“Outrageous Fortune” and Musicals: Victoria Bailey speaks to NAMT

On October 23, Victoria Bailey, TDF’s Executive Director, gave the keynote speech at the National Alliance for Musical Theatre’s (NAMT) fall conference. Under the title “Outrageous Fortune — the Musical!”, the conference investigated the state of new play and musical development in the United States. Below, we are please to present the full text of Bailey’s address.

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So why Outrageous Fortune? Why did Theatre Development Fund, an organization that if you know us at all, you for our TKTS booths,and maybe our
membership program, why did TDF commission Outrageous Fortune?

The idea came from a founder, our first Board President, John Booth. TDF was started in 1968 in response to a concern on the part of some folks at the Twentieth Century Fund that it
was getting more and more difficult for Broadway to sustain serious plays, plays that were meritorious. TDF was started to help stimulate the production of those plays. We did it with our ticketing programs, which have gone on to bring millions of people to theatre who wouldn’t otherwise have gone. We did it with our subsidy program, and we did it with the TKTS booths.

John Booth never stopped worrying about the production of the American play and the lives of American playwrights. As the century in which the not- for-profit regional
theatre movement was born came to a close, he urged us to do the study that became Outrageous Fortune. He pushed, he prodded, he badgered. He made sure it was a study about not only the producers and the theatres, but also about the playwrights. He pushed us to get it right and to think big. And William Baumol, also a TDF Trustee, and the coauthor of the ground breaking study about the not-for-profit theatre—The Performing Arts, the Economic Dilemma—insisted that the work be rooted in facts, in statistical research.

And I was all for it; I had spent the twenty years prior to coming to TDF at the Manhattan Theatre Club. I loved producing new plays and musicals. I was
deeply committed to their well being, and I had spent my career in the not-for-profit theatre. We engaged Todd London to do the study and Ben Pesner to work with him.
Todd, the Artistic Director at New Dramatists, was a passionate supporter of the playwright. Ben had been writing about both commercial and not for profit theatre for
years. We turned to someone with year’s of research expertise, Zannie Voss, currently Chair of the Arts Administration Program at SMU. 250 playwrights completed surveys,
playwrights who were culled from across all career phases, all of whom came from sources insuring that they were professional playwrights. We surveyed close to 100 not-for-profit theatres across the country, about three-fourths of whom were randomly selected from the TCG membership, with the balance being intentionally selected for their expertise in
producing new plays.

Once Zannie analyzed the survey results, we took the reports and went across the country talking to 84 writers and leaders of theatres, in separate
groups, in five cities. We interviewed 17 other players one on one. We asked them to respond to the work. We listened. And then Ben and Todd went away and wrote the
book about what the research – quantitative and qualitative – revealed. As you may have read or heard, it wasn’t pretty. As Todd wrote at the beginning, we found “a collaboration in crisis; our report locates that crisis not in individual writers, artistic director or producers, but in a system of theatrical production that has become
increasingly alienating to individual artists and inhospitable to the cultivation of new work for the stage, despite an apparent dedication to it.”

There is a divide between the playwrights and the theatres that have been founded to serve them. People see theatres very differently depending on where they sit.

That people see things differently is not in and of itself surprising. That they see it so differently is. That each side feels so ill served in many ways by the other is discouraging.
You are here today because you care about the strength and vitality of the American musical. While Outrageous Fortune was about the play and not the musical,
Kathy and her team thought it would be stimulating for you all to use it as a springboard for your conversations. There is much that is unique to the play but also much that is
applicable to both plays and musicals. Take from it what works for you, underscore it and go forward.

So what is the divide?

The playwrights look at theatres and they see institutions that they define as:

(1) Corporate — meaning what was meant to foster a personal relationship between the artist and producer, marked by creativity and mutual enthusiasm, has become
a relationship driven by budget, by box office, by marketing

(2) Suffering from a lack of leadership

(3) Board driven

(4) Audience centered as opposed to artist centered

(5) Formally conservative
The artistic leaders talk about very different things when they talk about their theatres. Among the things that worry them:

(1) The dwindling audience, which they fear is being lost to other media.

(2) They worry that new work is financially riskier.

(3) Many fault playwrights for not writing for their theatre’s audience.

(4) Two-thirds of them think it has become much harder to produce new work in the last decade.

(5)  And 75% of that two-thirds attributes the increased difficulty to financial
constraints — expenses are too high and funding is too low.

(6) Some feel the quality of the new work is not as good as it once was.
Who are playwrights talking about when they talk about theatres? While there were theaters of many sizes in our study, and while playwrights talked about small
theatres where they loved working and often felt supported, when they talked about “the theatre,” it was clear they were talking about the large institutional theatres at the top of
the LORT food chain and not-for-profit institutions on and Off Broadway. Playwrights do not see themselves as part of these institutions. They are on the outside looking in.

When we asked playwrights what the number one obstacle to getting their play produced was, they identified lack of access to the artistic director, the final decision
maker, as being at the top of the list. They feel completely cut off from the leaders of theatres that exist to provide them with a voice.

To quote: “Two-thirds of playwrights believe themselves to be hampered by a lack of access to top decision makers. Compare this with the next highest rated obstacle—
the feeling that their plays are too unconventional—at 55% and you see how powerfully access, or the lack of it, figures in writers’ lives.”

I would suggest that this feeling of lack of access is the unintended consequence of steps taken with best intentions, a theme that pops up again and again in the land of
Outrageous Fortune. As theatres have grown, they have added more people and departments who sit between the writer and the artistic director. They have added
literary managers and script departments and readers. They did this for the best of reasons: They did it because they wanted to have someone on the staff whose primary
responsibility was to know who was out there, who was a new, exciting voice. So the literary managers do their jobs well, they become champions for individual writers; they
go to festivals and readings and workshops. But they don’t decide what gets produced. They can champion writers, but that doesn’t get the play on stage. Created to be
bridges, they act as barriers.

As the conversations went deeper, we heard a suggestion that the increased layers of artistic staff exacerbate the risk aversion caused by the staff’s concerns about
audience reaction. Artistic directors, the people making the decisions, read and hear less and less new work themselves. They may not be conversant in changes in form
that new writers experiment with. They don’t get out and see as much work. It’s not that they don’t want to. They can’t. They are fundraising. They are at dinner with a donor.
The literary staff is downtown or at the new works festival. Artistic directors don’t listen to what’s new: They listen to their stakeholders, the Board, the major donors, and they
may underestimate what their audience will accept.

Playwrights and leaders have completely different ideas about what goes into the decision to produce a given play. In the study we found that more than 82 per cent of
the writers agreed or strongly agreed that “expectations about audience reception and interest” are a prohibitive obstacle to production, making it by far the single most
daunting hurdle for the new play. By contrast, only slightly more than 31 percent of the theatres agree or strongly agree that this is a prohibitive obstacle. The theatres
identified cast size and composition as the most severe obstacle to production. That is followed by “too expensive to produce” and “concern about the technical demands for a
given show”.

If these factors are tough for plays, imagine what happens when they are thinking about musicals.

The technical demand issue is an interesting one. The theatres saw technical demands as a big obstacle; rather unusually for this study, the writers agreed, in a way. 55% of the writers claimed that unconventional style of their plays can block their way to production. Think about this, all of you who create musicals. This may be a place where you all have it a little better. The lengthy developmental process that a musical goes through forces a developmental process for the physical production as well as the script itself. You have a longer period in which to focus on the music, the lyrics, and the book. Producing teams see musicals on their feet in workshops, and I think that helps them be more open to solutions for technical issues than they are if all they do is read it on the page or hear it around a table.

A host of factors go into the decision to do a full production. As one artistic director said, “The more institutionalized you get, the harder it is to say ‘I like it and that’s
it,’ because there are all of these other factors”. And when they do produce them, how does new work fare within the institution? How do artists and their producers (the
institutional theatres) interact? Who controls how the money gets spent? Who sets budgets? Think about the chain of budgetary command, from the production manager
to the general manager to the managing director, with some input from the artistic director who nine times out of ten isn’t the project’s director. Throw in some
enhancement money and it gets even muddier. The direct personal connection between producer and playwright is virtually gone in the institutional theatre. Issues around funding were a major topic with artistic directors and others we interviewed. What is the impact of the diminished availability of foundation and corporate philanthropic support for the arts? What about the individual donors who have their own expectations of success?

We heard an anecdote from a writer, one of your colleagues, about going to talk to the board of a theatre producing her project. It was the typical board meeting show and tell. At the end the trustees all say “Good luck, we look forward to seeing it.” And from one “And we hope it’s a hit.” That is what the writer took away. That trustee wasn’t really trying to up the ante, that was probably their way of saying, “We hope it goes well.” But why not say “We hope it’s a success?” The writer leaves thinking the board is corporate, indifferent to the artistic merit of the work.

Unintended consequence, yes. But how does the concept of “hit” as a marker of success reconcile with the idea that all these theatres were granted tax exempt status so they could take risks, they could fail, and there was no expectation of return on investment? And what about the theatres’ expectation of return on investment, also known as
subsidiary rights? We all know why theatres ask for subsidiary rights—the underlying premise being that the production of a play or musical enhances its value going forward
and that the authors give up some part of their subsidiary rights in recognition of that. In the beginning, when a commercial production opened on Broadway, it would generate lots of
activity after the Broadway run. The writers would make much more money than they would have if the show never happened on Broadway. The producers and investors
were entitled to a portion of the subsidiary rights. And then Arena Stage produced The Great White Hope, and it moved to Broadway, and Arena Stage received no benefit from the two-year run on Broadway or the film sale. That was wrong. And moving forward, originating not-for-profit theatres started asking for subsidiary rights in recognition of their role as
originating producers.
But once again, what started with good or at least understandable intentions has gone awry. We heard growing concerns from playwrights and those who represent and
advocate for them—agents, lawyers, new work mavens and some producers—that more and more people are grabbing for a piece. Smaller, not particularly visible regional theatres, workshop producers—all ask for some subsidiary participation.

I would like to pause here for a moment to talk briefly about what the average playwright earns, because that is essential to understand as the framework for thinking about subsidiary rights, thinking about enhancement and in fact thinking about the divide. The study found that the average playwright earns between $25,000 and $39,000 annually with approximately 62 per cent of the playwrights earning under $40,000 a year annually and nearly a third making less than $25,000. Furthermore, the study found that slightly more than half of the total income earned over the past five years by the 250 playwrights surveyed came from sources unrelated to playwriting. Of the $12,500 to $19,500 that came from playwriting related activities—teaching, TV and film writing—only 15% of the income, i.e. $1,875 to $2,925 came from playwriting. We went back to a smaller group of writers to probe further about how much of the playwriting-related income was actual production royalties, and 70 writers provided us with a further breakdown. In that group, 20% of the 15% of their income— otherwise known as 3%—came from production royalties. And lest you comfort yourselves by thinking of these writers as young writers, the average playwright in our study is thirty five to forty four years of age. And half of them live in New York and another quarter live in Los Angeles.

As the head of one play development center said: Playwrights have historically been expected to do their work for nothing. Why would
they put their time into a play that they’re not going to get commissioned for, that they’re not going to get paid for, from which the royalties are not going to be of any substance?
It’s hard to gauge who are the most exploited artists in the field, but most of us who are working in organizations are getting paid. We have health insurance. We have a salary.
I am working with writers who are forty or forty-five years old. They have never had health insurance; they haven’t been to a dentist in twenty five years. Even the actors get
a salary and hours towards insurance. This part is one of the things we have to deal with. It isn’t wrong that we have built sustainable, viable institutions. It isn’t wrong that we have staffs to run them, to raise the money, to sell the tickets and that those folks have insurance and pensions and vacations. The problem is that we haven’t figured out how to include our writers in the equation. And that failure of imagination is not because the folks who run theatres are bad people. It’s because we haven’t stopped to look at the model—the compensation model.

The model is based on a system of royalties. It’s based on the idea that a writer writes a play, it gets produced, not once but over and over. Well that doesn’t happen
anymore. Premiere-itis rules the world of the dramatic play. And in the musical world, workshops rule. Somewhere along the line we decided that because there wasn’t any
box office income associated with developmental projects, because the payoff was later if it worked, we didn’t have to pay the musical creators much money at all. They
get a fee where they used to get royalties from New Haven and Boston and Philadelphia. And that’s once you get to the workshop—after the composer has paid for
arrangements and musicians and demos on his or her own. We haven’t stopped to look at the model.

I would suggest that the subsidiary rights income, which means a lot to the theatres, might mean even more to writers earning an average of $10,000 to $20,000
dollars a year. And when a show goes on to a long and healthy commercial run after its development, there is enough to go around. It’s not about sharing, sharing is good for
heaven’s sake, it’s about when you share. So it’s fuzzy—these discussions about contribution and investment.

It only got fuzzier in the study when participants discussed enhancement funds. Another good intention going bad. In the beginning, enhancement money was the money a theatre
had to find when it wanted to do a project it couldn’t afford. The artistic director was passionate about a project that was so much bigger than what the theatre usually did.
So the theatre found a producer, with deeper pockets, and in exchange for certain future rights, the commercial producer made up the difference between a normal
production and the particular, deeply-loved project. Column B (the costs) less Column A (the typical production) equaled the enhancement. And of course musicals always cost
more, and musicals have the biggest commercial upside. Actually they have virtually the only commercial upside. And then the commercial producers figured out that the not-for-profit theatres could replace the road, the out of town tryout. Enhancement money was an easy investment for them. What was not so much for them was a lot for the theatre,
and everyone came away a winner.

And then, as we heard from playwrights more than once as we traveled, enhancement money became part of the operating budget. Agents are sometimes asked if there is commercial enhancement interest with this project. And again, remember the theatres are losing funding, the entities that were funding the risk are disappearing, so not their fault, but of course the writers still aren’t being paid more… so there is more distance, more resentment. Unintended consequences.
Other contradictions: The artistic directors cited concerns about cast size and technical requirements as being critical factors in deciding what they can produce; they
also complained about how playwrights are writing small plays. They suggest that playwrights aren’t writing for their audiences, yet everyone is chasing the same ten or
fifteen plays. Issues revolving around the audience came up a lot in Outrageous Fortune. Since TDF cares about audiences, it was kind of serendipitous. And writers and artistic
directors did share some common ground. They are in agreement in their view that, as Todd writes, “The audience is disappearing from traditional theatre, graying, dying and
turning away from the form for more insistent, exciting, accessible, inexpensive media. An explosion of entertainment choices has marginalized a staid theatre.”

I would remind you that the recent NEA study about public participation in the arts showed that public attendance at musical theatre has declined in the four benchmark years the study encompasses: It has gone from 18.6 % of the adult public attending a musical in 1982 to 16.7% in 2008. Dramatic plays are in worse shape. They went from 11.9 % to 9.4%, statistically much more significant as the audience is so much smaller. For musicals, attendance in actual numbers went up between 2002 and 2008, despite a percentage
decline as the population grew. For plays, even attendance went backwards.

Artistic directors worry that writers aren’t writing about things that are of interest to their audience. It is interesting to note that while artistic directors are in agreement about the conservatism, age and conventionality of most subscription audiences, they generally feel their audience is an exception. It’s endearing in a way. Artistic directorssee a disconnect between the person the artists imagine is coming through the theatre’s doors and the person who is actually coming in. Writers write for their peers, for their friends. While only a few artistic directors ask that the writers meet the audience on its terms, and most are committed to helping the artist find her voice, most do want them to write for a broader audience than they are now. The playwrights, on the other hand, see theatres that cater to their subscribers, subscribers who commit to the theatre and not an individual play or musical. They decry the revenue-driven decision making.

As we probed these issues in our conversations, we realized that the problem was perhaps that “in the current system of new play development, there are few
opportunities for writers to get to know theatregoers over time—productions are too sporadic, and ongoing relationships with theatres (and by extension , communities of
ticket buyers) are rarely sustained.”

I would suggest that it’s that connection that makes it easier to take risks, to imagine audiences accepting newer material, in different forms, with a different voice.

The issue of community came up a lot. Regional not-for-profit theatres talk passionately about their commitment to their community. Playwrights are itinerant.
They do not know the community. How can they? Underlying all the conversation about audiences, about how to reach them, about how much risk they will take, is a deeper concern. How do we insure that the theatre stays culturally relevant? How do we insure that we are talking to large enough groups of people to make a difference, to have an impact?

Another thing we heard several times over in conversations we held after the book was published was that theatres of different size and scale within communities don’t intersect as effectively as they might. There is very little movement between theatres of different sizes within the same community or in fact across communities. I am not talking about co-productions but rather intentional serial productions. The intentionality is what is key. The artists know that the work will be done in successive productions
over a period of time and they can continue their work rationally.

So the landscape as we found it is awash in new work, full of playwrights and theatres, and yet the ecosystem is in danger. It is not healthy. And it’s no one’s fault.Theatres aren’t run by bad people; artists are not self centered or naïve or unconcerned. We just haven’t had time to slow down and think about the world we have created. But now you have a couple of days together to do that. As I wrote in the introduction to the book: “One of the clearest messages I received through the course of this study is that language is failing us. Writers and those who produce their plays are not talking honestly with each other. Nor are they speaking honestly with their audiences or their funders. None of us are listening to the entire story, but rather only the piece we like, the part that confirms what we already believe. We must learn to speak together and to listen”.

There are ways to address these issues. We talk about some of what we discovered that is working in the last chapter of the book. Now it’s your turn to find some solutions; as we have disseminated the findings around the country, small but real changes have been happening. Let us know what you come up with. Have fun. Thank you.

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To read more about the findings in “Outrageous Fortune: The Life and Times of the New American Play,” please go here.