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| re: Agreed. | |
| Posted by: Phaedrusnyc 04:08 pm EDT 03/17/22 | |
| In reply to: Agreed. - ShowGoer 03:38 pm EDT 03/17/22 | |
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| It's funny, because it puts me in mind of a similar difficulty the world of comic books and "genre" movie franchises faces on these issues. (And I acknowledge the overlap in the Venn diagram between comics geeks and theater geeks is probably rather small so feel free to ignore my bloviating here.) But in both cases you're talking about a medium facing the reality of an audience that is increasingly niche, increasingly aging, and like it or not, in a historically narrow demographic. And, in both cases, they are attempting to broaden the audience by appealing to diverse people and experiences (which is worthy) and playing with the format of the medium (which is also worthy), but in both cases they are also dealing with a core audience that often rejects even the most minor changes being made in service of that goal. In comic books, the constant catch-22 is that it is believed that no one will buy a comic with a "new" character in the title, so they use the old titles and swap in new, more representative characters in the lead role. And then the core audience (specifically the core audience that is highly resistant to change) freaks out, very few new customers are captured, and they end up replacing the replacement characters with the original characters--the same characters that were narrowly representative of the country to begin with. The cycle always goes, "Why are you making this character who was always a white guy something other than a white guy; just create a new character!" then "nobody wants to buy that book because it's a new character," and on and on. And the prices keep going up because the consumer base is shrinking. Musical theater, in its lesser reliance on established intellectual property, has navigated this better on the main stage--regardless of how you feel about them, shows like "Hamilton," "Evan Hansen," "Six," etc., are bringing in younger people (though not necessarily super-diverse younger people, given the cost of a ticket). But it's still a reality that revivals and shows based on known IP are a good bet. No one wants to give up revivals as a source of revenue, but they also want to broaden the audience at the same time they are actively alienating part of the core audience. Encores is nothing BUT revivals, and specifically, very short-term and (until recently) obscure revivals. My usual argument is "We don't need to do another 'Carousel' if 'Carousel' is going to upset so many people." Or ANYTHING we consider, at best, old-fashioned and, at worst, actively offensive. But producers can't seem to navigate a world where shows are ever retired, and certainly the estates who are still trying to make money decades after the actual creators died (thanks, Sonny Bono) aren't going to hear of that, either. I wish I were smart enough to solve the issue for either of these media but I'm just stuck on message boards commenting on how difficult it seems to be to expand audiences while A. not losing an equal number of audiences and B. not making a total artistic mess of things. |
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| re: Agreed. | |
| Last Edit: Chazwaza 03:01 am EDT 03/18/22 | |
| Posted by: Chazwaza 02:59 am EDT 03/18/22 | |
| In reply to: re: Agreed. - Phaedrusnyc 04:08 pm EDT 03/17/22 | |
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| But consider, about revivals, that there is a LOUD minority who don't want anything old fashioned or that they see as offensive, or even more strictly, written or for a time before wokeness... they are not the majority of ticket buyers. Lots of ticket buyers still want to see those shows, lots of ticket buyers love beautifully restored and staged classic gems, and reinvented new visions (that don't massively rewrite and overhaul the text/score). Also, Encores hasn't only been obscure shows for awhile. I mean even when they did Chicago... Encores began in 1994, and Chicago was done in 1996. The musical itself had only closed on Broadway 19 years prior, after a run of over 2 years. So it's not as if it were some obscure show no one had ever heard of. It definitely fit the bill of an under-appreciated gem that many audiences of the day would never have had a chance to see, with a score very worthy of an "Encores treatment". I mean, their first production was Fiorello... which VERY much fit the bill of being tragically unknown to most modern audiences, rarely performed etc... and at least it was from the 50s (36 years old in 1994)... but it also had won the Pulitzer and Tony for Best Musical. So even then some might have said they were pushing the concept of under-appreciated by picking a show which at the time was 1 of 6 musicals to ever win a Pulitzer. There's next production, Allegro, was even more THE perfect choice for Encores. And that "perfect for Encores" streak continued until their 9th production with Chicago. But they did Wonderful Town in 2000, Hair in 2001, The Pajama Game in 2002, Bye Bye Birdie in 2004, Follies in 2007, the revised Merrily in 2012 (the fact that they didn't do the original, to me, flies completely in the face of the reason to do it at Encores, but hey)... So that aspect of their mission, or how it's interpreted, has been malleable since the beginning. And let's not forget, they have to make money too. But what has always been true is that they do not reinvent and rewrite the shows -- they do basically the original score, with original orchestrations if possible, and a paired down version of the book. Only in rare cases like Merrily where the show has been rewritten by the living author prior to Encores selection did they do actual rewrites. |
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