streaming ceremony will also be acknowledged during the TV portion.The ceremony, originally scheduled for June 7, 2020, will take place in September as part of an effort to reinforce the marketing message that Broadway is back in business — in fact, the show is being titled “The Tony Awards Present: Broadway’s Back!” Broadway’s 41 theaters have been closed since March 12, 2020; at the moment, the first show planning performances is “Hadestown,” on Sept. 2, followed by “Chicago,” “Hamilton,” “Lackawanna Blues,” “The Lion King” and “Wicked” on Sept. 14 and at least two dozen more over the fall and winter.“To have tickets on sale, to have shows announcing their openings, and to have an announcement about the Tony Awards, feels exhilarating, and hopeful,” St. Martin said.This year’s awards ceremony — formally known as the Antoinette Perry Awards — will be the 74th such event and will recognize work performed on Broadway between April 26, 2019, and Feb. 19, 2020. The Tony Awards retroactively set that eligibility deadline after determining that too few voters had seen a revival of “West Side Story” and a new musical called “Girl From the North Country” that opened in the final weeks before the pandemic arrived; those shows are expected to be eligible to compete for awards next year.The nominations for this year’s ceremony were announced last October; 15 shows managed to score a nod.The five contenders for best play are “Grand Horizons,” by Bess Wohl; “The Inheritance,” by Matthew López; “Sea Wall/A Life,” by Simon Stephens and Nick Payne; “Slave Play,” by Jeremy O. Harris; and “The Sound Inside,” by Adam Rapp.The winners have already been determined, although the results are unknown: the 778 Tony voters — producers, performers, directors, designers and others associated with the industry — were invited to cast their ballots, electronically, in early March. The results have since been safeguarded by the accounting firm Deloitte & Touche LLP.The streaming portion of the Sept. 26 Tony Awards ceremony is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. Eastern; the broadcast show, which can also be streamed live and on demand on Paramount+ and the CBS app, is scheduled to begin at 9 p.m. Eastern. As in years past, the Tony Awards show will be put together by the producers Ricky Kirshner and Glenn Weiss of White Cherry Entertainment; Weiss will be the show’s director. More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Theater

      Broadway Restart Accelerates as ‘Hadestown’ Plans Its Return

      by

      This Tony Award-winning musical has chosen the earliest reopening date of any thus far: The curtain is to go up on Sept. 2.“Hadestown,” the last show to win a Tony Award for best musical before the coronavirus pandemic shut down the theater industry, announced Monday that it is planning to resume performances on Sept. 2, nearly two weeks before any other Broadway shows have set their reopening date.The show’s producers said they had consulted with the office of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo as well as the Broadway League on their plan. They said tickets would go on sale June 11.“One of the themes of the show is imagining how the world could be, and we think it’s important to bring that hope and optimism to Broadway in this moment,” said Mara Isaacs, one of the show’s lead producers. She said that “Hadestown” wanted to open in early September for logistical reasons — the creative team is juggling the Broadway reopening with a new production in Korea and a North American tour — but also because “we felt we had a responsibility to get people back to work as quickly as possible.”Broadway’s 41 theaters have been closed since March 12, 2020, and until now the earliest resumption date has been Sept. 14, a date chosen by three juggernauts, “Wicked,” “The Lion King” and “Hamilton,” for a group reopening. Two other shows, the long-running revival of “Chicago” and “Lackawanna Blues,” a solo play by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, are also planning to start performances that night.It is possible that plans by “Hadestown” to start earlier will prompt other producers in New York to reconsider their own scheduling. Virus-related restrictions in the city have been easing in recent weeks, although it remains unclear when the tourist market that has in recent years been a key part of the Broadway economy will rebound.Isaacs said she would be fine if other shows opted to open early as well. “This is not about being first,” she said. “Every producer has to look at what is in the best interests of their show.”“Hadestown,” written by the singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell, is a contemporary adaptation of the ancient myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. The musical won eight Tony Awards, including the best musical prize, as well as one for Mitchell’s score, and one for the director, Rachel Chavkin.The show began performances in the spring of 2019, and had been seen by 371,000 people before the shutdown; the producers said they believe there remains a large potential audience in Greater New York of theater lovers who had not seen “Hadestown” before the pandemic, as well as a base of superfans who are eager to see it again.Twenty-seven shows have now announced dates during the 2021-22 Broadway season. Among them: “Girl from the North Country,” a musical featuring the songs of Bob Dylan that opened just a week before theaters shut down. The producers of that musical said Monday, which is Dylan’s 80th birthday, that they would resume performances Oct. 13.Broadway producers are planning to open their shows at full capacity, meaning no social distancing, and with mandatory masks, although it is unclear how changing conditions in the country might affect that. Thus far no shows are planning to require patrons to show proof of vaccination, but “Hamilton” has said it expects to mandate vaccinations for cast and crew.The “Hadestown” announcement advises that “protocols may include mask enforcement, increased cleaning and ventilation/filtration enhancements, vaccination or negative test verification.” Isaacs said it was too soon to be more specific.“If there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that things will likely change between now and when we reopen, so it’s not smart to make a decision today about what protocols will be required in September,” she said. “We will do whatever science and public health officials tell us is appropriate.” More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Theater

      Cultural Institutions Still Waiting for $16 Billion in Federal Aid

      by

      The Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program has been marred by delays, but officials say some applicants could learn next week if they have been approved for aid.Five months after Congress approved a $16 billion federal aid program to help live performance venues and cultural institutions survive the pandemic, more than 12,000 applicants have sought help but no money has been disbursed yet.But some venue owners, theater producers and museum officials — eager, and in cases desperate, for financial help after more than a year of steep pandemic losses — could soon learn if help is on the way. The Small Business Administration, which runs the program, said in a statement Friday that the highest-priority applicants — those that lost 90 percent of their revenue compared to the prior year — are tentatively scheduled to receive notices about the fate of their applications beginning next week.But some business owners are wary of the promise after weeks of delay and confusion over the initiative, the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant, which many had cheered as a lifeline. Each day applicants vent their frustrations on an online forum, regularly polling one another on whether any applications have yet been officially approved or rejected.“They’re hanging on by a thread right now,” said Meredith Lynsey Schade, a theater producer and nonprofit leader who helps answer questions from grant applicants on the forum. “They’re on life support, and every day they’re told, ‘just a little bit longer.’”At a news conference on Friday in Times Square, not far from the TKTS booth that sells discounted Broadway tickets, Senator Chuck Schumer and Broadway industry leaders celebrated the program as a savior for the hard-hit performing arts sector.“Right now $16 billion is on the way to the theater district, our theater industry, our live venues and our cultural institutions in New York and across the country,” Senator Schumer said. He did not address the delays that have hampered the application process or the frustrations of those awaiting relief.In response to a question about the program’s persistent delays, a spokesman for Senator Schumer, Angelo Roefaro, said “We are urging an ASAP release of these federal dollars.”Senator Chuck Schumer spoke about the promised aid at a news conference on Friday with Broadway officials and performers.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesNow that more theaters, concert halls and nightclubs are getting the green light to reopen across the country, new expenses are starting to mount, even as organizations try to figure out how to handle the losses of the past year.Forty Broadway shows are expected to open during the 2021-22 season, Mr. Schumer said at the news conference, some of them as early as September. In recent days, tickets have gone on sale for 19 shows, he said.Grant applications from live venue operators or promoters make up more than 40 percent of the 12,213 funding applications that were submitted as of earlier this week, according to data from the Small Business Association; theatrical producers make up about 7 percent of that total. The program offers grants worth 45 percent of applicants’ prepandemic gross earned annual revenue, up to $10 million.As Broadway shows prepare for reopenings beginning in September, producers and theater owners are among the applicants waiting anxiously for funding. Broadway applicants will most likely be considered in the highest priority window to receive the grant funds because they generally lost the vast majority of their revenue when theaters shut down, said Ms. Schade, who was a producer on two Broadway shows that were running at the start of the shutdown, “Hadestown” and “The Inheritance.”Charlotte St. Martin, the president of the Broadway League, a trade organization representing producers and theater owners, said in an interview that the Small Business Administration had told the group that money would start coming in by the end of the month, and that the industry understands “how government works.” Ms. St. Martin said that the agency had to take some time to familiarize itself with the Broadway industry.“If we don’t get some money soon I may have different things to say,” she said, “but I think they’re being extremely cooperative and supportive of our industry and trying to learn it while also handing out money.”The application process for the grant money has been chaotic from the start: On what was supposed to have been day one for people to submit applications, the online system broke down and the agency’s inspector general sent out an alert warning of “serious concerns” with the program’s waste and fraud controls.In its statement on Friday, the Small Business Administration acknowledged that there continues to be “some fine-tuning of technical components of the program” but said the agency is “committed to quickly and efficiently” disbursing funds to venues and organizations in need. More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Theater

      Tony Awards Voting Starts Now. And It’s Going to Be Weird.

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeFall in Love: With TenorsConsider: Miniature GroceriesSpend 24 Hours: With Andra DayGet: A Wildlife CameraAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTony Awards Voting Starts Now. And It’s Going to Be Weird.No shows are playing, and no one knows when they will come back. Here are answers to six questions about a process even more idiosyncratic than usual.Adrienne Warren as the title character in “Tina — The Tina Turner Musical,” one of three shows eligible for the best musical Tony Award.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMarch 1, 2021The last Broadway season ended, unexpectedly, nearly a year ago. The next one will begin who-knows-when.But deep in this winter of our theaterlessness, a dormant tradition is starting to stir: the Tony Awards.Hundreds of voters, this week and next, are casting ballots for the best shows, and the best performances, of a theater season abruptly cut short by the coronavirus pandemic.The jukebox shows “Jagged Little Pill,” “Moulin Rouge! The Musical” and “Tina — The Tina Turner Musical’ are competing for best musical, and hope to resume performances whenever Broadway reopens. All five of the best play contenders have closed. They are “Grand Horizons,” by Bess Wohl; “The Inheritance,” by Matthew López; “Sea Wall/A Life,” by Simon Stephens and Nick Payne; “Slave Play,” by Jeremy O. Harris; and “The Sound Inside,” by Adam Rapp.In this strangest-of-all Tony competitions, the voting is disconnected from both the period being assessed, which ran from April 26, 2019, to Feb. 19, 2020, and the ceremony for handing out awards, which has not yet been scheduled.In other words, we won’t know the results until — well, for a long time.But here’s what we do know:Who’s going to vote?Not a lot of people.There are 778 Tony voters, but they can only cast ballots in categories in which they’ve seen all the nominees. Because the pandemic prevented any spring theatergoing, there are fewer qualified voters than usual.There are 25 prize categories; the Tonys won’t say how many people will actually be able to vote in each category, but producers believe slightly fewer than 400 people will qualify to cast ballots for best musical, and fewer than that for best play.What’s missing?Parties.The usual Tonys season is all-encompassing. Shows that opened in the fall (and that would have included all three of last season’s nominated musicals) invite voters back to see them again. Monday nights are jammed with nonprofit galas at which nominees mingle with voters, and those who can sing, do. There are press junkets and mixers; display ads in The New York Times and caricatures at Sardi’s; plus, of course, a raft of spring openings to catch up with.So much hugging. So much schmoozing. So many four-hour dinners. Everyone complains. And now they long for it.“I can’t believe I miss buffets,” said Eva Price, a lead producer of “Jagged Little Pill.” “So much that we took for granted, and sometimes grimaced at, we would give our left arms for right now.”Lauren Patten, center, in “Jagged Little Pill,” a show that re-aired a cast reunion concert as a way to remind voters and fans that it plans to return to Broadway.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIs it appropriate to campaign?Yes, but very gingerly.We’re still in the middle of a devastating pandemic and a huge number of people who work in theater are currently unemployed. Also: money is tight because there are no ticket sales.“The 2020 shows can’t run a campaign in the usual way, and even if we could it would feel icky to try,” said Carmen Pavlovic, the lead producer of “Moulin Rouge!”“This is not a moment for cocktail parties and gossip,” she added. “It’s just a moment for lifting up artists from darkness, and hoping that lifts everybody else along the way.”So swag is minimal. “Moulin Rouge!” and “Jagged Little Pill” sent voters coffee table books about their shows, but that’s about it. The main form of campaigning this year is in the form of “For Your Consideration” emails.The nominated show that is furthest in the rearview mirror — a revival of “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune,” which closed in July 2019 — sent voters a video montage of interviews including its playwright, Terrence McNally, who died eight months later from complications of the coronavirus.Nominees are sitting for profiles with theater trade publications. And last week, “Tina,” “Jagged Little Pill,” “The Inheritance,” “Slave Play” and “Betrayal” bought daily sponsorships of Broadway Briefing, an emailed industry newsletter whose subscribers include many Tony voters.And there are other, newfangled ways to refresh voters’ memories. “Betrayal” on Sunday held a cast reunion on Instagram Live; “The Sound Inside” sent voters videotaped selections from the production; “Jagged Little Pill” released a video reflecting on the year and is re-airing a concert version of its show. “Moulin Rouge!” and “The Inheritance” built voter web pages with performance clips, interviews, scripts and more.The message needs to be focused, producers say. “We have to be very mindful and respectful of what people’s experiences are right now,” said Tali Pelman, the lead producer of “Tina.” At the same time, she said, “Honoring our talent and their contribution is important. More than ever, we have to shout out about their exceptional value in society.”What happens when the votes are tallied?An accounting firm sits on the results.The voting period runs through March 15, with votes cast electronically via a password-protected website, and tabulated by Deloitte & Touche LLP. Even in pre-pandemic years, results are not shared with the leaders of the organizations that present the awards — the Broadway League and the American Theater Wing — or anyone else before they are announced.This year they will just be kept secret for longer than usual.Aaron Tveit (with Karen Olivo, in “Moulin Rouge!”) is the only actor eligible for best actor in a musical.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesCan you lose if you’re the only nominee?Theoretically, yes.Aaron Tveit of “Moulin Rouge!” is the only person nominated as best actor in a musical. This is an unusual circumstance, for which the Tonys have imposed an unusual rule: to win, Tveit must get a positive vote from 60 percent of those who cast ballots. But, to be clear, he’s likely to pick up his first statuette this year.There are a couple of other nomination quirks, too. There will be no prize for best musical revival, because the only one that managed to open, “West Side Story,” did so after the retroactively imposed eligibility date. And the contenders for best score were all from plays.So when will we know the winners?Stay tuned.It seems clear that the ceremony will only take place after live performance is allowed to resume in New York and tickets to Broadway shows have gone on sale.That’s because the industry’s priority will be to use the ceremony to remind potential audiences that Broadway is back. The goal, said Heather A. Hitchens, the Wing’s president and chief executive, “is to be most helpful to the industry.”Several producers and publicists say they are now thinking the most likely time frame is after Labor Day, a full year and a half after Broadway shut down.The organizers have shared a few other details. This year’s ceremony, like those before the pandemic, will be overseen by Glenn Weiss and Ricky Kirshner. There will be some noncompetitive awards (those are honors like lifetime achievement). But there has been no announcement about whether the ceremony will be in-person or virtual, televised or streamed, live or taped; only that it will take place “in coordination with the reopening of Broadway.”“We hope to have news very soon,” said the League’s president, Charlotte St. Martin.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More