The Economics of Broadway Shows

Post by rwmj » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 2:12 PM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #18

PaulRobinson wrote: post #2

Not knowing what makes a hit vs a flop seems... strange. Familiar actors and stories might help, but also things that are clever and artistically memorable (e.g. Hamilton) have got to help. I'd also be interested to know how many shows start off-Broadway or off-off-Broadway (100-500 seats and below 100 seats as per this article), and move up to the bigger theatres: test a show in a smaller venue, see if people/critic…

> Not knowing what makes a hit vs a flop seems... strange. Wouldn't any formula for a hit get repeated until audiences are bored and it stops working?

Post by kwertyoowiyop » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 3:50 PM UTC

Grakel wrote: post #3

PaulRobinson wrote: post #2

Not knowing what makes a hit vs a flop seems... strange. Familiar actors and stories might help, but also things that are clever and artistically memorable (e.g. Hamilton) have got to help. I'd also be interested to know how many shows start off-Broadway or off-off-Broadway (100-500 seats and below 100 seats as per this article), and move up to the bigger theatres: test a show in a smaller venue, see if people/critic…

Hamilton was workshopped for a very long time and then had a long Off Broadway run at The Public Theatre where additional changes were made. A huge amount of money went into it because of the trust that Lin Manuel had generated with previous work. Spiderman was in tech for over a year (beta testing) because the damned flying didn't work. Then they radically changed the script because it hadn't been workshopped, and i…

Post by dehrmann » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 5:08 PM UTC

TomAbel wrote: post #6

Here is two interesting articles from The Economist where they analyse the success of Hamilton[1] and where they see if you could have predicted the success of Hamilton[2] and here is a in depth post on the data and methodology of the model they created and used[3] [1] https://www.economist.com/business/2016/06/16/no-business-li... Archive of the first Article https://archive.md/L3xzV [2] https://www.economist.com/th…

Post by lotsofpulp » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 5:16 PM UTC

tobtoh wrote: post #9

chii wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if there's a number of ultra-high net worth people there, it would push the average up, by a lot probably. Median income is a more representative number than average, when there would be outliers like that.

Oh of course. I forgot about the difference between median and average! For the purpose of the point the article was making in that section (about how the efforts to 'make Broadway more affordable and more democratic come up short.', the 'average' income seems particularly useless as a metric to gauge success. As you point out, the median is a much better metric.

Post by anm89 » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 5:29 PM UTC

dehrmann wrote: post #25

TomAbel wrote: post #6

Here is two interesting articles from The Economist where they analyse the success of Hamilton[1] and where they see if you could have predicted the success of Hamilton[2] and here is a in depth post on the data and methodology of the model they created and used[3] [1] https://www.economist.com/business/2016/06/16/no-business-li... Archive of the first Article https://archive.md/L3xzV [2] https://www.economist.com/th…

The main sign it was going to be a success was a performance Lin-Manuel Miranda did at the White House. Listen for where the laughs are; they're not there when you see it on Broadway (and I assume The Public Theater). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNFf7nMIGnE That's important because the premise is high school cringy. Let's take a historical story and set it to rap! If it wasn't so well-executed, it would have come…