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International Theater Productions - Country Portfolios II: Spain M.A. Theater and Orchestra Management at HfMDK Frankfurt The challenge of this semester in the course International Production Systems is the analysis of 12 international theater systems. In the past few weeks, we have looked at the French and Spanish theater systems, which seem to be similar to the German system but differ in some key aspects. Like the German system, the Spanish theater landscape consists of a public, a private and an alternative (independent) theater system. The main difference is that theaters in Spain generally have no ensembles and therefore cannot offer a varied repertoire. New casts are made for each production. The only variety in the program consists in guest performances. In the graphic you can see the arrow of time, which traces a development in the development of theatres that is typical for the Iberian peninsula. We will compare this with Portugal tomorrow (thanks to our formidable master student Henrik Greiner, who presented a rich impulse for this hour). Why are we dealing with this in our course? The general neoliberalism of international festivals and guest performances in the field of performing arts, which has long since taken hold of the so-called independent theater scene, can only be countered by alternative forms. This can be achieved if one places value on the reception and appreciation of the respective cultural peculiarities and framing conditions. One can only limit neoliberalism by placing value on the reception and appreciation of the respective cultural peculiarities and conditions. This counters the approach that every guest performance could be shown in every country in the same way, completely out of context, without taking cultural conditions into account. This is a complete anachronism. I believe that we first need to develop in-depth knowledge of the country and a great deal of caution in order to break through the neoliberal approach of internationally touring productions and return to more humility and caution towards the countries in which we perform.

Next week, for my Artist Representation course, I have the incredible opportunity to visit UTA's New York office. As part of this experience, my peers and I were each tasked with choosing a celebrity talent to practice "representing." For my project, I selected Tony Award-winning artist Lin-Manuel Miranda. In preparation, I’ve been diving deeper into the theater sector of UTA, and I recently read about Patrick Herold and Rachel Viola, the co-heads of UTA’s theater department. According to the article, Herold and Viola will oversee UTA’s theater division and report to Jay Gassner, the co-head of talent, and Allan Halderman, the co-head of TV lit. The article highlights the wide range of talent UTA’s theater department represents, including playwrights, composers, directors, choreographers, music directors, and designers—not just actors. This broad representation struck me as an important element of UTA’s strategy, as it emphasizes their commitment to the full spectrum of creative talent that drives the theater world. The article also noted that UTA’s theater department has seen recent successes, including The Outsiders winning Best Musical at the Tony Awards, and 28 other Tony nominations across their broad roster of talent. This underscores the department’s strong influence in the theater industry. Something I found particularly interesting was the close relationship between the theater and TV sectors. As Herold and Viola report to Halderman, the co-head of TV lit, I wondered if this proximity might lead to more opportunities for theater talent to transition into television and vice versa. With these sectors working closely together, there’s potential for talent to become more multifaceted, and new, unique opportunities could arise as a result of this collaboration. This overlap between theater and television could also suggest a future where theater talent increasingly moves between both mediums, further blurring the lines between traditional stage performance and the evolving landscape of TV and film. It's something I'm eager to explore as I prepare for my visit to UTA. Esquire Group Inc. James (J.T.) Hutchinson Read more! - https://lnkd.in/euf-z9fW

We’ve Hit Peak Theater Nobody knows how to succeed on Broadway anymore. The resulting drop in demand has already lasted longer than the dips Broadway saw after 9/11 and the Great Recession. Audiences are down 17 percent since the boom season of 2018–19 with older suburbanites accounting for most of the falloff. “The drop was at 50-plus,” Producing on Broadway, where roughly 80 percent of shows fail to recoup, has always been a leap of faith. Yet Tonys no longer guarantee solvency. It used to be that if a show won Best Musical, it would earn its money back. Moulin Rouge! The Musical, the last winner to open before the pandemic, ultimately reopened and recouped. The next two winners, A Strange Loop and Kimberly Akimbo, failed to break even before closing. That hadn’t happened since 2002. The capitalization of Broadway shows this season adds up to $410 million, compared with $290 million last year, according to Broadway Journal columnist Philip Boroff. Before 2023, only a handful of shows were ever made for more than $20 million. This season, there are at least five, topped by Cabaret, which at $26 million is the most expensive Broadway revival in history. This can’t be pegged purely to inflation. Titanic would have cost $19 million in today’s money In November, Boroff reported that Water for Elephants has weekly operating costs of $960,000; Back to the Future costs $980,000 to run, and Cabaret needs $1.16 million to break even. Before the pandemic, $700,000 was considered to be very high. According to a 2023 Broadway League report, the average age of a theatergoer is now 40.4, the youngest in at least 20 years. https://lnkd.in/ds6a-aeF

Theater Management II - Cooperation and Collaboration The German theater system is characterized by a strong autonomy of the individual theaters and their artistic directors, who are granted complete artistic freedom. Only very few theaters use cooperations with other theaters to strengthen their artistic excellence and save resources. This makes sense given the trend towards declining visitor numbers and the only stagnating compensation for inflation by public sponsors, especially in the poorer federal states in the east and north of Germany. Our student @Sophie Gebauer has examined the previous forms of cooperation and, in my view, developed a perfect classification of the increasing qualitative degrees of cooperation (graphic). She referred to relevant basic literature by @Patrick S. Föhl et al. As you can see, cooperations start with strategic and conceptual alliances, which are often mirrored or initiated in the German Theater Association. Or, they are commissioned at the state level by the Ministry of Culture or the theaters themselves. This is followed by mutual guest performances, joint projects and artistic productions, the joint operation of genres/ artistic sections (Wiesbaden State Ballet), and finally - temporary or long-term - joint ventures. Foundations and holding structures are further developed forms of collaboration (the Opera Foundation in Berlin). This also means that cooperation is becoming more institutionalized step by step. In Thuringia, for example, a state theater holding company was planned in 2007/08, a year in which the ministry of culture opened up a process of discussing a new theater and orchestra structure in the Feder state. This administrative and financial holding would have included all of the state's theaters and orchestras - an interesting model, as I can see in retrospect. However, this met with considerable resistance from the directors, who wanted to retain their autonomy and were afraid of too much control by the ministry of culture. I simply used the "vacuum" that opened up to suggest to the ministry that the National Theater should at least be converted into a state theater, what happened in 2008. My goal at the time was to secure the theater for the long term and to stop making it a plaything of artistically and organizationally nonsensical rumors of a merger with the neighboring Theater Erfurt. An important topic for the future because we need to work together more closely in theater, classical music, arts, and all other cultural fields to achieve excellence and to secure the German cultural landscape in the long term. That is goal number one. Goal number two is its ethical development and transformation.

Continually facinated by this ongoing story. The Milwaukee Repertory Theater's successful $78 million fundraising effort for its expansion and renovation project contrasts sharply with the broader challenges faced by many non-profit arts institutions in the post-pandemic economy. While the Rep showcases a best-case scenario of robust community and donor support enabling ambitious growth, other organizations struggle with financial strain, reduced revenues, and a focus on survival rather than expansion. This disparity highlights the diverse impacts of the pandemic on the non-profit arts sector, with the Milwaukee Rep's success story being more the exception than the rule, as many institutions continue to navigate economic recovery and the quest for stability. How is the support of the arts in your community?

The 2023-2024 Broadway season has officially come to an end and the Broadway League has released the stats. The season grossed $1.54 billion, slightly down 2.4% from the previous season, with 12.29 million admissions, almost unchanged from last year. Despite these positive figures, they have not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels from the 2018-2019 season, which saw $1.83 billion in gross and 14.77 million attendees. However, theater capacity was high at 89.63%, close to 2018-2019's 89.75% and higher than last season's 88.35%. There were 1,471 playing weeks, slightly fewer than the previous season, but attendance per playing week increased to 8,353 from 8,333. The season saw 39 new productions, including 21 musicals, 16 plays, and 2 specials. #theater #broadway #onstage #boxoffice #tickets https://lnkd.in/ed_i2PKY

It's really happening! The major German theater & stage Unions GDBA and BFFS decided to terminate the controversial collective agreement NV Bühne (= Normalvertrag Bühne). The NV Bühne was debated since 2016 within the several streams of the critical theater discourse and in different programmatic and scientific publications. The hotly debated NV Bühne not only puts stage artists at a significant disadvantage compared to colleagues in administration and technical departments in the theaters, it does not allow artists to develop significantly out of precarious living and working situations. It is one of the most insecure chain contract models, which gives artists and their families security at their place of work for one year only before the next prolongation happens - or not. Everything else is decided solely by the theater director = CEO, known as the INTENDANT, a position of supremacy that is clearly archaic for the 21st century and one that should be viewed critically due to its power. A GDBA message to members states: "We want to reform the NV Bühne, because it contains some regulations that have existed since 1924, i.e. are 100 years old - that's enough!". Nachtkritik.de writes: "The main board of the GDBA (stage union) and the board of the BFFS (Federal Association of Actors) have decided to terminate the collective agreement Normalvertrag NV Bühne on December 31. Both unions announced this. The aim is to achieve an improved collective agreement. The termination must be made to the German Stage Association by June 30. The artists' unions GDBA, BFFS and VdO already negotiated intensively with the Stage Association last year about the collective working time regulations. The failure was announced a year ago. The termination of the NV Bühne, which applies to artistic employees and also predominantly artistically active stage technicians, is only possible once a year until the end of June. However, the VdO (Association of German Opera and Dance Ensembles) is not participating in the termination. "This does not weaken our strategic partnership and opens up different options for further negotiations," the statement says. On July 3, a member meeting will be held to inform about the next steps. Until a new collective agreement is reached, the so-called "after-effect" will apply from the new year. This means that the regulations of the NV Bühne will continue to apply to members for the time being. For non-members and VdO union members, there are other options for action from the theater side. (source: Nachtkritik.de, GDBA.de) picture: Schauspielhaus Hamburg 2022, Richard the Kid & Richard the King.

Going back a little, to December 2023, an article was published which began, "If only you'd invested in Phantom... or Matilda... or Hamilton. Peek behind the curtain: the tricky art of investing in theatre productions." Things are already moving on since that was written, but it is still insightful. https://lnkd.in/gM3iZzQX #theatre #musicals #theatre #theatreinvestment

🚛 Go behind the scenes at our Gateshead depot! In the latest episode of our ‘On the Road’ series, I’m proud to share how our incredible team is maintaining Clear Channel UK's superior products, as they hit the road to: 💡 Upgrade courtesy lighting 🧽 Clean and maintain a bus shelter It’s great to see how this series showcases the hard work and expertise of our team, from installing screens and maintaining Living Roofs to ensuring the highest standards of infrastructure across the UK. Watch Episode 2 now: https://okt.to/ft2RkX #OnTheRoad #Operatives #Gateshead