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The show must go on: Broadway comes back with new investors, bold plans

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Jill Serjeant, Reuters

NEW YORK - Broadway may have seen the longest shutdown in its history but it has lined up new investors and made big plans for its grand reopening, determined to prove that there&#x27;s no business like show business.Optimism is strong for the reopening of musicals and plays starting in September, led by juggernauts &quot;Hamilton,&quot; &quot;The Lion King&quot; and &quot;Wicked.&quot;Theatres will be allowed to open at 100 percent capacity with audiences, casts and backstage crews all required to show proof of vaccination.Never risk-averse, Broadway producers are already backing new projects despite millions of dollars in lost ticket sales. The big three musicals were taking in about $1 million a week before the 18-month shutdown that began in March 2020.&quot;Producers produce what they&#x27;re passionate about. There&#x27;s nothing safe about what we do. If we wanted safe, we would be in investment banking, or an accountant, or a lawyer,&quot; said Ken Davenport, producer of Tony Award-winning musicals &quot;Kinky Boots&quot; and &quot;Once on This Island.&quot;&quot;This is a business that favors the bold ... I believe we&#x27;re about to see a renaissance of theatre over the next five years,&quot; said Davenport, who has six new shows in development.Mounting a new Broadway musical requires an initial investment of about $10-15 million, including wages for the cast and crew, makeup, sets and advertising. Plays generally cost less than half that sum.Broadway&#x27;s optimism seems undaunted by the absence of influential producer Scott Rudin, who said in April he would take a step back after multiple allegations of bullying his staff. Rudin has apologized for his behavior.Instead, Rudin&#x27;s withdrawal has opened the way for new investors, while not deterring big-budget projects like the first Broadway revival of the musical &quot;Funny Girl&quot; and plans for a &quot;Dreamgirls&quot; revival.&quot;It hasn&#x27;t left a void,&quot; said Gordon Cox, contributing theatre editor for Variety. &quot;There are whole groups of people who haven&#x27;t previously been asked to invest in a Broadway show, or realized it was a thing they could get involved in. Now that they feel they can, it seems like a cool thing to do.&quot;<div>BLACK INVESTORS</div>Not everything is rosy after the bruising shutdown.Disney musical &quot;Frozen&quot; is not returning, nor is the Rudin-backed 2020 revival of &quot;West Side Story.&quot; The two-part Harry Potter play is being condensed into one and there has been no word on pre-pandemic plans for revivals of classic plays &quot;Death of a Salesman&quot; and &quot;Our Town.&quot;The Broadway League has said it will not release official box office returns for the next few months, and ticket sales for some previously in-demand shows, including &quot;Wicked&quot; and &quot;To Kill a Mockingbird,&quot; have been slow so far, according to ticketing websites.However, seven new plays have been announced for this fall, all by Black writers. Some are being financed by first-time Broadway investors, including co-founder of television network BET, Sheila Johnson, who is putting money behind the play &quot;Thoughts of a Colored Man.&quot; Johnson and celebrity chef Carla Hall are also investing in a new musical called &quot;Grace&quot; about Black culinary history.Actor Blair Underwood and former basketball player Renee Montgomery are investing in the stage play &quot;Pass Over&quot;, a modern twist on &quot;Waiting for Godot.&quot;&quot;There is various new money that is coming into Broadway, and that money is extraordinarily helpful and it is also diverse money, which is also very interesting and new,&quot; said Brian Moreland, producer of &quot;Thoughts of a Colored Man,&quot; opening in October.Davenport says risk will always be part of Broadway&#x27;s DNA.&quot;Some of the most successful and most exciting pieces of work, including &#x27;Hamilton,&#x27; &#x27;Fun Home,&#x27; &#x27;Spring Awakening,&#x27; &#x27;Hadestown,&#x27; &#x27;Dear Evan Hansen,&#x27; have all been shows that, if you look at them on paper you&#x27;d go like, &#x27;Would anyone see that?&#x27;,&quot; he said.&quot;We&#x27;ve seen some really bold, exciting choices this coming year, and that&#x27;s what producers are doing. They&#x27;re saying &#x27;I love this piece, I love the message of this. I&#x27;m doing it, pandemic be damned, because it deserves to be on Broadway&#x27;,&quot; Davenport said. <div>(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Karishma Singh)</div>

Broadway may have seen the longest shutdown in its history but it has lined up new investors and made big plans for its grand reopening.

The show must go on: Broadway comes back with new investors, bold plans

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The show must go on: Broadway comes back with new investors, bold plans

Jill Serjeant,

Reuters

Published Aug 18, 2021 08:03 PM PHT

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Broadway

musical theater

theater

New York

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