Over Broadway
Putting On A Play Off-Off Broadway
There are three steps on the ladder of New York theater. This first is of course, Broadway. This is where you will see large commercial productions that cost and hopefully bring in millions and millions of dollars. Next in line is off-Broadway. At this level, plays are produced for anywhere from a little less to a lot less money than Broadway. Off-Broadway the plays are just that, not always in the Broadway area. There are also often less commercial or more edgy or risky. The last rung is Off-off Broadway where the plays are quite cheaply produced running form almost pennies to maybe in the tens of thousands of dollars. For the first time producer, Off-off Broadway is probably the place to be. It is certainly not the place to make money no your first outing unless you are very lucky, but it is a good starting place.
The first step is deciding on which play you want to do. You may have an original script but if you don’t, you need to read and read and read. Libraries and book stores are good places to get this done. However, if you work full time, I find that ebook readers can be very useful. You can do your research wherever you are, at work, at home or on the go.
New York is covered in Off-off Broadway theaters. You need to find a place to house your play so you need to think about a few things. What do you want to pay or how much can you pay? Where do you want to be, Brooklyn, uptown, downtown, midtown or elsewhere? How much audience you plan to bring in and how big the cast and the production is will also influence the size of the theater you need.
Actors are next in line. Stage actors have a union, Actor’s Equity and, if you do an Equity play, you have to do it all the way, stage manager, lighting, director, etc. Your budget will include their health and benefits funds payments and the union fee to do the play. This is a much more pricey way to go but you are pretty much guaranteed talent.
Now you have to dress the stage. This doesn’t just mean on the stage but above it with lights and around it with sounds, etc. If you are innovative, you can find inexpensive ways to do this. I produced a play where we acquired crystal jewelry wholesale in large quantities for props. We got a great deal.
You may have all the other elements, but if you have no audience, you have no play. Professional can be had who will bring in an audience by producing a promotional campaign. They will also get reviewers to critique your show. Or you can do it all yourself and hope for the best. Listing in the local papers is one free thing you should definitely do. For one play we got more audience by advertising a contest. Someone associated with the play donated an Ibanez electric guitar and we raffled it off.
The price of producing an Off-off Broadway play can definitely be reasonable, especially for someone with a little money burning a whole in their pocket. It is also within reason to ask friends and relatives without causing them to use their life savings. The play probably won’t bring back what you put in money-wise. But, it will definitely be rewarding and if it’s good and gets reviews can lead to much bigger things.
Bullets Over Broadway (1994) trailer
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Bullets Over Broadway [VHS] $9.99 One of Woody Allen’s best films of the ’90s, Bullets over Broadway stars John Cusack as a virtual Woody surrogate, a neurotic, Jazz Age writer whose new play sounds wooden and unrealistic to a low-level mobster (Chazz Palminteri) assigned to watch over his boss’s actress-girlfriend (Jennifer Tilly). When the hood starts contributing better story ideas and dialogue than what the official playwright… |
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Angels Over Broadway [VHS] $7.93 Sardonic newsman turned razor-wit screenwriter Ben Hecht softens his hard-boiled style for a rare directorial outing in Angels over Broadway. Set in the world he knew and loved so well–Broadway’s nightlife of hustlers and suckers and high-society swells–Hecht’s tale of tarnished angels stars Douglas Fairbanks Jr. as a street hustler cajoled into fronting a flimsy scheme to heist a gambling hoodl… |
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Moon Over Broadway [VHS] $3.00 In 1995, Carol Burnett returned to Broadway after an absence of three decades to costar in Ken Ludwig’s comedy, Moon over Buffalo. Legendary documentary filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker and his wife, Chris Hegedus, enjoyed extraordinary access to capture the nuts and bolts of mounting a Broadway play in this video equivalent of a backstage pass. It is more entertaining than the strained farce we gli… |
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The Phantom of the Opera (2004) $9.99 … |
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