Chill on Broadway

Posted 23 Feb. 2022 at 8:39Updated Feb 23. 2022 at 10:43

A sparse crowd hangs out under the giant screens of Times Square on this freezing late followingnoon. Night begins to fall and in front of the ticket offices of TKTS, where tickets are sold at reduced prices for evening shows, touts from Broadway theaters outnumber customers. “I’ve rarely seen so few people,” says Dave, a student who makes a few dollars by distributing flyers for musicals playing. “There are seats at discount prices for almost all the big shows, even for ‘The Lion King’, which had never happened before, he confides with a slightly forced smile. It’s time to go to the show! »

Broadway has the blues at the start of the year. Attendance fell following the holidays: in early January, barely 65% ​​of seats were occupied, according to data provided each week by the Broadway League, the organization that brings together producers and large private theaters in Midtown. The figure has since risen, with an attendance of 82% in mid-February, but it is thanks to promotions, and because there are fewer and fewer shows to see: only 19 at the moment, once morest around thirty in end of last year. After eighteen months of total closure, from spring 2020 to autumn 2021, the long-awaited comeback is struggling to materialize.

Since mid-December, several musicals have drawn the curtain, including “Diana”, inspired by the life of the princess with a tragic destiny, “Ain’t Too Proud”, on the soul music group The Temptations, or “Jagged Little Pill”, adapted from an album by pop rock singer Alanis Morissette. Even the stage play “To Kill a Mockingbird”, an adaptation of a best-selling anti-racist literature, which sold out before the pandemic, left the poster earlier than expected, on January 16. It should in principle resume before the summer, with the same troupe, but in a smaller theater. The musicals “Girl from the North Country”, whose libretto uses songs by Bob Dylan, and “Mrs Doubtfire”, inspired by the 1992 film, are also suspended pending better days.

Omicron ruined the holidays

Admittedly, January and February are always the quietest months for Broadway, with fewer shows and fewer audiences than the rest of the year. But the Omicron wave, which caused contamination to soar in New York from mid-December, made matters worse. At first, it disrupted performances: the number of positive actors and dancers soared, forcing many shows to lower the curtain, sometimes several nights in a row, when theaters do most of the of their winter recipes. “As artists cannot work with a mask, we ask that everyone be vaccinated, but also tested before each performance”, explains to “Echos” Charlotte St. Martin, president of the Broadway League. “If an actor is positive and they don’t have a stunt double, or if the stunt double is positive too, then the show just can’t happen. This is what happened to us at the worst time, during the second half of December. »

Broadway’s business model is neither very healthy nor very sustainable. Above all, it is extremely risky.

Heather Shields Producer and co-founder of Business of Broadway

On certain days, a third of the performances were canceled at the last minute, sometimes when the spectators were already in the room. In “The Lion King”, when the two singers who alternate playing the role of the lioness Nala tested positive the same evening, it was a ten-year-old boy who replaced them at short notice… without even having the costume of the role. “The stunt doubles and stand-ins really saved Broadway,” acknowledges Charlotte St. Martin. It is thanks to them that many shows have been able to remain on the bill. »

Half-empty rooms

Omicron, which peaked in early January in New York with more than 40,000 people testing positive every day, also emptied the ranks of spectators. Even at discounted prices, most major musicals failed to fill the bill. Mid-January, mid-week, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s blockbuster ‘Phantom of the Opera’ played to a half-empty house – unheard of for a show that, until the pandemic, was on Broadway without interruption since its creation in 1988. “Many shows will not cover their costs and will have to stop”, recognizes the president of the Broadway League. “But that’s nothing new: historically, barely one in five Broadway shows break even. In good years, you can get to one out of four…”

The pandemic has exposed Broadway’s business model. “It is neither very healthy nor very durable. Above all, it is extremely risky”, sums up Heather Shields, producer and co-founder of Business of Broadway, a consulting and training agency on the entertainment economy. Firstly because the number of theaters is limited: 41 precisely. The majority is owned by just three owners, Shubert Organization (17 theatres), Nederlander Organization (9) and Jujamcyn Theaters (5). They are not necessarily on Broadway, the avenue that crosses Manhattan diagonally. The name actually refers to private rooms with more than 500 seats located in the theater district. In addition to size, the members of the Broadway League are distinguished by specific contracts, negotiated with 14 performing arts unions bringing together the various professions.

L’exception « Hamilton »

All of this explains why producing on Broadway is so expensive. The starting bid is usually $3-5 million for plays, and $10-20 million for musicals. The most expensive in history, “Spider-Man”, in the early 2010s, cost $75 million. She remained only three years with the poster, with losses estimated at 60 million.

Producing a show on Broadway requires raising funds from a multitude of small private investors, who bet between 25,000 and 50,000 dollars, often for the love of theatre. “The contract clearly says you risk losing everything,” says Heather Shields. It also indicates that the amount paid does not give you the right to influence the show. For her, putting on a show is like a race once morest time, with one goal: to raise enough money to make it to the premiere. “All the money raised is only used for the first: the construction of the set, publicity, development costs, rehearsal salaries… Then you have to earn enough money with the box office to cover the running costs, room rental, salaries, etc. That is approximately between 200,000 and 500,000 dollars to be raised each week, with the surplus returning in priority to investors.

Broadway is the most expensive show production community in the world, even compared to London.

Charlotte St. MartinPresident of the Broadway League

Broadway’s biggest recent hit, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical “Hamilton,” took just over six months to pay off its $12.5 million production cost. And it took him six years to enter the very closed club of shows having exceeded one billion dollars. As with venture capital-backed tech start-ups, this triumph is the tree that hides a forest of failures. In practice, some shows sometimes stop even before the premiere, and others only last a few weeks.

“You can’t function if the audience isn’t there,” explains Charlotte St. Martin. Broadway is the most expensive show production community in the world, even compared to London. Additionally, Broadway is entirely private, while some West End theaters receive public subsidies. »

To produce on Broadway, the starting bid is generally $3 to $5 million for plays, and between $10 and $20 million for musicals.Benoît Georges for “Les Echos”

In this area, the coronavirus pandemic has marked a turning point. Not only because the theaters have been closed for the longest period in their history, from March 12, 2020 to September 14, 2021 – the attacks of September 11, 2001 only resulted in a two-day shutdown. But above all because in 2020, the entertainment world was able to count on very strong support from the public authorities, like the entire American economy. Producers, theaters and troupes have benefited from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), a federal aid allowing all companies to insure the salaries of their employees.

Unemployed staff also received additional benefits of $300 per week, in addition to the usual unemployment benefits. Finally, producers and theaters have been supported by the Shuttered Venues Operators Grant (SVOG), a 16.2 billion dollar program specific to the world of culture. “This allowed producers to continue working, receiving aid capped at $10 million. The procedure to benefit from it was complicated, but almost no show might have restarted without this program, ”said Heather Shields.

In the fall of 2021, the Broadway comeback was a success, despite the absence of international tourists, blocked by the American “travel ban”. New York spectators returned en masse to the theater, with a much stricter health protocol than in the rest of the United States: compulsory vaccination certificate, permanent masks, closed bars and fireplaces… “There was no case of contamination noted on 3.4 million spectators, ”says Charlotte St. Martin.

Discounted tickets

In this month of February, as in France, the Omicron wave ebbed in New York, with less than 4,000 contaminations per day on average. All the hopes of producers and theater operators are now focused on spring, which marks Broadway’s second busiest season, which runs from “spring break” to the end of summer vacation. Fifteen new shows are already planned for March and April, including “The Little Prince” by Saint-Exupéry and a “Macbeth” with former 007 Daniel Craig in the title role. Until then, tickets at knockdown prices should help fill theaters: in addition to those sold for the same day in Times Square by TKTS, theaters and the city relaunched NYC Broadway Week in mid-January, an operation that offers two armchairs for the price of one. Exceptionally, it has just been extended until the end of February.

The rest will depend a lot on the return of tourists, national and international. In 2019, for the last full season before the pandemic, Broadway had 2.8 million international spectators out of a total of 14.8 million. In the same year, according to a study by the Broadway League, the industry provided the city with nearly 100,000 indirect jobs and $14.7 billion in economic spinoffs. “What’s worrying regarding shows that are restarting right now is that there’s no more help on the horizon,” says producer Heather Shields. All of our hopes are pinned on a solid recovery in the spring, and that means a return of international tourists to New York and to the show. Frankly, aside from staying home, going to a theater in New York is one of the safest things you can do right now! »