Are the four major summer and early-fall theatre festivals in town—the New York International Fringe Festival, the Summer Play Festival (SPF), the Midtown International Theatre Festival, and, new this year, the New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF)—any different from political campaigns? One wonders. Presenting a slew of showcases of new works takes the kind of organization that only those with highly compartmented minds can understand.
Whether mounting a festival with 18 new shows, like the SPF, or 190 new shows, like the Fringe, it also involves devising ways to lure crowds, for however the box office revenue is split—generally between the shows and the festival itself—it is vital that audiences come, or else such a massive logistical and fiscal undertaking is without merit. Not unlike the need for political parties to raise tons of cash to get their word out, to make their point.
Before festivals can be mounted, there's a battle for nomination, too. Whether plays are vetted by legions of readers, as Fringe shows are, or vetted more personally by the producer, as the Midtown Festival shows are, or vetted by a panel of esteemed professionals, as the NYMF shows are, the cruel fact is the same: Not every submitted work can run in every festival. Someone (or some group) has to decide who gets in and who gets out and why, and slogging through that process can be grueling. Yet if the festival doesn't find and offer the best work it can, it won't be a hit.
The founding archetype for contemporary theatre festivals is, of course, the Fringe Festival, now in its eighth year and a thoroughly sprawling endeavor. Producing Artistic Director Elena K. Holy was putting last-minute touches on the 2004 Fringe (www.fringenyc.org) at press time, but in an email exchange with Back Stage, she explored in general terms how the festival does what it does.
"We rent the venues, we staff the venues, we run all the box offices, we enter data about the shows into our website, and we organize the marketing, cross-marketing, and advertising sponsorships and opportunities for both productions and FringeNYC as a whole," Holy said. "The marketing aspect is very interesting. We create amazing online databases that allow people to upload their marketing information and have it appear immediately on the website, then we offer some 'marketing speed dates' to teach blurb writing, then we offer marketing 'mixers' for cross-promotion."
But that is the tip of the proverbial iceberg: The participant's manual for the Fringe runs to dozens of pages. Yes, there is a submission fee ($50), and yes, there is a participation fee ($500), but compared to the costs of mounting even an Equity Showcase in the current scene, the prices are a steal. Getting in, though, isn't easy: Holy employs an army of adjudicators to make recommendations from among the hundreds of submissions the Fringe receives each year.
The eighth annual Fringe runs Aug. 13-29 in over 20 downtown venues; with four to seven performances per piece, Holy estimates that over 1,300 curtains will metaphorically be raised. The Fringe also offers a slew of ancillary programs, including FringeU, FringeJr, FringeHigh, FringeAl Fresco, FringeArt, and FringeClub. Altogether, some 500 volunteers, 4,500 artists, and, Holy says, 50,000 audience members participate, making it far and away the largest festival of its kind in New York and the gold standard by which all other festivals must measure up.
The SPF: History Repeats Itself
Here's one way theatre festivals differ from political campaigns: They usually aren't funded by one individual, which is how Broadway and Off-Broadway producer Arielle Tepper is mounting the Summer Play Festival. "In a way," she says, "the SPF got started 15 years ago. I grew up in New York and when I was 16, my mom, who was an artist, had an art gallery in East Hampton for emerging artists and wanted to open a New York branch. She found a space she loved at 623 Broadway, with one floor for her gallery and the second floor empty. She asked me, 'What do you think I should do with this extra floor?' and I said, 'It would be really cool as a theatre space—a sort of think tank for my generation."
Tepper, whose family wealth and early start as a commercial producer was recently documented in a New York Times feature, revisited the idea of a theatrical think tank last fall. "I heard Theatre Row would be available this March and took a meeting. I didn't think I could produce a festival as quickly as that, but I knew I could in July. Within three weeks of sending out press releases, we had 1000 submissions."
The SPF (www.spfnyc.com) runs July 5-Aug. 1 and used 50 readers to sift through the thousand-play pile. Every play was read twice, then the list was "whittled down" to 50 plays. A selection committee of "leading industry people" then read those 50 and, by design or happenstance, voted unanimously to "bring in" 18 shows, including plays and musicals by Neena Beber, John Bucchino, Heather Lynn MacDonald, and Gary Sunshine.
"We felt the important thing in looking at this festival's structure would be that artists not have responsibility for producing their shows. The SPF gets no royalties, holds no rights, does not have first right of refusal, and there are no fees to participate. We give each production—$10,000 per play, $15,000 per musical—a huge support staff. These people are very, very well protected," Tepper says.
Yet why would one person create a new festival with an estimated $1 million budget and, at $10 a ticket, little hope for meaningful revenue?
Tepper says her goal is simply to forge that "think tank" she dreamt of long ago. "This gives people an opportunity to put on their shows in a protective environment. In the future, I'm hoping all these writers have a future—these writers are all emerging; they've never had full productions of their work in New York in a larger than Letter of Agreement production. If I held any rights, what producer would be interested in coming? Instead, people are coming from nonprofits countrywide, plus New York producers. At the very least it gives these writers a chance."
It also gives the SPF staff a logistical challenge, for scheduling 18 shows into four of the five Theatre Row spaces is not easy. Casting was handled exclusively by Mark Simon, and auditions, Tepper says, "were based on the writers' and directors' schedules, with everything from open calls to the creative teams inviting everyone they know to become part of the process."
The rehearsal and tech processes, too, were centralized. Tepper currently rents half a floor of Theatre Row just for the administrative operation of the SPF, with "overhead staff, our head production stage manager, our tech supervisor, and the festival administrator all in one room, working together." She also hired SpotCo, the Broadway advertising agency, to whip up a campaign eschewing direct mail and employing a mix of sponsorships, guerrilla marketing tactics, and aggressive word-of-mouth instead.
Is the SPF a one-time deal? Hardly, Tepper says. "We're already thinking about next year's festival and planning begins on the first of September. With more time to plan next year, though, it will be a very different thing."
Midtown: Small and Intense
"There are several hurdles for producing the Midtown International Theatre Festival," says John Chatterton, the event's executive producer and artistic director (he is also editor and publisher of OOBR, the online Off-Off-Broadway Review). "The first problem is getting the plays to put on. The second is to find venues appropriate to put the plays on in, and there are obviously lots of ways to do that. The third is to promote the event, and the fourth, finally, is to run it. The thing is, to create a successful festival you simply can't fail at any one of the four."
Now in its fifth year and running July 12-Aug. 1, this year's festival will present some 36 productions in just three spaces. It is, Chatterton says, a deliberate choice.
"We're called the Midtown International Theatre Festival because we obviously want to be in Midtown, but I'm not sure it's always good to be spread out between disparate venues," he says. "Really, you need two or more theatres in close proximity—they have to be the right price and have the right amenities, like storage space. You have to have staff to look after them, not to mention the shows in them. This year, we're at a venue I own, the Where Eagles Dare Theatre on West 36th Street, so between us and our 38 seats, and the WorkShop Theater, also on West 36th Street, with its 65-seat Main Stage and 40-seat Jewel Box theatres, we can control the producing and organizing process."
Getting quality material, he adds, is also a challenge. "It's personally evolving. In the past, I've put out notices asking for submissions, and that's worked all right, up to a point. This year, I experimented by having a co-artistic director, Cheryl King, whose task was to put together a lineup of solo plays. She did such a good job we got nearly two dozen in the festival, more than half of all the shows."
The delegation process, Chatterton says, seems to have worked better this year than leaving all decisions regarding what shows get in up to him. King, for example, teaches stand-up and is a noted playwright and performer, "so she knows who is working on what. Then again," he cautions, "solo plays tend to have a small but intense following, so we expect some shows to do very well and attract great audiences, whereas others won't."
Next year, following the model of delegating programming, Chatterton envisions up to four artistic directors, "with one for musicals, another, say, for plays, and perhaps someone for cabaret." More eyes and ears will likely increase the number of works being submitted—this year there were nearly 100, making the affordability of the festival, with only a $30 submission fee and a $300 participation fee ($150 for solo plays), something of a hard sell.
That is, it's a hard sell for him, because Chatterton, who calls the Midtown Festival "a hybrid venture," bears "the vast majority of the financial burden." He calls the project a hybrid venture because it is being produced in tandem with Theater Resources Unlimited, a nonprofit service organization.
As in previous years, the Midtown Festival is advertising in The New York Times, but "now we're also doing a lot through the Internet, through e-blasts, through our ticket seller, Smarttix, and by having a marketing director, which empowers individual producers to promote their shows. Also, like last year, we're beginning advanced sales early so we can determine which shows have legs and therefore give certain shows more performances and to allocate resources more effectively."
Roughly speaking, Chatterton says, "two-thirds of the audiences come from people who know people with shows in the festival, whereas one-third are, if you will, civilians—people who read a review or an ad. So we focus on helping shows find full audiences." The box office is split between the shows and the festival, which, he adds, will "not pursue any subsidiary rights of any nature."
The Midtown Festival has been "very fortunate," he concludes, "in terms of how we are staffed. I've had various arrangements with production stage managers and managing producers and tech staff, who all report to me. But this year, I finally delegated all of that to one production manager, who has control over everything, including drawing up contracts, which I review. This way, I don't have to worry about scheduling plays; the production manager hires the box office manager and assistant box office manager and those who handle concessions. In the end, we want to present the cream of Off-Off-Broadway, as we see it, in an accessible environment. And to us, an accessible environment is a Midtown environment, one with convenience, safety, quality, and comfort—and I do mean air conditioning."
The NYMF: Tuners in Embryo
Does New York need a musical theatre festival?
That question was asked by Back Stage last April, when Kris Stewart, executive director of the National Music Theater Network, announced the formation of the New York Musical Theatre Festival, running Sept. 13-Oct. 4 at a variety of venues "all across New York, from the theatre district in midtown Manhattan to the outer boroughs."
The idea, Stewart told Back Stage last week, "came out of the idea of helping nonprofits in New York that have musical theatre as part of their mission. I had attended a roundtable, representing the National Music Theater Network, and there were about 30 or 35 people there, and one thing that came up was the idea of creating a festival where there could be what you would call a 'key event.' We started mentioning the idea to other folks, and we felt from speaking to people—I include individual writers and performers and venues—that if you're going to be in a New York musical theatre festival, it had better be broad and diverse."
And it is. The centerpiece of the event is the Next Link Project, which will premiere 18 new musicals that were picked by a jury from a total list of 220 submissions. The jury included choreographer Kathleen Marshall, producer Robyn Goodman, actor-director Gabriel Barre, actor Raúl Esparza, composer-lyricists Jeff Marx and Robert Lopez, and director Scott Schwartz. "The idea," Stewart says, "is to create a framework where new musicals can go further than just readings, because if you know how this business works, you can easily get caught up in reading after reading after reading, and readings tend to simply bring you…a lot more readings. Not that there isn't developmental value to a reading, but what if you feel you're ready for full production?"
The festival supplies those 18 musicals—which had not been officially unveiled at press time—with "the theatre and tech staff and the publicity," Stewart says, "so all the shows need to do is focus on the show. We guarantee each show six performances in a Midtown venue"—the houses thus far include the Lamb's Theatre, Theatre Row, the 47th Street Theatre, and one of the venues used by Primary Stages on West 45th Street—"plus master classes, forums, and special events."
Stewart openly cites the Fringe as the model for how the first NYMF is being put together, given its $50 script submission fee, $300 participation fee, and arrangement to split box office revenue 50-50, plus the fact that the shows bear the cost of mounting each production.
The overall budget for the festival, as reported in Back Stage last April, is between $350,000 and $600,000, which has been gathered, Stewart said, "by staging benefits that raised us tens of thousands and gifts from foundations. But, you know, a lot of people have donated staggering things to this project. Some people have given six to nine months of their time. Some have given incredible in-kind support. Most of our media and PR is, on paper, worth $200,000, and it's largely donated or sponsored."
Before coming to America, the Australia-born Stewart served as director of a large cultural events company in Melbourne. It was there, he says, that he learned "how easy it is to fritter away money and spend it on the wrong things and things that don't end up being on the right side of the festival. The Fringe is a great example of smart spending and creating the experience and the vibe and the energy."
The NYMF has programmed a wide range of extra activities, too. Over at AMC 42, there will be the Movie Musical Screening Series, showcasing musical movies from the independent film scene as well as films celebrating the history of the movie musical. There will also be a sneak preview of a "family musical" by Stephen Schwartz; "New Author New Star," a concert series; the International Concert Series, presenting foreign works in their original languages; the ASCAP/MAC Songwriter Showcase; the BMI Shorts Series, featuring short tuners from authors in the BMI Lehman Engel program; and the Raw Impressions Radio Series, featuring tuners created specifically for broadcast.
How does one man put all that together? "Carefully," Stewart says, adding that he is thankful that "helping to run the National Music Theater Network has afforded me the opportunity to turn so many contacts into projects and helpers.
"You know, the musical is a really broad thing, and you can attempt a number of different things with the form. What this festival is about, fundamentally, is new work, new artists, new approaches to musical theatre, new perspectives on it. I think we are in a new era, in a changing, shifting time, and it's increasingly obvious that more revivals of Broadway musicals isn't the way to guarantee box office success. We're focused on musicals with contemporary spirits. And we're the festival that is going to make them happen."