Seller: Rent has returned $100
million to its investors.
McCollum: Avenue Q is another show that’s returning
very, very nice profits to its investors. If you go to our new theaters at 37
Arts, there are three: a 499-seat house; a 399-seat on top of that; and a
299-seat on top of that. We made a deal with (Mikhail) Baryshnikov to put the
home of his dance empire in condos on the top three floors. So we are a
for-profit with a not-for-profit arts center on the top. We are the first
commercial arts center and not-for-profit. It’s very similar to what they’re
looking to do at the World Trade Center site.Was $650,000 the cost to move
the show because you’re partners in 37 Arts?
McCollum: No, it would have cost that at any Off-Broadway theater. Also, here
we’ve taken a show that was Off Broadway to a larger Off-Broadway theater that
we happen to also be major partners in, because we felt it would meet our needs.
A lot of the Off-Broadway theaters are just storefronts, and we needed a proper
theater with fly space and room for sets; we had a choice of moving shows to
Broadway or, if it made more sense, Off Broadway to a larger house.
 There’s some resentment on Broadway that you two have decided to move
Hurlyburly to an Off-Broadway theater.
McCollum: Every show finds its proper place based on who’s producing it. It
made no sense to go to Broadway. Not that we’re dissing Broadway, but the
economics are out of whack. That’s just reality. When you’re in the business of
trying to create an economic equation and it makes sense to go to Broadway, you
go to Broadway, like we did with Rent and Avenue Q. When it doesn’t make sense,
and the field is crowded and you know from your experience it’s a bit of a
bubble, your job is to avoid the bubble and to create a new way.
Seller:
Making the establishment angry? That’s the fun of it. That’s our job. We have to
reinvent what the establishment is. The establishment should be creating
profitable models to see live theater, because that’s how it becomes groovy
again, and that’s how you attract young people.
McCollum: Hey, if we can
create some drama around the theater, which never gets its due on Access
Hollywood or Entertainment Tonight, great. Broadway and Off Broadway in New York
is a vibrant economy; it’s a $1 billion economy if you count road shows. And we
don’t even get any play, so I’m happy for the dialogue, and I’m happy to talk to
anybody about what we should or shouldn’t do at any time. | Every show finds its proper place based on who’s producing it. It made
no sense to go to Broadway. |
Young people
shouldn’t be afraid to go to the theater, just like our parents weren’t afraid
to go to the theater; it was part of their ethic. We’ve lost, in our public
school system in the past 15 years, the value of arts. Film gets projected to
you—it’s very convenient, you sit in your home and just watch. Theater takes
some effort. Being touched by what that is . . . the young people who get
touched by Rent or Avenue Q or Hurlyburly create generations of theatergoers.
We’re sort of farmers that way. We really believe that you have to make shows
accessible to young people, which is why all our shows have a $20 ticket policy
in the first rows. You show up two hours before the show and you can sit in the
front, we don’t put you in the back. It’s something we started with Rent, and
the good news is other shows have copied us. We have a lottery at Avenue Q every
night, and hundreds of people show up to get those seats.
Seller: I want to
address the cool issue again. There was a time when playwrights like Sam
Shepherd flourished Off Broadway with plays like Buried Child and True West,
when you had Lanford Wilson’s Balm in Gilead starring John Malkovich and Joan
Allen Off Broadway. We haven’t seen those kinds of plays flourish Off Broadway
in a number of years. I was specifically referring to being able to bring back
to the commercial Off-Broadway theater a playwright like Hurlyburly’s David Rabe
and stars like Wally Shawn, Ethan Hawke, Parker Posey and Bobby Cannavale.
That’s the kind of play that flourished Off Broadway in the ’70s and early ’80s,
and then it went away.
|
