The Great White…wait!

Illustration: Silke Werzinger

Hunter Bell is thrilled to be on Broadway. The actor and book writer’s musical [title of show] just opened at the Lyceum Theatre, and he’s riding the mighty wave that could carry him to glory (or a fast closing night, although the buzz is good). His name in lights on the biggest stage in town: Must be a dream, right—the ultimate symbol of theatrical, New York success? Well…it’s a little more complicated than that. To the outsider, Broadway is the unquestionable theater-career apex—it bestows “authenticity” on the actor or playwright due to some hazy myth of glamour and tradition. The rest is just the minor leagues, or worse—the amateur fringe.

For insiders, though, the perception is just that: perception. And how much artists care about that perception defines their success.

Bell didn’t start big; he and his collaborators have clawed their way up the food chain since 2004—starting at the New York Musical Theatre Festival, then the Off Broadway Vineyard Theatre—and they now have a chance at…what, exactly? [title of show] might get strong reviews, but will it find an audience? Can the Broadway ecology support this sort of small, downtowny metamusical? “People don’t blink when a play has two or four people,” Bell counters, “But somehow, in some folks’ minds, a musical has to be bigger? I don’t know. I think we fit great in the Lyceum, and a good story is a good story. Avenue Q and In the Heights cracked people’s heads open about size, scale and originality.”

Right now, he’s enjoying the ride with fingers crossed. “I would love for this run to last so I can experience some financial security and pay my peeps back,” he says. “I’m sure the good folks at Sallie Mae with my student loans hope we recoup too.”

Stranger things have happened. No matter what you think of “authenticity,” business is booming on Broadway. Last season, tourists and locals together spent nearly a billion bucks on seats. Shows are returning their investments (thanks to super-marked-up premium tickets) like they haven’t in years. And if you’re an artist who wants to actually make a living, the Great White Way is the only way. According to Actors’ Equity Association, even the lowliest chorus boy or girl is guaranteed at least $78K a year. That’s part-time work. Principals or stage stalwarts negotiate higher salaries. You can be sure that Boyd Gaines and Laura Benanti of Gypsy will pull down half a million or more if their show runs through next June.

On the other hand, struggling playwrights or directors—even those loved by critics—have it much tougher. Dramatists have to scrape by on grants, teaching gigs and commissions. Naturally, such scribes would jump at a chance to land a show on Broadway, where the paycheck is fatter and where there’s a chance of a national tour.

And yet, two years ago, when celebrated Red Light Winter author Adam Rapp was offered the crown, he passed. “There was an offer to do it through the Roundabout, produce it at the Walter Kerr and sell preview performances to the subscribers,” Rapp recalls. “I just felt that I’d formed a bit of a following that was used to paying $20 to $40, and if I did a show with $100 tickets, I’d lose my audience.” So Rapp and his producer, Scott Rudin, opted for a commercial Off Broadway run at the Barrow Street Theatre, where it played for six months and lost money.

The playwright admits the huge success of Tracy Letts’s August: Osage County and the upcoming Broadway transfer of Neil LaBute’s Reasons to Be Prettyindicate that a nonmusical, nonclassical play can find a home on Broadway—even without a movie star or a British accent. For now, Rapp (who, like many writers, has subsidized his stage writing with TV gigs such as The L Word) says he’s content in the Off Broadway trenches. “For me, the middle step would be a production at Lincoln Center Theater or Second Stage,” he says. “Because I would like to sustain myself without having to take Hollywood jobs.”

At least Rapp can be assured of a production most seasons. Others don’t even get that far. Take Anne Kauffman (The Thugs, God’s Ear), a downtown directing star. By any rights, Kauffman would be helming new work at Off Broadway prestige houses like Manhattan Theatre Club and the Public. Instead, she’s still waiting for a big nonprofit break. Unlike her peers who do get those gigs (and tend to stage new plays with a brisk but bland naturalism), Kauffman is perceived as a purveyor of “weird” work. She is one of the rare directors with a larger vision. “I don’t think about Broadway, which is probably stupid,” she admits with a rueful laugh. “In terms of financial stability, I see myself more as becoming an artistic director who would still direct. For me, success is getting my writers to a wider audience.”

Then there’s the dream of an Off-Off Broadway scene that might actually survive on box-office profits. Is it possible to live off intimate, noncommercial, risky theater? Not without a trust fund or a foot in the European festival circuit. “For my tribe of alternative-theater artists, you go to Europe,” says John Clancy, a founder of the New York International Fringe Festival. Clancy is a veteran of the Edinburgh Fringe and has brought productions to London and Australia. He savors the international profile…not that he would turn down a job at a more established venue. “I’m an American artist and I want to work here,” he insists. “[Urinetown book writer] Greg Kotis once asked me, ‘This is what you want to do, be like a jazz artist—big in Europe?’ And I said, ‘God, no. But that’s who’s been paying the bills for the last six, seven years.’”

Clancy is pouring his energies into a new venture: the League of Independent Theater, an Off-Off advocacy group that wants to reform Equity’s restrictive showcase code. If the code changes, Off-Off producers could conceivably run a show as long as they want and gradually increase ticket prices and actors’ pay. Whether or not LIT starts a revolution, Clancy still thinks he can make a career without Broadway or even Off Broadway as part of the equation. It’s about creating a scene and keeping it alive. “Success,” he asserts, “is having the respect of people you respect.”

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