Nonprofit Organizations

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares109 Views

      in Music

      BAM Artistic Director David Binder to Step Down in July

      by

      Binder, who was a Broadway producer before joining the nonprofit in 2019, plans to return to theater’s commercial sector.David Binder, the artistic director of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, will step down in July, as the venerable institution faces ongoing turnover and the challenge of pandemic-era rebuilding after decades of stability in its leadership team.BAM, which began presenting work in 1861 and describes itself as the nation’s oldest performing arts center, long played a key role in New York’s cultural life, presenting adventurous theater, film, music and dance from artists around the world. But the institution was quieter than some at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, and Binder’s departure will follow the 2021 exit of the institution’s president, Katy Clark, and the 2020 death of its board chairman, Adam Max.Binder joined BAM as artistic director in 2019, making his tenure significantly shorter than those of his two predecessors, Joseph V. Melillo, who spent 35 years at the institution, and Harvey Lichtenstein, who led BAM’s artistic work for 32 years.Similarly, on the institution’s executive side, Clark left BAM after five years in the post (keeping an apartment the institution helped her purchase); she had succeeded Karen Brooks Hopkins, who had spent 36 years at the institution, including 16 as president. BAM’s current president is Gina Duncan, who started just last year, after a year in which that position was vacant.Binder, who had been producing Broadway shows as well as arts festivals before joining the institution, said he was leaving voluntarily and is planning to return to commercial producing after leading the nonprofit’s artistic programming through the upheaval of the pandemic as well as the change in the organization’s executive staff.BAM said Binder would continue to consult for the organization until next January as it searches for a new artistic leader. Binder began working with Melillo when his appointment was announced in early 2018.“I feel like I’ve accomplished what I set out to do there, and I want to get back to making work and producing work,” Binder said in an interview. “I want to keep growing.”Duncan characterized the transition similarly, saying, “David decided to move on, and I appreciate him letting me know now.” She added, “We have a strong team in place, and I have time to do a search and find someone to be my artistic partner.”Binder’s departure comes as many performing arts institutions around the nation are seeing turnover at the top — New York’s theater leaders have tended to hang on longer than most, which is a source of criticism as well as stability, but there is wholesale change unfolding in San Francisco, Chicago and elsewhere.Binder, who is 55, has drawn some buzzy work to BAM, which primarily presents shows developed by other companies.Last year’s pandemic-delayed production of “Cyrano de Bergerac,” which starred James McAvoy and transferred from London, was both a critical and a popular success, becoming the best-selling show in the history of the BAM Harvey Theater. And this month, BAM was the only institution with two shows on The New York Times’s list of things critics are looking forward to this year: the theater critic Jesse Green wrote about anticipating a production of “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window,” with Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan in the starring roles, and the dance critic Gia Kourlas wrote hopefully about BAM’s U.S. premiere of Pina Bausch’s “Água,” a piece created two decades ago in Brazil.Binder arrived at BAM saying he wanted to bring in new artists — his first Next Wave festival there, in 2019, featured only artists who had not previously performed there. Over the course of his tenure, Binder said he will have presented more than 50 debuts of artistic companies as well as solo performers.Ticket sales during his time have generally exceeded projections; BAM says it is attracting new audiences, and there have been multiple programming highlights: Simon Stone’s “Medea” adaptation, produced by BAM, starring Rose Byrne and Bobby Cannavale; a new spring music series, curated last year by Hanif Abdurraqib and this year by Solange; and an annual artist residency program.“Through the pandemic and through the leadership changes, I feel that the team and I at BAM have stayed focused on putting fantastic work on our stages, and when we couldn’t do it on our stages, we did it outdoors or site-specific or virtually. And the work we’ve done has been really successful,” he said. “We always tried to mix it up: We had the National Theater of Korea’s opera of ‘Trojan Women,’ and ‘Kiki and Herb Sleigh’; we had the Lithuanian opera ‘Sun & Sea,’ which won the Golden Lion at Venice; and we also hosted the world premiere of Madonna’s ‘Madame X’ tour.”In the commercial arena, Binder is best known as the lead producer of “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” which won the Tony Award for best musical revival in 2014. Binder said that he would soon announce that “Hedwig” was “finally coming to the West End in a big way.”Beyond “Hedwig,” Binder is among a handful of commercial producers who have continued to focus on the production of plays, which tend to be riskier than musicals. He says he plans to resume work on his longtime effort to bring the German director Thomas Ostermeier’s production of “An Enemy of the People” to Broadway. (Last fall, Binder brought Ostermeier’s “Hamlet” to BAM; that production was in German, but “An Enemy of the People” would be presented in English.)Binder said he was also working with the innovative British director Jamie Lloyd, who helmed the “Cyrano” revival at BAM, to develop a new play that he was not yet ready to describe.BAM, like other arts organizations, shrank during the height of the pandemic, but is now nearly back to where it was, according to a spokeswoman: Its current annual budget is $56 million, up from $55 million prepandemic; it has 222 full-time staff positions, down from 256; its most recent Next Wave festival had 13 shows, down from 16 prepandemic; and last spring, BAM presented 17 shows, up from 16 during the final prepandemic spring.“I think we’re doing as well as one can, given the circumstances of the world,” Duncan said. “We’ve had some success in audience growth, and our membership numbers are starting to increase again. Everything is heading in the right direction, and now it’s a matter of time.” More

    • 138 Shares139 Views

      in Theater

      Live Performance Is Back. But Audiences Have Been Slow to Return.

      by

      Attendance lagged in the comeback season, as the challenges posed by the coronavirus persisted. Presenters hope it was just a blip.Patti LuPone, Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig came back to Broadway. The Norwegian diva-in-the-making Lise Davidsen brought her penetrating voice to the Metropolitan Opera. Dancers filled stages, symphonies reverberated in concert halls and international theater companies returned to American stages.The resumption of live performance after the long pandemic shutdown brought plenty to cheer about over the past year. But far fewer people are showing up to join those cheers than presenters had hoped.Around New York, and across the country, audiences remain well below prepandemic levels. From regional theaters to Broadway, and from local orchestras to grand opera houses, performing arts organizations are reporting persistent — and worrisome — drops in attendance.Fewer than half as many people saw a Broadway show during the season that recently ended than did so during the last full season before the coronavirus pandemic. The Met Opera saw its paid attendance fall to 61 percent of capacity, down from 75 percent before the pandemic. Many regional theaters say ticket sales are down significantly.“There was a greater magnetic force of people’s couches than I, as a producer, anticipated,” said Jeremy Blocker, the managing director at New York Theater Workshop, the Off Broadway theater that developed “Rent” and “Hadestown.” “People got used to not going places during the pandemic, and we’re going to struggle with that for a few years.”Many presenters anticipate that the softer box office will extend into the upcoming season and perhaps beyond. And some fear that the virus is accelerating long-term trends that have troubled arts organizations for years, including softer ticket sales for many classical music events, the decline of the subscription model for selling tickets at many performing arts organizations, and the increasing tendency among consumers to purchase tickets at the last minute.A few institutions are already making adjustments for the new season: The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra has cut 10 concerts, after seeing its average attendance fall to 40 percent of capacity last season, down from 62 percent in 2018-19.Many Broadway shows have struggled to match prepandemic salesPercent change in weekly gross sales in 2021 and 2022, compared with the same week in 2019 More

    • 100 Shares109 Views

      in Theater

      New Haven's Long Wharf Theater to Become Itinerant

      by

      Long Wharf Theater, a regional nonprofit on New Haven’s waterfront, is ending a long, bumpy chapter there, hoping to expand access and reduce costs.New Haven’s Long Wharf Theater will move out of its longtime headquarters and embrace itinerancy as the company seeks a fresh start after a period of extraordinary upheaval.The leadership of the nonprofit theater is framing the move as an opportunity to reach new audiences and reimagine its operations, and the city is supporting the change, which it says will help the organization better serve the community.The move is the latest chapter in a time of extensive change at the theater, which in 2018 fired its executive director, Gordon Edelstein, a day after The New York Times reported sexual misconduct allegations against him. As the company remade itself, it faced a real estate quandary: whether to renew its expiring lease at the New Haven Food Terminal, just off Interstate 95, where it has been performing for 57 years.The theater, which has been among the nation’s leading regional nonprofits, also faces the same challenges as its peers: demonstrating to patrons, artists and donors that it can move forward following the lengthy pandemic shutdown, and that it is committed to shifting priorities in response to industrywide calls for more diversity, equity and inclusion.“Long Wharf Theater has an incredible legacy, and it’s had some complicated challenges,” said Jacob G. Padrón, the theater’s artistic director. “The next several years will be about discovery.”The theater’s leaders said they could have chosen to renew its lease when it expires in June, but that they opted not to, both because the theater was spending too much money on rent and upkeep, and because its location, once treasured for free parking and easy highway access that appealed to suburbanites, was inconvenient for some New Haven residents and difficult to access via public transit.The theater, which had thought of the industrial waterfront location as temporary when it opened there in 1965, has contemplated relocating before. In 2004, it announced plans to move to downtown New Haven, but in 2011, citing a worsening economy, it abandoned those plans, opting to renovate the Food Terminal location instead.Padrón said he views the decision to relocate to a variety of yet-to-be-determined spaces around New Haven as a way of rethinking “how a regional theater makes its art,” and a way to “expand our imagination of how a theater can show up for its community.”“It’s exciting to think about what’s the project, and what’s then the right container for that project,” he said.Jacob G. Padrón, the theater’s artistic director, said that “the next several years will be about discovery.”Gabriella Demczuk for The New York TimesThe theater’s leadership, including not only Padrón but also the managing director, Kit Ingui, and the board chairwoman, Nancy Alexander, all said that they believe the institution is financially stable, and that it would benefit from the flexibility of its next phase. They said that the new arrangement should not only reduce its costs but also expand its reach to audiences who, because of geography, transportation or economics, have not found their way to the waterfront district from which the theater takes its name.“There’s no sense that we’re hanging on by a thread or that we have to live on a shoestring,” Alexander said. “We have been blessed with some longtime givers who have created a strong endowment for us, and we are projecting budgets that will work.”Long Wharf plans to stage at least two more shows at its current location — a new play called “Dream Hou$e,” by Eliana Pipes, which the theater describes as being about “the cultural cost of progress in America,” and “Queen,” by Madhuri Shekar, about “brilliant women confronting inconvenient truths.” The theater is still talking with its landlord about whether it might continue producing in the building later this year, but by the fall of 2023 the leadership expects to present full productions at other locations in and around New Haven — possibly in rented theaters, and possibly in spaces not traditionally used for theater.“We believe you can produce theater anywhere,” Ingui said.Long Wharf, which in 1978 won the Tony Award for regional theater, survived the pandemic with significant support from the federal and state governments. Its staff is less than half the size it was — about 30, down from 65 before the pandemic; the annual budget, which had been about $6.5 million before the pandemic, is now a little over $5 million.The theater’s leaders said they have not yet decided whether they will remain itinerant long-term, or whether this will be a short-term phase. But they all said the crises faced by the theater were catalysts, not causes, for the move.“We’re going into this with excitement,” Alexander said. She said that the theater’s pandemic performances in city parks demonstrated that new locations could attract new audiences, and that by moving around New Haven, Long Wharf is seeking to become “a theater that is much more widely in our community, and, we hope, valued by our community.”“We really are being mindful that this is a period of exploration and experimentation, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we ultimately decided to have something like an anchor space and then continue producing in some other creative spaces as well, in some kind of hybrid model,” she said.Adriane Jefferson, New Haven’s director of cultural affairs, said Long Wharf was one of the most important nonprofits in the city, and that its move would strengthen both the organization and the city. She said she believed the shift would help Long Wharf become more anti-racist, in keeping with the city’s new cultural equity plan, which called attention to “inequities that prevent people from participating in arts and culture in every corner of our city.”“Long Wharf’s idea of being more mobile, moving throughout the city and coming to communities who are not making it down to where Long Wharf is now, is very responsive to our plan,” Jefferson said. “I would have concerns if they weren’t thinking along these lines.” More

    • 75 Shares159 Views

      in Theater

      Broadway Play “Clyde's” Will Be Livestreamed

      by

      The digital experimentation born of the pandemic shutdown is continuing: the final 16 performances of Lynn Nottage’s “Clyde’s” will be streamed, for $59.The coronavirus closures prompted many theaters around the country to experiment with online offerings. Now, even though theaters have reopened, a new Broadway play is planning to try streaming some performances.Second Stage Theater, a nonprofit that operates a small Broadway house, plans to sell a limited number of real-time, virtual viewings in January for the final 16 performances of “Clyde’s,” a dramedy about a group of ex-cons working at a sandwich shop. The show, by the two-time Pulitzer winner Lynn Nottage, opens Tuesday.The decision to stream some performances, which Second Stage views as an experiment, suggests that some of the survival strategies theaters embraced during the pandemic could have a lasting effect on the art form.“Over the 18 months when we had to pivot, and shift a lot of storytelling to Zoom, that opened up a new door of opportunity for many of us who make theater,” Nottage said. “What we’re hoping is that folks who are reluctant to come out because of the virus, or for whom theater is not accessible, will have access because of this streaming.”They are not aiming for a mass audience. The streams will cost $59, which is the same price as the least expensive ticket at the box office, so as not to undercut in-person sales. (There will also be a $30 ticket for people aged 30 and under, as with in-person performances.)The virtual tickets will be limited in number — probably to around 200 to 300 a performance — because as part of an agreement with labor unions, the theater will cap the number of streaming tickets sold so as not to exceed the total capacity of the theater over the course of the play’s run.The move is significant because, even though the Metropolitan Opera has been streaming performances to cinemas for years, and a number of leading symphony orchestras have long been streaming their concerts, Broadway has been resistant to such a step, in part because of quality concerns, in part because of the cost of compensating artists, and in part because of a fear of eroding the appetite for in-person attendance.In 2016, when BroadwayHD live-streamed a single performance of the Roundabout Theater Company’s revival of “She Loves Me,” the event was so unusual that it was recognized by Guinness World Records; a few months later, the same company also live-streamed a performance of Roundabout’s “Holiday Inn.”The pandemic prompted theaters to take digital work more seriously: with their buildings closed, many Off Broadway and regional theaters, as well as some prominent theaters in Britain, embraced streaming as one way to continue connecting to audiences. There were complications both mundane (which labor unions represent theater artists onscreen?) and existential (what is theater, anyway?), but one upside was increased access for people unlikely to attend in-person performances because of disability, geography or finances.For Broadway shows, there were some limited pandemic experiments with filmed performances, but not livestreaming. A “Hamilton” movie, using footage shot and edited in 2016, was released during the pandemic by a streaming platform, as was a filmed version of David Byrne’s “American Utopia”; the musicals “Come From Away” and “Diana” filmed invitation-only run-throughs during the pandemic, and those filmed performances were also released on streaming platforms.Now, as theaters reopen, some are discussing the pros and cons, as well as the feasibility, of a so-called hybrid model, in which stage shows can be seen either in-person or at home. Second Stage, working with the company Assemble Stream, earlier this fall offered its subscribers an opportunity to livestream some performances of an epistolary Off Broadway play, “Letters of Suresh”; encouraged by that experience, the nonprofit decided to try the hybrid approach for “Clyde’s,” which is its first post-shutdown Broadway show.“In-person activity is our priority, but we’ve learned a lot from the pandemic, as far as finding other ways of engaging with audiences,” said Khady Kamara, the executive director of Second Stage. There are a number of potential audiences — those still leery of public gatherings, those who live outside the New York area, those with a variety of accessibility concerns — and Nottage said she also hopes at some point that the play could be streamed in prisons.Kamara said the theater would livestream “Clyde’s,” which stars Uzo Aduba and Ron Cephas Jones, in real time during performances from Jan. 4 to Jan. 16 — it can’t be watched on demand.Is there a risk that the project will dissuade people from coming to see the show at the theater? “I really believe that the magic of being inside the theater, and being so close to the stage, is not something that goes away,” Kamara said. “I think that most people are still going to want to go with the in-person experience.”The performances will be captured by five to seven cameras mounted by Assemble Stream inside the Helen Hayes Theater; the footage will be edited, remotely, in real time, as with a live television broadcast, according to Katie McKenna, the company’s vice president of marketing and business development.Kamara and McKenna said the theater would not need to remove any seats to accommodate the cameras, and that the cameras would not obstruct any patron’s sightlines; the cameras will be operated remotely. “Our goal is to be as nondisruptive as possible,” McKenna said.Neither party would detail the financing arrangement, but Kamara said, “To begin with, we’re not looking at this as a revenue stream, as much as we’re looking at it as an additional avenue for us to provide access to the work that we put on our stages.”And will Second Stage seek to stream other Broadway shows in the future? Kamara described the “Clyde’s” streaming as a pilot project. “We are learning, and will continue to learn, and we’ll see what the future holds,” she said. “Certainly, if there is a market for it, hopefully we’re able to continue to offer it.” More

    • 150 Shares179 Views

      in Theater

      Virus Fears Prompt a Major New York Theater to Postpone Its Return

      by

      As the Delta variant spreads, Signature Theater delayed its planned October opening of “Infinite Life,” a new play by Annie Baker.Signature Theater, a prominent Off Broadway nonprofit, has postponed its return to the stage over concerns about the persistent coronavirus pandemic, becoming the first major New York theater to take such a step.The theater’s leadership announced the postponement Friday afternoon, just days before rehearsals were to begin for “Infinite Life,” a new play by the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Annie Baker, who was also planning to direct the work. The production was supposed to run from Oct. 5 to Nov. 7.“Due to ongoing health and safety concerns, Signature Theater and Annie Baker have decided to postpone the upcoming production of ‘Infinite Life,’” the theater said in a statement. “Signature will continue, in discussion with artists, to evaluate on a case-by-case basis how to proceed with other programming planned for this season. The company and artist agree that this is the best choice for this show at this time.”Around the country, there have been a number of cancellations and postponements of pop music tour dates and festivals because of the rise in coronavirus cases caused by the spread of the Delta variant. There have been several theater postponements in California, including at Berkeley Repertory Theater, which recently cited the Delta variant in delaying until next year a Christina Anderson play that had been scheduled to begin in October.It is unclear whether the postponement of “Infinite Life” is an outlier or a first indication that the theater industry is getting cold feet about the many reopenings planned in New York this fall, on Broadway and off. Two Broadway shows, “Springsteen on Broadway” and “Pass Over,” are already running, and 15 more plan to start next month; there are also some plays already running in commercial and nonprofit venues around the city, and many of the city’s larger nonprofits plan to resume presenting shows during the fall.Broadway theaters are requiring audience members to show proof of vaccination and wear masks. And Mayor Bill de Blasio has declared that all performing arts theaters must require proof of vaccination as part of a mandate that applies to indoor dining, entertainment, and fitness.Signature said it was still hoping to stage a revival of Anna Deavere Smith’s “Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992” in October. Although “Infinite Life” would have been its first stage production since the start of the pandemic, it would not have been the first use of its building: This summer, the nonprofit featured an installation called “The Watering Hole,” conceived by Lynn Nottage and Miranda Haymon, in its Frank Gehry-designed home, the Pershing Square Signature Center, a few blocks west of Times Square.Baker, who won a Pulitzer in 2014 for “The Flick,” writes plays that are sometimes hard to describe, and very little has been released about this one, but a spokesman said there was a six-person cast. In news releases, the theater has described “Infinite Life” as “a play about no end in sight” and “a new play that tackles persistent pain and desire.” More

    • 100 Shares159 Views

      in Theater

      Historic Cherry Lane Theater Sold for $11 Million

      by

      The Lucille Lortel Theater Foundation, which has managed the 97-year-old theater for the past decade, will take over the building in Greenwich Village.The Cherry Lane Theater, the oldest continuously running Off Broadway theater in New York City, has been sold to the Lucille Lortel Theater Foundation for $11 million, the theater announced on Monday.“It has been a great run,” Angelina Fiordellisi, the executive director of the theater, said in a statement. “To stand on the stage where so many of our greatest artists, crews and theater providers have stood is to know what theater history feels like.”The new owner will be the Lucille Lortel Theater Foundation, which is a few blocks from the Cherry Lane Theater on Christopher Street and has managed the building for the past decade. The sale includes the 179-seat main stage and a 60-seat studio theater.Fiordellisi, who has led the 97-year-old nonprofit theater since acquiring the building in 1996, will continue to lead the nonprofit producing group Cherry Lane Alternative, which will have readings — and possibly productions — in the theater’s studio space.She had previously announced plans to sell the building, at 38 Commerce Street, in 2010, citing financial struggles. At the time, she told The New York Times that the theater was operating at a deficit of $250,000, which she attributed to a steep drop in income from government and foundation support, ticket sales and rental fees.“It’s frightening to me, what’s happened to Off Broadway theater,” Fiordellisi told The Times in 2010. “We have to adhere to the formula of having a film star in our productions to sell tickets because it’s so financially prohibitive. I don’t want to do theater like that.”But eight months later, she reversed her decision because of a significantly reduced deficit, a new managing agent and the support of the theater’s neighbors. Cherry Lane Alternative, the resident theater company Fiordellisi established in 1997, currently has a deficit of $100,000, a spokesman for the theater, Sam Rudy, said.The theater, a Greenwich Village institution that has long been a testing ground for new work by emerging artists, reopened at full capacity last month with Jacqueline Novak’s “Get on Your Knees,” a comedy that offers a personal and intellectual history of oral sex. It is scheduled to run through July 31.Under Fiordellisi, Cherry Lane has mentored writers including Katori Hall, who won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Drama for “The Hot Wing King”; Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu, whose play “Pass Over” will begin previews on Broadway in August after being produced at the theater in 2016; and Jocelyn Bioh, whose “Merry Wives,” a contemporary take on Shakespeare’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” is running at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park.Cherry Lane was started by a group of artists who were colleagues of Edna St. Vincent Millay and has showcased work by Samuel Beckett, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams. But despite its storied history, the theater had not staged a play in two years when Fiordellisi bought it for $1.7 million in 1996 and renovated it for $3 million.Cherry Lane Alternative, the nonprofit producing group, said it expects to resume a scaled-back version of its acclaimed Mentor Project, which pairs emerging writers with established playwrights like Lynn Nottage, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and Taylor Mac to develop and stage their work in the studio theater space. It will likely include one production per season instead of the typical three.George Forbes, the Lucille Lortel Theater Foundation’s executive director, said the foundation plans to announce new programming shortly. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Theater

      17 New York Arts Organizations Are Among Those Receiving $30 Million

      by

      The Queens Museum, Harlem Stage and 44 other groups were chosen to receive aid from Bloomberg Philanthropies for digital innovation.The Queens Museum is among 46 cultural nonprofit organizations selected for a new $30 million program by Bloomberg Philanthropies that is intended to support improving technology at the groups and helping them stabilize and thrive in the wake of the pandemic. A Bloomberg Tech Fellow is being appointed at each organization, the philanthropies announced Tuesday.Heryte Tequame, assistant director of communications and digital projects at the museum, was chosen as its fellow in what is known as the Digital Accelerator program and will be in charge of developing a digital project of her choice. In an interview she said that in 2020, the museum “realized where we needed to expand our capacity and invest more.”“I think now we’re really taking the time to see what we can do that has longevity,” Tequame said. “And not just being responsive, but really being proactive and having a real future-facing strategy.”The organizations don’t know exactly how much of the $30 million each will receive yet, but Tequame said she wants to use at least some of it on the museum’s permanent collection.Another recipient, Harlem Stage, selected Deirdre May, senior director of digital content and marketing, as its tech fellow.That performing arts center — which largely focuses on artists of color — aims to use the assistance in part to increase accessibility, Patricia Cruz, its chief executive and artistic director, said in an interview. “People who cannot leave their homes, for example, would be able to see some of the finest artistic performances that could be made,” Cruz said, because “that’s the core of what we do.”The 46 organizations selected for the program include nonprofits in the United States and Britain. Among them are 26 in the United States, and 17 of those are in New York City, including the Apollo Theater, the Ghetto Film School and the Tenement Museum. The chief executive of Bloomberg Philanthropies, Patricia E. Harris, said in a statement that when the pandemic hit, cultural organizations had to get creative to keep their (virtual) doors open.“Now we’re excited to launch the Accelerator program to help more arts organizations sustain innovations and investments,” Harris said, “and strengthen tech and management practices that are key to their long-term success.”As Cruz from Harlem Stage put it, “We’re ready to be accelerated.” More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Television

      Hollywood Foreign Press Presented With Golden Globes Reform Plan

      by

      Proposals for the embattled Hollywood Foreign Press Association include adding 50 members to its voting ranks to bring in more diversity and creating a for-profit spinoff company.LOS ANGELES — For months, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the troubled nonprofit organization behind the big-money Golden Globe Awards, has been wrestling with how to reform itself after an outcry over financial, ethical and diversity lapses and NBC’s cancellation of next year’s Globes telecast.Part of the challenge: Swaths of the entertainment industry — and a few H.F.P.A. members, two of whom quit in protest in recent weeks — have deemed the “transformational” changes proposed by the group’s board as insufficient. A particular point of contention has been inclusion; the group currently has about 80 members, none of whom are Black.On Wednesday, an expanded reform plan was presented to the organization’s members for consideration.Todd Boehly, the chairman of Eldridge Industries, a holding group with assets that include Dick Clark Productions, the decades-long producer of the Golden Globes, presented the complex plan over Zoom. Its core components involve the speedy addition of 50 journalist voters to the current group of about 80, with an emphasis on diversity; the creation of a spinoff, for-profit Golden Globes company in partnership with Eldridge that would be governed by a 15-member board; and tougher and more transparent requirements for reaccreditation as an H.F.P.A. member, which must be done annually.Jesse Collins, a producer whose awards-show credits include the Academy Awards, the BET Awards and the Grammys, and who will produce the next American Music Awards, a Dick Clark production, has agreed to work with Eldridge to advance H.F.P.A. reform. “This is an exciting opportunity to be part of real change,” Mr. Collins said in an email.Eldridge has gotten involved because the Golden Globes generate tens of millions of dollars in revenue for Dick Clark Productions. Eldridge wants to set the Golden Globes up for long-term stability and even growth — possibly by expanding overseas to produce local versions of the show or perhaps turning the flagship ceremony into a multiday event. If the organization moves quickly enough (a long shot considering its recent infighting), Eldridge even believes the 2022 Golden Globes could be salvaged.“While we recognize that this is ultimately an H.F.P.A. membership decision, we look forward to investing time and resources to ensure that essential reforms — prioritizing inclusion, transparency and governance — are implemented, creating meaningful change and long-term, sustained success,” Eldridge said in a statement.The H.F.P.A. is expected to vote this summer on various reform proposals. The organization requires a two-thirds majority vote to change its bylaws.In the meantime, those in Hollywood who are pressuring the H.F.P.A. to change — stars, publicists, filmmakers, show creators — will undoubtedly scrutinize the fine print on Eldridge’s proposal and weigh in. It is unclear, for instance, how the voter-expansion plan will be received.Eldridge’s suggestion of 50 additional voters would be a 63 percent increase. But those voters would not become members, at least not immediately. That means they would not receive the same financial opportunities as the current members, who would become employees, with rolling terms, of the new for-profit company and have responsibilities that include producing content that can be used to promote the Globes.(A nonprofit H.F.P.A. arm would continue to exist as well, with responsibilities that include charitable giving; the organization says it has given away $45 million over the last 28 years. On Wednesday, Mr. Boehly proposed that the charitable entity expand its mission, including by endowing journalism chairs at one or more historically Black colleges and universities.)The foreign press association has been under fire since February, when a wide-ranging Los Angeles Times article found, among other things, that the group had no Black members, had more than $50 million in cash on hand at the end of October and paid large sums to members for serving on committees. The newspaper has continued to scrutinize the organization, publishing more than 40 articles about its problems and the most recent Globes ceremony.During the Globes telecast on Feb. 28, members of the foreign press association vowed to diversify the group. A set of changes were announced in early May. They included increasing the group’s membership by 50 percent over the next year and a half and hiring diversity consultants (those initially hired to do the job quit under protest). The association also said it planned to hire a search firm to seek potential candidates to run the group, and had retained a law firm to help carry out the changes.But Hollywood — long willing to turn a blind eye to the group’s problematic inner workings — pushed back. Netflix declared that it would not work with the organization unless additional changes were made. Amazon and WarnerMedia said the same. Scarlett Johansson said in a statement that the organization’s news conferences “bordered on sexual harassment,” and Tom Cruise returned his three Golden Globe trophies. A group of more than 100 publicity firms that serve the entertainment industry vowed a boycott.All of that, and the knowledge that the ratings for February’s show dropped precipitously, prompted NBC to cancel the 2022 show.“We continue to believe that the H.F.P.A. is committed to meaningful reform,” the network said at the time. “However, change of this magnitude takes time and work, and we feel strongly that the H.F.P.A. needs time to do it right.” More