The average Broadway theatergoer is a 42-year-old white woman from out of town whose family income exceeds $275,000. That’s one way to summarize The Demographics of the Broadway Audience 2023-2024, the latest annual report available for purchase from the Broadway League, which found that 65 percent of Broadway theatergoers were female and a greater percentage were white. But there are more encouraging ways to read the data.
“The attendance and box office levels are coming back, not as much as before the pandemic” (NPR)
“[T]he headline is: TOURISM is driving Broadway’s rebound.” (Ken Davenport blog)
“With concerns about Covid on the wane, aging theatergoers returned to Broadway last season… As the audience shrank modestly in 2023-24 for every age group under 50 years old, ticket buyers who are 50 ad up increased.” (Broadway Journal)
Forty-five percent of Broadway theatergoers were American tourists. Twenty-one percent were international tourists; the number of tickets these international tourists purchased was the second highest in three decades. (Playbill)
At the same time, under 13 percent of tickets were sold to theatergoers who live in the New York suburbs, (visitors from Long Island, Westchester/Rockland counties and northern New Jersey) — the lowest percentage in thirty years. “And we’ll feel this during the times when the tourists are gone (September, February, etc.),” Davenport wrote.
The Broadway League’s survey didn’t ask questions about political views, of course. But one might surmise what it might be from social media posts like this one:
The Week in New York Theater Reviews
In “The Antiquities,” playwright Jordan Harrison offers a dozen stories about the downside of technology through the ages, each from a distinctive year, from 1816 to 2240. If the play can feel like a dramatized essay at times, Harrison has something intelligent to say about technology in general and Artificial Intelligence in particular….And many of the individual stories in “The Antiquities” work well on their own – funny, pointed, haunting…up to a point.
In “Mrs. Loman,” a misfire of a play that attempts a sequel to Arthur Miller’s “Death of A Salesman,” Willy Loman’s widow Linda experiences a somewhat anachronistic awakening, while playwright Barbara Cassidy weaves in a critique of Miller that focuses on his treatment of race and gender. Neither the awakening nor the critique are especially novel, and there is nothing inherently wrong with reimagining Arthur Miller’s plays from a 21st century perspective…It’s just that Cassidy’s script does such an inept job of it.
They meet for drinks after an absence of thirty years, still loving one another, and still sharing a secret. “Still,” starring Melissa Gilbert (from Little House on the Prairie) and Mark Moses (from Mad Men), is opening Off-Broadway tonight just four days after the closing night on Broadway of “Left on Tenth,” another play starring two familiar faces from television portraying older characters drawn to one another. But they’re very different .. Lia Romeo’s play is more sophisticated than one would expect from a show that might initially feel best-suited for dinner theater in Florida….“Still” pivots into politics…
The Week in New York Theater News
Trump says he will fire Kennedy Center board members, appoint himself chairman. “
The National Endowment for the Arts, meanwhile, said Thursday it will alter its 2026 grant guidelines by eliminating the Challenge America grant, which was reserved for projects that “extend the reach of the arts to underserved groups/communities.” (Washington Post)
The cast of Good Night and Good Luck, opening on Broadway April 3: George Clooney as Edward R. Murrow, plus
Mac Brandt as Colonel Anderson, Will Dagger as Don Hewitt,
Christopher Denham as John Aaron, Glenn Fleshler as Fred Friendly,
Ilana Glazer as Shirley Wershba, Clark Gregg as Don Hollenbeck,
Paul Gross as William F. Paley, Georgia Heers as Ella,
Carter Hudson as Joe Wershba, Fran Kranz as Palmer Williams,
Jennifer Morris as Millie Green, Michael Nathanson as Eddie Scott,
Andrew Polk as Charlie Mack, Aaron Roman Weiner as Don Surine
R. Ward Duffy, Joe Forbrich, Imani Rousselle, Greg Stuhr, JD Taylor, and Sophia Tzougros rounding out the ensemble.
Operation Mincemeat announces Lottery: $39 Rush: $49 There is also “The Golden Preview Draw” on Feb 12th only for all preview performances at $39 (until the show opens on March 20) Click here for details, links + lottery and general rush policies for all Broadway shows
Tituss Burgess will take over the role of Mary Todd Lincoln in “Oh, Mary!” from March 18, 2025- April 6, 2025 ,the third to take on the role after the originator Cole Escola and Betty Gilpin. This will be Burgess’s sixth role on Broadway.
Alex Joseph Grayson , four-time Broadway veteran most recently in Parade, will join the cast of the Tony-winning musical The Outsiders on February 28 in the role of Greaser Dallas “Dally” Winston, originated by Tony nominee Joshua Boone
Tickets are on sale for Off-Broadway Week, where you can buy two tickets for the price of one for 29 Off-Broadway productions (18 of them newly offered), for performances from February 17 through March 9.
Deirdre O’Connell is one of the 12 cast members who will be in Caryl Churchill’s quartet of short plays “Glass. Kill. What If If Only. Imp” opening at the Public Theater April 16, which is one of the 10 works of theater I’m most looking forward to this Spring.
Denzel Washington and Ira Aldridge, performing Othello two centuries apart
Two Centuries of Black Actors on the New York Stage
In honor of Black History Month (which several federal agencies now have banned employees from celebrating), at the link above is a gallery that chronicles the history of New York theater actors of African descent,
The Interview: Denzel Washington has finally found his purpose; it’s not acting (NY Times)
This is a shot in the dark: There’s a book by James Baldwin called “The Devil Finds Work,” and in it he makes connections between the church and the theater. Does that comparison ring true for you? The universal stems from the specific, so you’ve got to be more specific.
He says both are about people experiencing an event together and communally creating the event as it happens. There is a spirit that, for him, was similar between the church and the theater. I agree with that.
The reason I ask about theater is because you’re going back to the theater to do “Othello.” Can you tell me about the rewards for you of doing Shakespeare? I think that still gives me the greatest joy: acting onstage as opposed to acting in movies.
I watched the commencement speech you gave at the University of Pennsylvania years ago, and you talked to the students about how you have to be willing to take risks. Are there ways in which doing “Othello” feels like a risk? In light of all that’s going on in our world, all that’s going on in our state, California, and our city specifically — it’s just a play. I’m grateful for the opportunity, but when put in perspective, it’s just a play.
In Memoriam
Tony Roberts, 85, best-known as the affable pal in Woody Allen movies, he was also a fixture on stage, performing in twenty-four Broadway productions, as well as many in London and in regional theaters. He seemed destined to be an actor from the age of four, when his father, a radio announcer, “noticed him listening raptly to Laurence Olivier as Shakespeare’s Henry V on the radio.”
David Edward Byrd, 83, responsible for such memorable theater posters as Follies, Godspell, and Little Shop of Horrors His recent book: Poster Child: The Psychedelic Art & Technicolor Life of David Edward Byrd
The Week’s Theater Video
BroadwayCon 2025: First Look and Showcase
