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In September, New York City’s theater community was rocked by life. Broadway’s longest-running musical, The Phantom of the Opera, has announced it will end on the Great White Way after 35 years and billions of dollars in ticket sales.
According to the collated data poster, the Phantom regularly occupied less than 80 percent of the seats in the 1,600-person house in the months leading up to the announcement. The show didn’t make enough money to cover operating costs — something many in the local theater community saw as an ominous sign.
If one of Broadway’s most beloved musicals can’t survive, what else can?
closing notice paper broadway
Earlier this month, two new shows “KPOP” and “Ain’t No Mo” launched closure Appointments a few weeks after opening. “Ain’t No Mo” reported revenue of just $164,000 between Dec. 5-11, with audiences at less than half the theater’s capacity. “KPOP” was packed, but still only made $281,000.
That same week, “Musician” topped the list in terms of money, earning more than $3 million. Other top-grossing shows — including “Hamilton,” “Number Six,” “Aladdin” and “Funny Girls” — earned between $1.4 and $2 million.
More shows are scheduled to wrap up in the first few weeks of January, including “Musician,” “Strange Loop,” “Beetlejuice,” and “1776.” All but one opened this year.
The bad news continues off-Broadway. Caroline’s on Broadway, a well-known comedy club just north of Times Square, will host its last comedian on December 31 after its landlord rent increase. Off-Broadway,”stampede,” The major show at the local theater for nearly 30 years, announced it would close in January.
Nearly three years after the pandemic shut down theaters and entertainment venues in New York City, the future of the local theater and entertainment industry still looks shaky.
Pandemic ‘a great accelerator’ amid theater woes
The nature of live entertainment — which relies on large crowds packed indoors — means it’s largely been sidelined during the pandemic.Small venues are only allowed in partial capacity Spring 2021, just over a year after the initial closure.Crowd size and income also Down In institutions such as the Metropolitan Opera.
“No one wants to admit they don’t sell tickets,” said Karen Greco, who worked in public relations and communications for 20 years in off-Broadway theaters before leaving the city in 2020. “Because of COVID, it’s kind of like an admission right now on Broadway that … sales are down and audiences aren’t coming back. I think it’s the same for off-Broadway and off-Broadway, but no one wants to talk about it.”
Greco said the pandemic is a “huge accelerator” of existing problems at theaters in New York City. Fewer people are going to the theater, partly because of rising Broadway ticket prices. Off-Broadway shows offer more affordable options, but often cater to smaller, more niche audiences.
While Broadway’s struggles are more pronounced, the problems facing off-Broadway theaters are even more acute. Many have started operating on slim margins, and some do not own theater space of their own. In these cases, it’s not just the future of the show that’s at stake—it’s the future of the theater itself, and the community built around it.
“Private money can definitely keep them alive, but as the money goes, I think theaters are going to need ticket sales more and more,” Greco said.
For that, larger, well-resourced off-Broadway theaters like The Public Theater and Playwrights Horizons will probably do just fine. Those much smaller houses were staring at the barrel.
“What happens when benevolent landlords give them space for their songs and decide it’s time to sell it, and hedge funds buy it?” Greco said. “Or, if it is a touring company, there is no venue, and now there are so many venues that rent theaters, where are they going?”
An off-Broadway theater works to keep the community alive
in Alphabet City, wild plan, a small theater and arts venue dedicated to providing space for queer and BIPOC artists, is working hard to secure its future and the future of the artists it supports. The theater opened in 2007 and for most of its life was used primarily as a rental theater for artists or small theater companies without their own space.
In 2017, wild project (sic) shifted focus – the team wanted to start giving back to the community more, and the non-profit status provided grants for programming.
Before grant money started rolling in after the worst of the pandemic, the frenzied project survived on money from renting out theaters. In 2020, the organization was kept afloat thanks to the Paycheck Protection Program and low-interest loans from the Small Business Administration. They got through 2021 through the SBA closing grounds operator grant.
“I would say that after the pandemic, we really started raising money to build our projects because we have been fighting rent increases through our leases because we don’t have our own buildings,” said Ana Mari de Quesada, the organization production art director. “Every year we get 12-16% rent increases, which is crazy. We haven’t been able to get on our feet financially, so we’re just renting out the property to make that income.”
The funding allowed them to produce their first original work earlier this year — “F**k 7th Grade,” a new piece of music by songwriter Jill Sobule drama. They’re also able to offer more support — technical and outreach assistance, and a cut of box office revenue — to artists still renting theaters.
Production director Tom Escovar said their first full year back in operation after the pandemic shut down has been a fantastic result, especially as other smaller theaters have struggled to bring audiences back.
All of that — plus funding for a summer program last summer in partnership with a local public school — was great, de Quesada said, but there was one hurdle in the way for the field project: buying their buildings.
“We started a capital campaign in February of this year because we were trying to buy our building and our landlord really wanted us to buy our building,” she said. “Despite all these exciting things that have happened, we are still subject to, I mean, we could lose our homes and we have a very limited amount of time to try to marshal our resources to get funding.”
Buying buildings and keeping them open is more important to wild projects than protecting their own future. Dozens of rehearsal spaces and rental theaters have closed over the past two years, leaving the downtown theater community with dwindling resources.
“We felt we needed to act quickly,” Escobar said. “We want to make sure we’re here, and we feel it’s really important to keep the space alive and where it’s located — especially in the East Village, where … businesses are going down left and right.”
The Wilderness Project has one year left on its lease and they hope to have enough money to make an offer before the building hits the market and is acquired by a developer.
Winter will be the ‘real test’
Live entertainment could be headed for another challenging season as a “triple illness” of flu, COVID and RSV sweeps the city.Health authorities again recommend indoor maskinflation remains high.
“I think people want to go back to theater, both Broadway and independent venues like this,” Escovar said. “I think there’s a lot going on against the city right now, especially as we head into winter. I think the real test will be winter.”
Greco, who now lives and writes about theater in Rhode Island, said she is seeing a revival of great productions in regional theaters outside of New York. The Tiny House is taking risks they haven’t taken before and launching experimental new shows. It’s exactly what Manhattan’s bustling theater community can only dream of.
“[It has] It’s been really cool to see, and at the same time, I’m actually kind of bummed out when I see our little New York ecosystem malfunctioning,” she said. “Know there are concerns that this might go away. I shouldn’t have said gone – New York is New York and it will always be there. But it will look very different. And I think it will look a lot smaller. “
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