Here are the ten biggest stories about New York theater in 2023, some of them major recurring issues, some of them events, most of them serious, one of them silly, some glimpsing the sublime.
1. Theater in Crisis, except…
Over and over throughout the year, we were told there is a crisis in the theater, which was not as evident on Broadway as everywhere else – empty seats, closed theaters, laid off staff, curtailed seasons. The pandemic and the squeeze of inflation were seen as accelerating problems that were already underway, such as the rise of streaming, the fall of theater subscriptions, the aging of theater audiences.
At the same time, even the doom-sayers insisted (as American Theatre Magazine put it) “live theatre as an art form is not in danger of disappearing.” Indeed, (as the Wall Street Journal put it), many theaters “are finding ways to thrive. The leaders of these theaters define success differently than they did before the pandemic, but they are optimistic about the future and intent on connecting with new and younger audiences.”
Many of the theater stories of 2023 seemed to fit into one of two categories — a sign that theater is doomed, or that it is thriving in the face of adversity….or both. Examples:
Signs of doom: The shutting down of New York theaters and long-running shows (see number 6.)
Signs of thriving: The opening of new theaters and repurposing of old ones (See number 7)
Sign of both: The Public Theater announced the end of its Under the Radar theater festival, which it had sponsored for 18 years, the latest of a slew of January theater festivals that have shut down over the last few years. But the festival was then taken over by a consortium of other Off-Broadway theaters, and will again be presented, without interruption, in January.
2. Sondheim As Savior
Everybody agreed on Stephen Sondheim as the brightest spot in a challenging year, with an avalanche of books about Sondheim, too many of them self-serving, and three Sondheim musicals taking center stage in New York — a revival of “Sweeney Todd” opening on Broadway in March, “Merrily We Roll Along” to much acclaim on Broadway and the world premiere of “Here We Are” in October. But the surge of Sondheim was not just in New York: “The genius of Stephen Sondheim practically served as a rescue squad,” writes Charles McNulty of the L.A. Times
3. Responding to Antisemitism
The increase in antisemitism and theater’s response to it were evident even before October 7, when Hamas killed some 1,400 Israelis, mostly civilians, and took more than 200 people hostage. Back in March, the Broadway revival of “Parade,” a musical based on the true story of the lynching a century ago of the Jew Leo Frank in Georgia, was picketed at its first performance by self-declared neo-Nazis. In “Just for Us,” stand-up Alex Edelman offered an account of his confronting neo-Nazis in Queens. There have been a number of shows set during the Holocaust, Including “Harmony,” “King of the Jews” and “Amid Falling Walls.” (There were just as many last year.) “Prayer for the French Republic,” a play that opened last year Off-Broadway about antisemitism both during the Holocaust and in the present, has begun previews on Broadway, with a scheduled opening next month.
As antisemitism has spiked dramatically recently, the reactions have become more personal, including dozens of Broadway performers putting together a video entitled “Bring Them Home: A Broadway Prayer,” singing a song from Les Miserables in support of the hostages; a “Christmas message” video from the British actor and writer Stephen Fry declaring himself a proud Jew and decrying antisemitism; and a long magazine piece by chief New York Times theater critic Jesse Green which on the surface was simply about the history of Jews in New York theater (“Let Us Tell You A Story: How Jewish people built the American theater as we know it.”) but was clearly a response to the surge in antisemitism. In the essay, Green talks about the downside of assimilation, and implies a lack of reciprocal allyship among non-Jews. He also touches on the relative lack of Jewish-related content created by Jewish artists, on the elevation of Jewish trauma on stage to the exclusion of any other aspects of Jewish life (“Jews are unlikely to be Jewish onstage unless they are endangered”), and on the frequent practice of casting non-Jews in Jewish roles.
4. Be Kind To Your Usher, or Else
There was a palpable rise in rude and rowdy behavior among theater audiences on Broadway and elsewhere. In response, Playbill added a full page in all their programs listing rules of theater etiquette including
“Treat all theatre staff you see with respect and kindness…”
“Do not sing along with the actors…”
“Stop drinking alcohol immediately if you’re feeling tipsy. Drink some water.”
5. The Morphing of Digital Theater
The Broadway plays “Between Riverside and Crazy” and “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” and “Scene Partners” Off-Broadway, were all “simulcast” – presented both on stage and simultaneously livestreamed — during their last week by an organization called the League of Live Stream Theater, one of the signs that digital theater, in the words of one of its pioneer Jared Mezzocchi is “no longer a response to COVID, but a whole new way of thinking about audiences and the economics of theater.”
Mezzocchi wrote this on what used to be called Twitter, the degradation of which by its new owner is itself a theater story because of the destruction of the robust conversation between theater lovers and practitioners that took place for years on the social media platform.
Doug Reside, the curator of the Billy Rose Theater Collection at the Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, put digital theater in the larger context of the history of this interplay between theater and technology, in his new book “Fixing the Musical.” The book is a clear-eyed if implicit dismantling of the myopic view of theater as an unchanging ancient art form that has defiantly survived despite competition from new-fangled lesser forms of entertainment. The book demonstrates instead how much theater has thrived (rather than just survived) because of (not despite) the way it has collaborated (not competed) with the evolving arts and tools of modern life.”
6. Pharewells
“The Phantom of the Opera,” the longest show in Broadway history, closed after 35 years on Sunday April 16, 2023, its 13,981st performance.
Off-Broadway, “Stomp” ended its run after 29 years, and “Sleep No More” announced it would end its run after 13. Off-Off Broadway, the New Ohio Theater shut down after 30 years.
7. PACNYC and Other Happy Hellos
The Perelman Performing Arts Center, or PAC NYC, officially opened at the World Trade Center site with a “ribbon connection” (rather than ribbon cutting) ceremony and five concerts collectively entitled “Refuge: A Concert Series to Welcome The World,” with hopes of reframing 9/11 – hoping to replace the images we now associate with the site (the smoldering ruins and the two beams of light meant as an annual memorial on September 11th) with vibrant new art.
Also, this year, A24, the film company that more or less swept the Oscars, bought the Cherry Lane, the venerable Off Broadway theater about to celebrate its centennial. The Off-Off Broadway fixture La MaMa ETC reopened what had been its original permanent home after a renovation that took five years and cost $24 million.
8. The Changing of the Guard
The announced departure of André Bishop from Lincoln Center Theater, who has led it since 1992 and Carole Rothman, from Second Stage Theater, who co-founded it in 1979, followed the deaths within the past year of Todd Haimes, who ran the Roundabout Theatre Company for 40 years; Robert LuPone, the co-founder of MCC Theater who served as its co-artistic director for 36 years, and Andrew Leynse who lead Primary Stages for 21 years.
There are also the departures of James Nicola from New York Theatre Workshop after heading it for 34 years; Sarah Benson who lead Soho Repertory Theatre for 16 years and John Doyle, who served a comparatively short six-year term as the head of Classic Stage Company,
“The people who take on those jobs are going to have to navigate a rockier theatrical landscape than we’ve seen in a long time,” critic Jan Simpson pointed out on her blog, including still-skittish theatergoers, and increasing demands for inclusion and for better working conditions. Yet she’s not discouraged. A similarly rock landscape face the “now old-timers” and they made the most of it.
9. The Hollywood Strikes
The Writers Guild of America went on strike against the Hollywood studios for 148 days, the second longest in the union’s history, while the union of screen actors, SAG/AFTRA, went on strike for 118 days. The Hollywood strikes did not directly involving theater unions, but did have an effect in several ways: The Tony Awards broadcast was in danger of being canceled, and was ultimately performed without a script, in accordance with the wishes of the striking union. The strikes were also evidence of a general increase in union activism in the arts and entertainment industry. Theater unions recently expanded their membership to include touring physical therapists and production assistants, and Actors Equity made permanent its so-called Open Access membership policy, allowing any non-union theater worker to join the 51,000-member union who can demonstrate that they have worked professionally as an actor or stage manager within Equity’s geographical jurisdiction.
10. The Year of George Santos
George Santos was sworn in as a Republican Congressman from New York at the start of 2023 after being revealed as a fabulist, which is a theatrical way of saying liar, and lasted nearly the whole of the year, until he became only the sixth member of Congress in history to be expelled.
How is this a theater story?
New York Times fashion critic Vanessa Friedman devoted an entire essay at the start of his tenuous tenure to Santos’s costumes, comparing him to characters in several shows, arguing it makes sense that he would be accused of stealing clothing, and concluding “Mr. Santos clearly understood that no matter the character you are playing, what you wear tells the story.”
Among the many many lies that George Santos reportedly told was that he was a producer of “Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark”
The saga of Santos is one of several (sur)real life stories in 2023 that threatened to eclipse the fantasies on stage that we pay money to see.
These stories are culled largely from my #Stageworthy posts, a weekly summary of theater news.
