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Presented by The National Arts Journalism
Program
and Columbia University's School of the Arts
Columbia
University Graduate School of Journalism
October 29–30, 2001
Summary
| Program | View
the publication
Introduction
Transcript
Monday, Oct. 29, 2001, 4 p.m.
Michael Janeway, director, National Arts Journalism Program: Welcome.
I’m Mike Janeway, director of the National Arts Journalism
Program here at Columbia and professor in the Journalism School
and the School of the Arts writing program.
Selecting ìWonderful Townî as the title for a conference on the
future of theater in New York no doubt dates me. It also dates the
planning of this event back to long before Sept. 11, by which time
many materials for it had been printed. ìWhy-o, why-o, why-o, why
did we ever leave Ohio?î sing the heroines of ìWonderful Townî as
the subway thunders over their heads. But they stayed, and so are
we, and New York remains theater’s Wonderful Town. And if
a less carefree note is wished for, New York this season is also
home to the wonderful ìUrinetown.î
I’m going to be as brief as I can, because we’ve got
a formidable lineup of lead-off speakers, and we’ll save housekeeping
for later. This conference was prompted by two impulses. The first
was the second American Congress of Theater, or ACT II, a year ago
in June at Harvard, in the course of which I urged participants
to move on from complaints about the press to a more mutually informed
dialogue with the press about issues of concern to the theater industry,
and offered a forum here for doing so.
The other prompt comes from my colleagues at the School of Arts
• for whom Evangeline Morphos will speak in a moment, and for others
at Columbia who’ve joined with NAJP in fostering cross-disciplinary
work on issues of arts and cultural policy and pursuing that at
the university in reaching out from it to the real world of arts,
entertainment and culture. Focusing on an art form and industry
that serve as a great city’s trademark • and it’s the
site of a lively national and international export/import trade,
and it’s also the site of a new cross-platform entertainment
industry in the making • seemed a good way for such a university
enterprise to commence.
Our thanks to Provost Jonathan Cole, Executive Vice Provost Mike
Crow and School of the Arts Dean Bruce Ferguson for funding support
for this event. Many of them also collaborated in making ACT II
happen, which was the first gathering of leaders of commercial and
nonprofit theater in 26 years, and have helped us for over a year
in coming together here today • especially Jed Bernstein of the
League of American Theatres and Producers, Ben Cameron of the Theatre
Communications Group and Rob Marx of the Fan Fox & Leslie R.
Samuels Foundation, who also made possible the Samuels Foundation’s
support for the conference.
We set out to inform discussion here with an advance draft of a
research report on the issues. The conference speakers have a copy
of it. It’s a work-in-progress, and now the conference will
inform the report, and we’ll revise and publish it for the
end of the year. More about that in a bit.
So, to these well-laid plans, as to the world, came Sept. 11. In
the first aftershocks after Sept. 11, it was logical to ask whether
any effort to discuss long-term systemic issues confronting theater
in New York at this time was possible. But subsequently, it became
clear that post-Sept. 11 emergency responses needed to be related
to the long-term issues, and, indeed, that the economic downturn
before Sept. 11, intensified since then, made such dual consideration
necessary.
Let me first introduce my colleague, professor Evangeline Morphos
of the School of the Arts theater program and also a theatrical
producer in her own right. Evangeline will be followed by four leaders
in formulating responses to the September 11 crisis as it affects
the theater industry: Schuyler Chapin, Jed Bernstein, John Breglio
and Virginia Louloudes. I’ll introduce them in a moment.
Welcome
Evangeline Morphos, producer and theater professor, Columbia University
School of the Arts: First of all, it should be noted that Mike Janeway
is really the driving force, and the wonderful force, behind ìWonderful
Town,î and it really is to him that we owe being here.
As Michael talked, he cited that the planning for this conference
really began over a year ago, and the purpose was to think about
a way to use the university as a neutral place to start to explore
some of the issues that are facing New York theater. It was also
to bring together a variety of perspectives that could inform those
issues and to think outside of the box. We were very fortunate to
be able to use the resources of the National Arts Journalism Program
to really conduct research, and, as Michael said, that’s a
very important part of the beginning of the discussion. It also
seemed especially appropriate to use the university, since the School
of the Arts here at Columbia is training the artists, producers
and artistic directors who will one day become some of the leaders
of this industry.
We made several choices in planning this conference. The first was
to limit the issues facing the theater to the New York theater •
to New York City. And second, to focus on theater as an industry
and not in terms of its content or its artistry. And in fact, the
decision was made to see theater, which consists of very many different
parts and constituencies, as one industry. We wanted to look at
those areas where theater intersects with other institutions and
other industries • the press, real estate, public policy • and other
entertainment media • film, television, the Internet • that in fact
compete for audiences and artists. The events of Sept. 11 have not
changed the questions, but rather they’ve intensified the
need for answers. Sept. 11 has put theater very much at the forefront
of our understanding of what makes New York unique as a city. Theater
is absolutely vital and integral to New York’s economy. And
we were also reminded of the unique properties of the theatrical
experience. the ability to come together as a community at a live
event.
American theater historically has responded to far-reaching national
events by redefining its content and its structures. During the
Depression, a new group of artists, writers and actors were defining
a new Naturalism that would address the real issues people were
facing, and their work created a new context for the American playwright.
It also expanded the Broadway audience and made Broadway the place
to explore new ideas. The revolutions of the ’60s and ’70s
and the national divisions that they brought created the new structures
of the off-Broadway movement, the experimental theater companies
and also the regional theater movement. This represented an extension
of, but also a fragmentation of, the old audience base, and moved
the context for developing new work from Broadway to other venues.
With each change, theater reasserted what is unique about itself
as a medium. It still remains to be seen what the artists, our voices
during this time, will be saying. But what we’re considering
here is, ìWhat context will we provide for them to say it in?î
Thanks.
Speakers
Janeway: Thanks, Evangeline.
The city of New York’s responses to the Sept. 11 crisis have
been heroic. One of those responding personifies the city’s
long-standing commitment to the well-being of the arts in New York,
Commissioner of Cultural Affairs Schuyler Chapin, who also happens
to be a former dean of the Columbia School of the Arts.
Schuyler Chapin, commissioner New York City Department of Cultural
Affairs:
Thank you very much, Michael.
I must say, when you asked me to speak this afternoon, I had, as
many of you might understand, a mixed bag of feelings. In the first
place, it’s odd that the three • this being the third • serious
conferences on the matters to do with the theater have all taken
place at Ivy League universities. In 1974, I was there at Princeton
when Alexander H. Cohen met W. McNeil Lowry at what I believe was
the first meeting of the profit and the not-for-profit theater arenas.
I was not at Harvard last year, but I understand that ACT II produced
a lively series of dialogues and discussions. And now here at Columbia.
As Michael indicated, I was, for 11 years, the dean of the School
of the Arts at this distinguished university; perhaps the only dean
in its history never to have gone to college, but they didn’t
seem to mind. The result is that this school is active in the work
they do for young artists, and it’s a joy to be back on campus.
Today, New York theater consists of two distinct parts: the commercial
theater, Broadway, as a showcase; and the 100-plus off-Broadway
and off-off-Broadway companies, as custodians of New York theater’s
creative energies. Or for another version of that: New York theater
as an instrument of cultural tourism, as distinct from New York
theater as a dynamic originator in the performing arts.
New York theater is not an industry that has planned well for the
future, but trends in funding, prices, costs and labor issues highlight
the need for such forward, strategic thinking and planning right
now. A common complaint in New York theater circles is that the
media are part of the problem; that they just don’t understand.
And in addition to better understanding is the problem of talking
about the knottier issues in public.
As I prepare to pass on my baton to whomever my successor may be,
my challenge and charge for you is: Can we take advantage of the
urgencies of this moment to make these discussions-in-progress meaningful;
to bridge the distance between theater in New York as a showcase
and as a creative force; to strengthen the quality of communications
between one of New York’s most important, most distinctive
industries and the news media? All my life, I’ve heard theater
talked about as ìthe fabulous invalid.î Perhaps after this conference
is over, a new look at the invalid may just erase that word and
replace it with something like: ìa vibrant new look at one of the
most important arts we have.î Thank you very much.
After September 11: Updates and Initiatives
Janeway: Jed Bernstein, president of the League of American Theatres
and Producers, representing commercial theater in New York, was,
with Ben Cameron of the Theatre Communications Group, one of the
two real leaders in getting commercial and non-profit theater leaders
talking to each other in a meaningful way, in organizing ACT II.
Jed?
Jed Bernstein, president The League of American Theatres and Producers:
I think
I’ll address you from here. This is all very intimidating.
Ginny prepared careful remarks, John is the most articulate person
I know in the theater business. So, I’ll be very brief.
Michael asked us, in addition to the panels that we may be participating
in the next couple days, to talk a little bit about the response
and activities since Sept. 11. And if I am nothing less • in the
five or six years that I’ve been in this job • than controversial,
I guess I’ll perhaps start by throwing something out for the
next day and a half, and that is the following assertion: That if
the commercial theater behaved all the time as it has in the last
eight weeks, you wouldn’t need to have this conference. That’s
the premise.
Now here’s some evidence for that, and then we can of course
have lively debates about whether that’s even close to being
true or not. On Sept. 13, when we gathered all the different constituent
elements at the League of our community • the unions, TDF, Actors’
Fund, the charitable elements, etc. • the group reached a kind of
consensus about trying to move forward on three parallel paths.
One was to reduce costs, because without that, there was a great
fear that shows would close • and in fact, some shows did. The second
was to increase revenues, to bring audiences back faster than perhaps
they otherwise would. And the third was to try to make a statement
or some commitment of a charitable nature to the victims of this
tragedy. Naturally, those initiatives had the potential to overlap
with each other. One program or one idea could address more than
one of them, but we felt that at the end of the day, unless we addressed
all three, the task would be incomplete.
On the cost-reduction front, I think we had an unusual partnership
in two ways with our partners at the unions and guilds, and that
is that there was an agreement to reduce costs by 25 percent, which
you’ve all read about. And then in many cases, when the operating
results of shows were much stronger than expected, that money was
returned and given back to hopefully afford some trust and credibility
for the next time • which we hope doesn’t come • when such
an action might be necessary. The cost reduction affected other
partners as well. Royaltyholders gave up royalties, theater owners
gave up rent, and every constituent group gave something back to
try to help those shows that were most in danger.
In the second area of marketing • because at the end of day you
cannot cost-reduce yourself to profitability • we had the ìI Love
New York Theaterî campaign that I’m sure most of you have
seen: the television commercial with the singing and dancing in
Times Square, and some of the print advertising. That has two more
elements, or two more phases to it, yet to come: in the late November/December
area, and the January/February area. And of course, that campaign
was kicked off with the contribution of $5 per ticket for every
ticket bought, and that has raised three-quarters of a million dollars
for the Twin Towers Fund. And many individual producers and theater
organizations have also given generously to that fund, led, I think,
by the Shuberts with a $1 million gift.
So I think the best thing that can be said about that response is
that it was collaborative, because it did involve all the various
elements of our community. It was rapid, and if you compare the
commercial theaters’ response to that of hotels and restaurants,
for example, I think you can see how rapid it was, and that it was
close enough to being right. I’m not suggesting that it was
100 percent right, but it was close enough to being right, and it
had a very positive effect. The business results, which Karen Hauser,
our director of research, will take you through in the next session,
show that we are pretty much now where we expected to be at this
time of year. And tomorrow will be the seven-week anniversary of
the tragedy, so that’s a pretty remarkable comeback.
The results on the road vary by market but are also surprisingly
healthy. On the other hand, advance sales are not building as they
should. We won’t go into the Christmas holiday season as strongly
as we should, and then of course into January/February, which is
the darkest time for theaters and the most pressured. So there are
certainly many chapters yet to be written regarding Sept. 11 in
every industry, and particularly in the New York commercial theater.
I think that New York overall has been the beneficiary of enormous
national attention, international attention, enormous sympathy,
if you will. And I think that the mayor has set the tone in terms
of establishing that patronizing New York and all of its constituents,
no less the theater, is the patriotic thing to do. That was an enormous
help to us in the very early hours and days. Here was somebody who
instantly became the most beloved leader in the free world, telling
people to go to the theater and to go to restaurants and to defy
terrorism by going to the theater. It obviously can’t be underestimated
what effect that had. But I think it also, I hope, sets the tone
for our community, and it sets a tone for our city in terms of our
getting healthy and moving forward: that through collaborative action,
and through working together, an enormous amount can be achieved,
both incrementally and exponentially above what we can achieve in
our own disparate ways. So, the story isn’t over, but we’re
well into the middle chapters now, and it’s a pretty good
read.
Janeway: Thanks, Jed.
Next, Virginia Louloudes, who directs A.R.T/New York, the Alliance
of Resident Theaters in New York, which in turn represents the city’s
nonprofit theater community.
Virginia P. Louloudes, executive director, Alliance of Resident
Theatres, New York:
Jed, I did not prepare this for today; this was just to intimidate
you • that’s actually a joke. I have to say that I was incredibly
impressed with the Broadway community’s immediate response,
and I envy their resources and envy Jed’s energy, which is
why he can speak so wonderfully sitting, and I have to stand to
get my energy going.
Our response was probably more along the lines of what my response
would be. On the 13th, many of our theaters were still closed, and
we were just e-mailing people, saying, ìAre you OK?î On the 20th,
we had a meeting, fittingly, at the American Airlines Theater, where
we invited all of our membership to come together and just talk
about what they’d gone through, because I had fears that had
very little to do with ticket sales and had a lot more to do with
the ripple effects.
Two hundred and fifty people showed up at the American Airlines
Theater, and it was an incredibly moving experience. We had members,
we had funders, we had a few people from the press. And probably
the most memorable experience of that morning was when Daniel Aukin,
the artistic director of Soho Rep, stood up with Alexandra Conley
as managing director. They were in the frozen zone; they stood up
and Daniel looked like he hadn’t slept in days, and he said,
ìOur theater’s closed. We don’t know when we’ll
be able to open. We’re told it could be two weeks, we’re
told it could be three months. We’ve lost every rental between
now and Jan. 1, 2002, which comes to $60,000. Our board met two
weeks ago to launch a strategic stabilization fund. Now we’re
just trying to make ends meet.î
About four hours later, my phone rang and it was our board president,
Todd Haimes, who’s the artistic director of the Roundabout
Theatre, which produces on Broadway but is a not-for-profit, and
he said, ìThat was really a great meeting, and I wonder if there’s
anything I can do to help Daniel. Can I give him free rehearsal
space? What can I do to help?î And that was one of the best things
that came out of that meeting: that people stood up in our community,
which is a terrific community. I always call us the Cratchit kids.
We’re used to so little that if you come with a few presents,
we’re going to really celebrate. It was a wonderful moment.
I’ve been thinking and writing these last seven weeks about
what Sept. 11 is going to mean for the theater community, because
the not-for-profit theater community was not on full footing prior
to Sept. 11. We had been told by our foundation funders that their
portfolios were down as the market turned. So the smarter and more
seasoned of us • I’m not really sure I should be in that category,
but I would put Todd in that category • were saying, ìLook, contributions
are going to drop.î A number of my companies, including myself,
were about to launch capital campaigns. And as the market was turning
and Lincoln Center was announcing the first billion-dollar capital
campaign, I, for one, was scared. We were about to face the largest
turnover in elected officials in New York City history, after an
era when Mayor Giuliani had certainly changed the rules. Theaters,
museums that were not in city-owned buildings, for the first time
four years ago, could get capital funding from the city. It was
a huge change, and A.R.T./New York and Roundabout were the first
two recipients of that policy change. The City Council matched it,
the borough presidents matched it. Billions of dollars in the last
20 years of Peter Vallone’s leadership alone had gone to the
arts. We do not know what this new council, what the new borough
presidents or what the next mayor will bring, but we do know that
they have added pressures.
Just a little bit about our membership: We represent 400 not-for-profit
theaters. They range from the two largest theaters in the country,
Lincoln Center Theater and The Roundabout, to the Manhattan Theatre
Club, which produced this year’s Pulitzer Prize•winning play,
ìProof.î Theaters like the Vineyard and Manhattan Class Company,
which are dedicated to new work; theaters that do the classics,
like Repertorio Espanol and Classic Stage Company; and literally
260 emergent companies whose budgets are under $100,000 a year.
They may be poor financially, but they are rich artistically. If
we were in a more profitable era, they would probably be bigger.
And they have done amazing work on a shoestring.
They are funded by a vast, complicated and generous mixture of earned
and contributed income. And earned income is not just ticket sales:
it’s tours, classes, renting of your theater space, subsidiary
rights when your show moves and goes to Broadway. A great example
of that was New York Theatre Workshop. We’d made a $200,000
loan to them in 1994, I believe, to purchase the space next door
to their theater to turn into office space. ìRentî hit. They were
so overwhelmed with the success of ìRentî that they missed a few
payments, and we understood. It was a small staff. We said, ìNo
problem.î Then ìRentî did so well, they paid their 20-year loan
off early. So we lost the interest that we’d budgeted, but
we were happy to have that money. That’s when I knew I was
becoming like a banker.
So we have those kinds of successes. We have all kinds of members.
They get their money from foundations, corporations; and over the
past few years, they’ve done tremendously well, despite everything
you’ve heard from government • not just from the Department
of Cultural Affairs, but from City Council, the State Legislature,
New York State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the
Arts and the Board of Education.
OK. So what has Sept. 11 meant for my members? Interesting stuff.
First of all, there are about 10 companies that we call the ìGround
Zeroî theaters that were affected immediately. They were forced
to close. One of our theaters actually had its office in 5 World
Trade. They lost everything but their lives. And they have had the
most serious hardship and yet decided to go on and do their performance.
So they’re actually in previews, I believe, next week; they
went right into rehearsal. And I think that’s probably what’s
kept them going. They’re called Three-Legged Dog. A few others,
like Worth Street Theatre and Soho Rep, were forced to close for
a while. One of them was Access Theatre, and just to show how resourceful
they are, Jackie Christie sent each of her audience members a letter
saying, ìPlease show this to the police so they’ll let you
through the barricade.î And it worked. That’s how resourceful
they are.
We surveyed our members just to get a sense of what the direct loss
was, direct loss being, ìWhat did you lose at the box office?î Indirect
loss: ìWhat did you lose in terms of future rentals? And, what are
you afraid of losing? And, anything else you want to tell us?î Of
the 360 surveys we sent, 102 were returned, which for us, on short
notice, is very impressive. We’d hit a chord. And the wonderful
Joan Firestone from Alan Hevesi’s office called serendipitously
as we were doing this and said, ìIs there anything we can do to
help?î And I said, ìI have these surveys, and I can do a quick analysis,
but if someone who’s an economist could look at it, that would
be helpful.î She came back and gave us the pro bono services of
the management consulting firm of Oliver, Wyman & Co. So suddenly
I had five people working on my project, which was amazing. And
the first thing they did was call me and say, ìGinny, we think the
loss is under-reported. We have it calculated, and it’s $4.7
million in direct loss.î
I said, ìThat’s probably right. There were forced closings
for two to four days. The revenues total for the year are $140 million,
and a lot of them weren’t even open yet.î
ìOK,î they said, ìbut that’s not going to look good. That’s
not really going to make a case.î
And I said, ìWhat I’m worried about isn’t ticket sales.
What I’m really worried about is contributions. What I’m
really worried about is government funding. What I’m really
worried about is what’s going to happen to this economy.î
And they said, ìWell, we can help you with that. Because we did
this with a comptroller. We projected out based on nothing more
than their knowledge of what they think the future’s going
to look like.î And it was scary because it shows another $16 million
that we could lose in revenue, ticket revenue, of people that are
afraid to go out, contributions, government, ancillary rights, you
name it.
Now the really hard thing to quantify • one of the greatest challenges
that we face • is anthrax, and the fear of going out. The mayor
has done a tremendous job in making it patriotic to go to Broadway,
and I wish he would say ìtheater,î and I wish even more he would
say ìsupport the arts.î And a lot of people have responded, and
they’ve gone to Broadway. What I have heard from my members
is that people are canceling ticket orders because they’re
afraid. The day that Tom Brokaw’s assistant was announced
to have gotten anthrax, the Vineyard Theatre had 40 cancellations
for ìUnwrap Your Candy,î a play that The New York Times had given
a great review to for that one performance on Friday night. Repertorio
Espanol, which serves literally thousands of school children, just
called me to see if they could get a loan. That is one of the most
fiscally sound companies in the city. But the Board of Education
has forbid any travel on school trips beyond boroughs. They’re
not allowed to cross bridges; they’re not allowed to go through
tunnels. So suddenly all Board of Ed•sponsored programs • I mean,
all arts and education programs, literally, if they come to your
theater • are at risk. It’s a huge amount of money for theaters
who do the classics.
The loss, by the way • the $4.7 million • half of it was experienced
by the five largest theaters. But it was a small percentage of their
revenue. For the remaining theaters, particularly those whose budgets
are under $100,000, it was a significant portion of their revenue.
So what does this mean? It means we have a tough road ahead of us.
It means we have to be very proactive and responsive, and it means
this is going to be quite a year for A.R.T./New York. We’re
going into our 30th anniversary, and as I was writing and trying
to quantify and sort of define all the problems, I realized that
we were basically reinventing our mission, or reinventing our organization.
Our mission’s to serve. The mission doesn’t change,
but what we do is certainly going to change.
We were blessed a year ago that the Mellon Foundation gave us $1
million grant, half of it to create a revolving loan fund. And we
have made, in the last seven weeks, $300,000 in loans to theaters
as result of Sept. 11. We have also filed three class-action grant
applications. In other words, we file grant applications on behalf
of the Ground Zero theaters. And already the Sept. 11 Fund has awarded
$130,000 to those theaters.
We have done a workshop, because one of the other things we noticed
was that theaters were afraid to fund-raise. And this was before
the mail became dangerous. This was, ìHow in God’s name can
I ask anybody to give me money now?î But we learned from our colleagues
in California, for example, who had to deal with earthquakes, that
if you wait, you lose. Berkeley Rep had its first deficit in years
because it delayed its fund-raising. So we did a workshop a few
weeks later, at the American Airlines Theater, called: ìWhat do
you mean you’re not fund-raising?î about fund-raising. And
we told them it’s OK to ask for money for yourselves: you
just might want to change the tone. And I should also say that,
although it’s not nearly at the incredible level of the Broadway
theaters, our theaters have also passed the hat and taken collections.
CSC raised $7,000 for its fire station down the street. The Signature
Theatre has a matching grant from Saks Fifth Avenue for money raised
for the Sept. 11 Fund.
The big message I want to leave here is: What do we need? We need
what we’ve always needed, only we need it sooner. Our mid-sized
theaters were always at risk, because as they came of age, the basis
of support that allowed our big theaters to grow was taken away,
so we need cash reserves. We have been talking to the Mellon Foundation
about doing a cash reserve program, which was how we got the loan
fund money from them. But one thing that Mellon has done nationally
with the Doris Duke Charitable Trust, I think, needs to be replicated
here. Nationally, there’s a program called the Leading National
Theatres Initiative, and if you’re a wonderful theater, you
get invited to apply. And artistic directors have to talk about
the one thing they would do if only they had money. And then Mellon,
if it deems it so, gives them the money to do that one thing, and
Duke endows that one thing.
What our mid-sized theatres need • and by ìmid-sizedî I mean budgets
between $750,000 and $4 million, of which there’s probably
30 or 40 • is cash reserves. They’re not going to be able
to have endowments. They need cash reserves so when something bad
happens, they don’t have to borrow at prime-plus-whatever
percent and take the time to fill out those applications, because
they don’t have the staff to do it. They needed it before,
and they really need it now.
What else do they need? They need access to loans that are affordable.
What else do they need? They need a campaign like Broadway • and
I truly, truly commend you on that campaign. In fact, I want to
pull out the commercial you did for A.R.T./New York when you were
on our board, that TV commercial. Bravo called us and said, ìIs
there any way we can help?î And we said, ìYes, we need PSA’s.î
So I’m actually thinking of re-dubbing that commercial.
We need it because people are afraid to go out now. They weren’t
afraid to go out after the attack. I was at the Jean Cocteau Rep
the Saturday after the attack. It was three-quarters full for an
unknown Tennessee Williams’ play that was three hours long,
and it was fabulous. For three hours I didn’t think about
the Towers crumbling. I thought about these drunks in this bar and
their life, and it was great. There were 60 people on a Monday night
to see a new play by an unknown writer down in Soho the Monday after
the attack. The Signature Theatre said that for every cancellation
they had from Sept. 11, there were two people trying to buy tickets
who said, ìI just don’t want to be home anymore.î So I know
that people want to go to the theater. But now they want to be home
with their kids; now we have conflicts; and now we have to give
them the confidence and the energy to go out.
What else do we need? We need funders to stay the course. Now is
not the time to divert, now is not the time to ask us to come up
with new initiatives. Now is the time to say, make our money general
operating money, make it liberal challenges. Because the one thing
I learned from Sept. 11 is that the public responds to need and
urgent need. And I think if we can take the grants you give us and
turn it into an urgent appeal for funds from individuals, we might
be able to just get there.
One last thing. We need everybody to be real straight with us. If
you’re not going to give us money, don’t tell us in
June. Tell us in November. Then maybe we can make some adjustments.
Don’t tell us in June; it will be too late. We need the city
to do for off-Broadway what it’s done for Broadway. We need
an economic stimulus package along with a public relations package.
We need the next mayor to make the citizens feel they are helping
this city by going to the theaters, by going to the museums, by
going to the opera. Because we are what make the city great. And
we depend on the city. The livelihood of the city and the livelihood
of the nonprofits are inextricably linked. When I saw what happened
downtown I thought, ìOh my God, there goes the tax base, there goes
Wall Street, there goes the foundation portfolios, there goes the
money that funds all the city programs. There goes our AAA bond
rating that floats the capital projects.î We are at risk here. When
the city goes down, we go down. We need to work together with the
citizens to make the city go up.
I’m kind of pre-empting my tomorrow’s speech, so I should
be quiet. I’ve clearly spoken enough. I want to thank you
for this opportunity. I just want to urge everyone here • and I
know I’m speaking to the choir • to go to theater this week.
Go to a not-for-profit theater, too, and keep going. Thank you.
Janeway: Thank you, Ginny. John Breglio is chairman of the Theatre
Development Fund and a partner at the firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind,
Wharton & Garrison, a leading attorney in working with the theater
industry, and now he’s a theater innovator as well. John.
John Breglio, chairman, Theatre Development Fund: First of all,
I consider it a privilege to be here today to speak to all of you.
And I thank Mike and Evangeline for giving me this opportunity.
I think this kind of dialogue is exactly what we need. We need to
bring together all the interests of this community: Broadway, off-Broadway,
the not-for-profit community, even the academic community, and certainly
the funding community, to begin to grapple with all the problems
that we face.
Although I’ll probably repeat some of the stuff that’s
been said, what I’m going to try to address is exactly that
kind of coalition of interests that I believe is essential if we’re
going to make some progress and have some true rebuilding efforts
after Sept. 11.
There’s a radio commercial right now that’s running
with Broadway.com that says, ìThe show must go on.î And the script
touts the all-enduring traditions of Broadway and urges everyone
to get out, spend a lot of money, and see a Broadway show. We’ve
heard our mayor tell New Yorkers they are essentially duty-bound
to buy tickets to the theater and other New York cultural events.
Indeed, I’d go so far as to say that it’s largely the
result of the mayor’s heroic leadership and determination,
in addition to everything Jed discussed that the industry has done,
that he’s saved the city from the kind of self-doubt and fear,
that the New York theater business has regained now a large portion
of the patronage that it lost during the first weeks following the
attack. These efforts and other industry-wide measures, such as
temporary four-week union concessions, helped resuscitate a severely
shell-shocked industry.
But for all these worthwhile efforts, New York theater is far from
having recovered to withstand future crises and to attract sufficient
new capital investment for the production of plays and musicals
in the coming seasons. None of the problems that plague the theater
are new. They are exacerbated by an uncertain economic climate and
a chilling reduction in domestic and foreign tourist trade. When
success or failure for most shows is measured by margins of 5 or
10 percent, it’s not difficult to calculate that theater’s
future prospects of a long-range reduction in ticket sales may turn
out to be, as many predict, 15 or 20 percent. As we all know, in
addition to the devastation of downtown businesses, every hotel
and restaurant in the theater district has suffered serious reductions
in its business, as have tour guides, souvenir shops and others
dependent, to some degree or another, on tourism and a healthy theater
industry.
I want to stress that my concerns are not confined to midtown or
Broadway shows. They include off- and off-off-Broadway as well as
the city’s many theatrical not-for-profit institutions located
throughout Manhattan and the other four boroughs. The fragile economics
of any Broadway show are even more profound when applied to off-Broadway
• they live or die on the difference of several thousand dollars
in revenue each week. And the not-for-profit sector it has had the
cushion of a subscription base for the time being, but undoubtedly
it will face funding difficulties in the next several years as corporate,
private and governmental sources of support are eroded by the reordering
of giving priorities. In short, the entire chain of the theater
business ecosystem, which brings together all these disparate interests,
is now threatened, I believe, like never before.
So what can we do? One thing is clear, I believe. Since Sept. 11,
every aspect of our personal and professional lives has been and
will continue to be re-examined, reassessed, and rethought. Should
we not then re-examine, reassess, rethink how all of us conduct
our day-to-day lives working in the theater? To that end, the Theatre
Development Fund, which I serve as chair, has proposed the establishment
of a Theatre Relief Fund to begin a dialogue among the many interests
of the New York theater community: theater owners, producers, unions
and talent in the Broadway, off-Broadway, and not-for-profit sectors.
And through that coalition, we seek to identify common interests,
take charge of our future and, most importantly, accumulate sufficient
revenues and resources to meet future crises, encourage the production
of new plays and finally build future audiences.
As some of you no doubt have read, as a first step we’ve enlisted
the support of Senators Schumer and Torricelli, Congressman Rangel
and several other key figures in Washington to introduce tax legislation
in Congress that would encourage the production of plays and musicals
during the next two years. In brief, this tax initiative will encourage
investors to invest capital in the production of new plays so that
new jobs will be created. A tax credit equal to approximately 20
percent of salaries paid to employees in new productions would be
passed through to investors in each production. A sunset provision
would provide that this benefit would apply only to productions
financed through the end of 2003, and there are limits on the amount
of credit available to each production. The tax benefit would not
apply to hits. It’s not going to help ìThe Producers,î or
ìRent,î or any major hits; that’s not its purpose. Instead,
it will give further downside protection for shows that never recover
all or a large portion of their investments. In the end, we estimate
that the ultimate benefit to the investors would be 10 percent of
the total capitalization of a show.
For example, if a show is capitalized at $1 million and lost all
of its capital investment, they’d receive a further credit
against all their taxes equal to approximately 10 percent of their
total capitalization. So if a particular investor put up $100,000
of that $1 million investment of that show, he or she would get
approximately $10,000 as a credit. That credit is in addition to
the deduction that the investor would normally get for his investment.
Keep in mind this is a very modest proposal and not a bail-out or
a give-away. If you calculate the total tax dollars to the treasury,
it is exceedingly modest. It’s a pittance, in fact, when compared
to the billions given outright by the federal government to the
airline industry. Having shared this proposal with scores of Broadway
and off-Broadway producers, I believe it would be an attractive
incentive to encourage investment over the next year or two, when
we may face a serious shortage of potential funding for new productions.
Second, the Relief Fund will seek to raise funds from our community
and eventually from outside sources to further enhance TDF’s
ticket subsidy program. Our objective would be to identify qualified
productions that are not necessarily capable of filling seats during
the crucial preview periods and the first few weeks after official
opening. Ideally, we would fill virtually every unsold seat for
a new production during these critical periods by purchasing tickets
from producers at reduced prices, then selling them to students,
teachers, retirees and other groups at further-reduced prices, or
even distributing them for free. Although TDF currently has a similar
program, we’d want to expand this dramatically so that in
some cases it may make the difference between a show being financed
or not.
Third, we are proposing the production of one play each year in
which talent and everyone else involved would participate at minimum
salaries and provide goods and services at cost. The proceeds of
such productions, which we estimate would be as much as $3 million
a year, would be contributed to the Relief Fund to further its goals
and purposes.
Fourth, if we have sufficient resources, the Fund would come to
the aid of future productions, which could demonstrate particular
hardship and need as a direct consequence of a specific crisis.
I’m not suggesting that we will ever experience a repeat of
the horror of Sept. 11, but we live in uncertain times. We do not
know what other dislocations and crises we are going to face over
the next several days, months or years. For us not to prepare for
such contingencies would be foolhardy and short-sighted.
Fifth, as we identify common interests, I hope the Fund could support
industry-wide discount ticket initiatives and other promotional
plans for those times of the year when every production faces a
serious downturn in business: January through March, the July 4th
period, and other predictable downturns of the business cycles.
Finally, and in many ways most importantly, we must strengthen our
efforts to rebuild audiences: not just tourists, but those who live
and work in New York. If it were not for New Yorkers themselves
and the mobilization of their support to the theater, we would never
have recovered so swiftly after Sept. 11. Somehow along the way,
we lost the veteran New York theatergoer who regularly attended
three or four or five shows each year. We have to recapture and
retrain that audience, keep them engaged and cater to their needs
and interests. Related to the building of our audiences, we have
to educate and encourage children and teenagers and young adults
to fit live theater into their lives, culturally, emotionally and
intellectually. In a world where connecting to one another has never
been more important, we must convey to these young audiences the
extraordinarily singular nature of experiencing live theater. I
realize these are ambitious and perhaps lofty goals, but even if
we accomplish only one or two of them, we will be the better for
it, I think. Anyway, I do not think we have much choice.
I began these remarks by referring to the radio commercial that
says, ìThe show must go on.î Of course, the show will go on, in
some form or other, throughout the country in schools, colleges,
local communities, performing arts organizations and many other
venues. But I submit that the challenge we have right now is a much
more profound and fundamental one. This is not a matter simply of
preserving our theatrical heritage. To do so would suggest that
our future will devolve into a museum-like existence where we dust
off the occasional old play or musical a few times a year. Instead,
we need to build a more solid, more secure artistic and economic
infrastructure so that new playwrights, directors, actors, designers
and producers will find a place for their vision, their talent,
and their economic well-being. In that way, we will have reaffirmed
the very essence of what it is to come to New York, to go to Broadway,
to go to the theater. And we will have reaffirmed this great city
as a symbol of America’s live dramatic culture.
Thank you very much.
Janeway: Thank you, John. We’re close enough to schedule so
that we can take a few sharply focused questions on the specifics
on some of these initiatives that have been mentioned. If anyone
would like to put a question, please, in the interest of dialogue
and the record, identify yourself. Yes?
Carolyn Albert, reviewer, Theatrereviews.com: I’ve been a
theater reviewer for 23 and a half years. To get right to the point,
a media spin has been placed on information about anthrax. I, for
one, don’t trust information about the safety of humans around
Ground Zero. I think it’s the responsibility of the press
to get accurate information. Now if panic is the end of the theater,
or business, or spending money, complacency and wrong information
can be even more deadly. Of the 10 theaters at Ground Zero mentioned
by Ms. Louloudes, I’d be very wary of going there, or recommending
that other people went there, until I was really sure that those
fumes are not dangerous.
Louloudes: There are 390 others that I urge you to go to in the
meantime. [laughter].
Trudi Biggs, executive director, National Alliance for Musical Theatre:
Are there any initiatives happening at more of a work-force level?
For the actors or others who rely on temporary or freelance work?
Bernstein: I think there are a tremendous number of grass-roots
initiatives, certainly on the charitable and fund-raising level.
Ginny referred to that, and several of the Broadway companies have
done that as well. There’s an initiative amongst a bunch of
the Broadway Equity actors to do performances at memorial services
and funerals on a pro bono basis. Ginny perhaps did the best job
of talking about the emotional impact of this event, which was enormous.
And I think the casts and the companies were very hesitant about
going back to work, but by and large they have found it to be a
healing and communal kind of experience.
Is that what you were talking about? Or did you mean job-hiring
initiatives?
Biggs: I don’t know specifics. Anecdotally, I have heard that
a lot of people who rely on temp work are not able to find employment
right now.
Bernstein: I’ve heard that too, that the so-called ìsurvivalî
job, the secondary job • whether it’s restaurant, or temping
or whatever • has been eliminated in many cases.
Louloudes: One other thing along the lines of which Jed was talking
about earlier. Tonight, when you leave here, you can go to the Worth
Street Theatre. They’re doing a free, USO-like show called
ìThe Stage Door Canteenî for all the rescue workers. And tonight,
Jesse Martin, recently of ìLaw & Order,î will be one of the
people singing.
And I didn’t mean to sound cavalier about the last question.
I hope I wasn’t cavalier. I have been down to Ground Zero,
and you’re right. The fumes are different. I live in Brooklyn.
We’ve bought two air purifiers because there are nights when
we can smell it, and I live three miles away. So I think everyone
has to do what they feel most comfortable doing. We’re fortunate
that we have enough choices in the theater, that we don’t
have to go down there. For those of you who do want to go down there
tonight to support Worth Street Theatre, ìThe Stage Door Canteenî
was on television last week and it was well-received. It’s
supposed to be even better tonight.
Alan Eisenberg, president, Actors’ Equity: Right. This is
going to sound very misanthropic, but I think that for the record,
there should be some other remarks made about just some of the things
that have been done, or a different view of collaboration.
My definition of collaboration, or so it frequently appears, is
when the union gives; that’s another definition. When the
guilds or the unions want something, there’s a different arrangement.
One might ask, for example, with the millions of dollars that some
of these shows made, such as ìRent,î such as ìLes Miserables,î such
as ìPhantom,î why do they have to ask for cuts from the unions and
the guilds when they have made millions and millions of dollars
over the years? Why did Disney ask us for cuts for ìBeauty and the
Beast,î as part of a ìme-tooî proposition?
There’s a collaboration that goes on between the commercial
theater and the not-for-profit theater that Equity knows much more
about, in many ways, than either the commercial theater, which never
seems to talk to the not-for-profit theater, or the not-for-profit
theater, which never speaks to the commercial theater. So in that
sense, why wasn’t Equity a participant in the creation of
ACT II? I asked about that and was told, ìWell, we shouldn’t
be a participant.î
You have this great collaboration between commercial theater and
not-for-profit theater. Do any of the subsequent results of the
fruits of the production ever go to the actors or the other unions
and guilds that participate in this collaboration? There’s
been a complete refutation of any kind of principle that the actors
should in any way earn something from a not-for-profit production
that goes to a commercial production. I sat around a tree in Cambridge
discussing the idea of participation in one way or another. And
the principle was: The actors get the job, and they’re not
entitled to anything else.
The New York Times did a major article about the collaboration between
the Brooklyn Museum and the art collector in London, saying what
a terrible thing it was. Just a few weeks before or just a few weeks
after, Cameron MacIntosh introduced ìMartin Guerreî to the Guthrie
Theater, one of the richest theaters in the United States. Now why
is that any different than what Saatchi did with the Brooklyn Museum?
So, I know we have to be lovey-dovey, and I don’t mean to
disrupt, really. I mean, I’m on a panel tomorrow, and I’ll
be very polite tomorrow. I just want the community to know that
there’s a great deal of tension that goes on between the different
aspects, and the tension continues to exist about why we had to
take cuts for that four-week period.
John Breglio spoke about a collaborative project. Actors’
Equity, two or three or four years ago, came up with a concept called
ìThe Broadway Initiatives,î which had to do with taking air rights,
selling the air rights, and having the air rights form a function
of contributions back into various plays. That was totally an Equity
idea. We participated in the zoning rights to make that happen,
in direct opposition to our members in Clinton because they saw
some buildings going up in that area, which would further make it
more difficult to live in that area. And after that whole program
got through, and after all the air rights were approved, the producers
would not give a dime to that fund; the theater owners would not
give a dime to that fund. All they asked was: How are the actors,
how are the unions going to take cuts? What are their sacrifices
going to be when we have a single flow of income stream, which is
our daily job, and kicking it out three hours a day, and the producers
and everybody else have all kinds of different income streams? So
if we want to speak about a new form of collaboration, which I’m
very interested in doing, I’d like to see how actors and other
people in the unions and guilds can become part of that larger income
stream.
The Signature Theatre pays only $300 a week, and Kathy Chalfant,
who won an award for ìWit,î probably made $250 a week. There’s
some adjustments that are required from our point of view. Thank
you.
Janeway: Anybody want to send love back to Alan?
Bernstein: It’s one of my special privileges that Alan and
I exchange love on a regular basis, so I see no need to do it in
public. It’s our special relationship.
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