Corporate Theater: the Revolution of the Species Susan Russell
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Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2003 Corporate Theater: The Revolution of the Species Susan Russell Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF THEATRE CORPORATE THEATER: THE REVOLUTION OF THE SPECIES By SUSAN RUSSELL A Thesis submitted to the School of Theatre In partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2003 The members of the committee approve the thesis of Susan Russell defended on October 30, 2003. Mary Karen Dahl Professor Directing Thesis Carrie Sandahl Committee Member Laura Edmondson Committee Member The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members ii My Thesis is dedicated to all my artist friends who dreamed of Broadway. I carried you in my heart every night. My thesis is also dedicated to all my artist friends in Phantom of the Opera. You were never invisible to me. Most of all, my Thesis is dedicated to my Wife, Elizabeth Nackley, whose love awakened me to the miracles, and whose artistry shows me the possibilities. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ……………………………………………………………………………............ v INTRODUCTION ..…………………………………………………………………………….. 1 1. CHAPTER ONE: ARTISTIC CAPITAL …………………………………………………… 22 2. CHAPTER TWO: THE ECONOMY OF REPITITION ……………………………………. 43 3. CHAPTER THREE: PROFITS FROM PAIN …………………….………………………… 62 CONCLUSION ….………………..……………………………………………………………. 83 AFTER THOUGHT ……………………………………………………………………………. 89 BIBLIOGRAPHY ……………………………...…………………………………………….… 95 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ………………………...………………………………………...100 iv ABSTRACT My thesis explores the artistic effects of two different kinds of financial investment on Broadway. I define and then trace the rise of what I term the “corporate producer” over the past twenty years, then document the fall of the independent creative producer, which had been the traditional means of producing shows on Broadway prior to the 1980s. This rise and fall is documented through personal interviews with Broadway professionals, and through newspaper, magazine, and literature on current and past practices in theatre production both on Broadway and on tours. The rise of the corporate producer has resulted in an increasing pattern of revivals; musicals based on movies from the past, and expanded musical revues. Broadway has begun to resemble the mass produced product seen in any department store across the country, and Broadway’s actors are turning into assembly-line workers exercising in front of a constant stream of mediatized and mass marketed consumers. The demands of such a life are changing the concept of theatre, performance, and acting. In addition to life on Broadway, the touring business of Broadway has been taken over by corporate producers as well, and tours have begun to take on characteristics of other industries based on the principles of Henry Ford, suffering from downsizing of labor and materials, division of labor to its smallest units, and de-unionization and control by an ever expanding middle management with an eye on the bottom line. The Broadway actor is becoming standardized, like a piece of machinery on an assembly-line. Liveness is being traded for frozen or “cinematized” events, and Broadway is becoming a movie. These theatrical movies are being taken across the country, changing what the United States views as theatre, and preparing the next viewing generation for accepting these movies as Broadway. v INTRODUCTION CORPORATE THEATER: THE REVOLUTION OF THE SPECIES Introductory Narrative All art began to disappear that year, all the beautiful art that we treasured, all the art that we believed was a form of maximal experience. All that art making its privileged audience believe that the sight of the face of God is imminent… Julian Beck _Philip Auslander, Presence and Resistance After twenty-five years as a professional actor on Broadway and in regional theatre I returned to graduate school. I immersed myself in a Master of Arts degree in theatre studies and began exploring the scholarly theories behind what I had experienced throughout all my years onstage. My research did not encounter any writings concerning the material conditions of the actor, any writings supporting the living embodiments of the art form that theatre scholarship calls its home. In my thesis, I will attempt to bring this discussion to the forefront. I will reveal the decline of the material condition of the actor on Broadway due to the rise of the purely financially motivated corporate producer. I will focus on the Broadway actor, posing that whatever occurs on Broadway will eventually radiate throughout the country. In my thesis, I call to the scholarly community to come to the aid of theatre artists everywhere by adding concerns or the craft of the actor to the discourse of theatre studies. For most young actors, Broadway is the dream. It is a symbol of theatrical excellence and success, and as commercial as it is, not many actors would turn down the experience of performing on a Broadway stage. The symbolism of Broadway lives in our culture at large in films such as Singin’ in the Rain, Stage Door, Bullets over Broadway, and The Goodbye Girl. Broadway’s symbolism is alive in plays such as The Royal Family, All About Eve, and A Chorus Line. George Benson evokes the magic in his familiar pop song “On Broadway,” and legions of young tappers learn their craft to the tunes from 42nd Street. Journals and magazines such as American Theatre, Modern Drama, TCG (Theatre Communications Group) and newspapers 1 such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal make it their responsibility to inform the world about Broadway and its current achievements. Universities like Florida State bring in Broadway professionals in performance, set design, lighting design, costume design, and playwriting to teach their students and offer advice on successful careers in theatre. FSU brings in School of Theatre alumni like Davis Gaines and Michael Piontek, both veterans of Broadway, to perform in the “Seven Days” series, showing the subscribers and the press FSU’s qualifications to train young talent. FSU takes its senior BFA acting and musical theatre classes to New York each spring and gives them an opportunity to perform for invited New York agents and Broadway casting directors hoping that one of them will be “discovered” and ushered onto the “Great White Way.” FSU has an outreach organization in New York that offers help for new arrivals, showing how to market their talents, how to audition for New York agents and casting directors, and how to break into the inner Broadway circle through networking. Broadway is the center of this country’s theatrical world, and just as Florida State University supports this in its teaching, so do the Tony Awards each year in an internationally televised award show. Broadway’s cultural symbolism in the theatrical world is unchallenged; however, symbolism is not a guarantee of economic stability. Like businesses across the United States, the business of theatre follows the ebb and flow of capital. Over the past fifteen years, the economic demands facing Broadway have taken a toll on the traditional means of producing theatre, and given rise to a new trend: the corporate producer. In the past, Broadway had been fueled by another kind of financial mechanism - a more personal, collaborative, and artistically based one: the independent producer. Production costs have risen by millions of dollars over the past fifteen years, and many independent producers who had been financing productions on their own or with a small group of investors have no longer been able to take the financial leap. Corporate interests stepped in, and within the last five years corporate producers have begun to dominate Broadway.i As I demonstrate in Chapter One, corporate producers differ from independent producers because they are large multi-interest theatrical producing corporations that invest in theatre solely in order to generate profit. By independent producers, I refer to those producers who have been personally, or with a small group that incorporates for the show, financing theatre projects without a major corporate structure, or a publicly traded or privately owned diversified corporate entity, or a media conglomerate attached. Instead, their primary goal is an artistic 2 mission. It is sometimes difficult to make a clear separation between the two concepts, as in the case of Hal Prince, who has many investors in his productions; however, for the purposes of this thesis the most important aspect of the independent producer of the past is to note that, as Hal Prince is quoted as saying in an interview by Bernard Rosenberg for The Broadway Musical, “Creative producing did, in the old days, involve people who for one reason or another - generally lack of writing talent, but with great taste-wanted to be in the musical business” (33). It would seem logical to support the infusion of corporate money into Broadway since the costs of productions have risen to at least $8 million a musical (18). If this trend were based in benevolence, it could be the answer to the constant challenge of finding funding for all of the arts. However, corporate America’s track record of benevolence is not what it could be. My thesis is not about the ethics of Sam Waksal, Ken Lay, or Bernis Ebbers, however, Imclone, Enron, and WorldCom serve as cautionary tales for anyone wondering about the future of corporate investing on Broadway. As columnist Ariana Huffington says in her book Pigs at the Trough, corporate America is “not content to conduct themselves according to a code of fair play [. .] they’ve created their own set of rules that defy logic, violate basic decency, corrupt commerce, and laugh in the face of laws and regulations established to protect the rest of us” (6).