The People's Broadway Musical?The Producers' Leo Bloom famously sang, "I wanna be a producer on Broadway."
Now thanks to an announcement yesterday from producer
Ken Davenport,
you can do it for as little as $100 per unit with a "minimum investment of 10 units."
Yes, you read correctly.
For as little as $1000 -- essentially the price of a few of
The Producers' infamous premium tickets -- you'll not only receive a limited liability company interest in
The Godspell, LLC, but you can also have your name listed on the Broadway poster outside the theatre and on the show's
Web site.
Although a revival for
Stephen Schwartz's musical
Godspell was
initially planned (and then dropped) for the 2008-09 Theatrical Season,
it was announced last December that Davenport would bring that "postponed" version to Broadway sometime in the fall of 2010.
Now the impresario is saying he will take it to the streets in mounting the tuner in the spring or summer of 2011 as the "first ever community produced Broadway musical."
Director
Daniel Goldstein remains attached to the upcoming production with
Christopher Gattelli as choreographer. (Click
here for my SOB story from July 2008 with added background on the show's history.)
Neither venue nor dates have been announced for the "Crowd-Funded" production. But suffice it to say with these latest developments, I'll be watching for developments day by day.
So dear readers, are you in? Please take a moment to vote in the following poll:
This is
Steve On Broadway (SOB).
In keeping with the new that unfairly discriminate against bloggers, who are now required by law to disclose when they have received anything of value they might write about, please note that I have received nothing of value in exchange for this post. Labels: Christopher Gattelli, Daniel Goldstein, Godspell, Ken Davenport, Musical, Producers, Revival
The Ups And Downs Of BroadwayAs those of you who follow
my tweets on Twitter know, I follow Broadway box office totals the way sports fans follow the scores. I like knowing what's up and what's down, the shows that are making the most gains, as well as those teetering on the edge of closing notices.
Fortunately, I supplement watching those box office totals by reading some exceptional blogs, including theatre impresario Ken Davenport's
The Producer's Perspective.
Yesterday, like the professional he is,
he took note of the bottom line earnings for the second quarter of the current Broadway season. He crunched the numbers and found that year-over-year gross sales were up 5.9% over last year to $242,217,564 for a grand total of $500,376.907 to date for the entire season.
Not too bad, considering the awful economy, right?
Well, bubbling beneath those numbers is a much more ominous trend: fewer theatregoers.
Davenport forthrightly acknowledges that overall attendance is down to 5,806,155 -- a year-over-year loss of 319,717 from last year's 6,125,872. That's a 5.2% loss of warm bodies and the proverbial "butts in seats."
What's going on here?
For starters, plays like
God Of Carnage and
A Steady Rain have attracted audiences who might not have otherwise come to Broadway thanks to their powerful star wattage. Many in those audiences have been willing to pay a premium for their tickets, thus helping escalate the overall box office earnings (it should be noted here that
God Of Carnage saw its fortunes dim considerably last week when a replacement cast took over from the original; on the other hand,
A Steady Rain remained Broadway's toughest ticket last week with an average ticket price of $135.44).
Second, popular musicals including
Wicked (average ticket: $107.17)
, Billy Elliot (average ticket: $120.46)
, The Lion King (average ticket: $102.37 )
, Jersey Boys (average ticket: $117.03),
South Pacific (average ticket: $100.07 ) and to a lesser extent
Mamma Mia! (average ticket: $83.05 )
, The Phantom Of The Opera (average ticket: $77.93) and
West Side Story (average ticket: $93.46), have succeeded in drawing crowds no matter what. Think of them as mini-New York City tourist attractions unto themselves. It's no wonder that among that first tier, those shows regularly boast weekly grosses of over $1 million each.
I give enormous credit to Davenport for laying out the numbers, but as he and other producers seek ways to build audiences, there's a solution that may be almost too novel for them to consider: reducing the price of tickets.
Earlier this fall, it was announced that the government's
cost-of-living adjustments or COLA is not scheduled to increase for the first time since they began providing them in 1975. That's because in addition to being in a severe recession, the United States has entered a deflationary period in which overall prices have
decreased by 1.5% year-over-year, as of September.
Not only does that mean Social Security recipients won't receive any additional dollars in 2010 (retirees are a core Broadway constituency), but it also portends negatively for millions of Americans whose employers figure they don't have to provide any pay increases, if they're not already contemplating reductions in pay.
All this seems to have been lost on Broadway, which has largely been oblivious to the economic pain everywhere around it. Broadway is increasingly being viewed as a luxury, something for the elites, rather than an art form to be enjoyed by the masses.
As
I've said before, we can lament all we want about the declining butts in seats, but until ticket prices come back down to earth (or even hold steady), it's likely that the overall grosses will decline along with the audience numbers.
Is Broadway bold enough to respond appropriately?
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Labels: Broadway, Cost-of-Living Adjustment, deflation, Economy, Ken Davenport, Recession, The Producer's Perspective, Ticket Prices
