Freakanomics did a two part show about how the Broadway play Stereophonic came together. The first part is broadly about the 11 year creative process playwright David Adjmi went through to make the show. The second part focuses a bit more on the economics behind a Broadway show.
If you have been involved with the performing arts for any length of time, you can probably predict the process Adjmi underwent – cobbled together funds from two commissions and a grant, plus had two architects let him live in their house rent free for years while he wrote. He had to put some pressure on Playwrights Horizons to consider the show and the cost of over $1 million was a lot for an off-Broadway production.
But it became a hit based on essentially breaking the formula of Broadway shows – a straight play about music, but not a musical, no stars in the cast, and runs long at 3.25 hours. Apparently it has a strong appeal to men based on the observation the men’s restroom line is longer than the women’s.
There is a lot more to the story than that. The first episode is 70 minutes alone and the second about 55 minutes.
Being the arts management nerd I am, I was even more interested in the second episode which talked about the economics and decisions that were made. Everything from the cost of putting on a show in NY vs. London, who can and how to invest in shows in both cities, what the actors got paid off-Broadway vs. after the move to Broadway, decisions about pricing tickets, and the marketing mix they used.
In terms of the pricing tickets, the producers say they can now get up to $349 for a ticket though they re-evaluate their pricing three times a week, but they started out much lower during previews:
We had preview pricing that was $40, $80, $120 to start, for the month of April. But you have to catch up to it, because now we can get $229 for them. You kind of play a game of chicken with yourself and with your audience. For something like Stereophonic, because it’s an unknown title — obviously it’s getting more well-known — but two, it does not have a major mega-star in it. It has a group of incredible rising stars, but they’re not household names. The way that we get there is by getting people in the door, and really building to that moment.
Thanks to improved audience analytics tools, the producers have changed their marketing mix from what it once was as well:
Oh, it’s almost entirely all digital now. It’s all mobile. It’s all through Meta — it’s all through Instagram, Facebook. We do still take the traditional behavioral banner ads that follow you around the internet. We still do some prints, but not a ton. We have dabbled into television, but we’re taking specific ads. We’re not taking giant flights with multiple spots on Good Morning America or the Today Show, which was always your bread and butter.
[…]
The R.O.I. is much easier to figure out because you can actually track people. Our zip code reporting is way more sophisticated now than it was before, whereas you had to blanket the market with something and then you didn’t see a direct correlation. Now it’s less things, but you can still see how your wraps jump due to specific things of press, like a C.B.S. Sunday Morning piece, or if your stars are on Morning Joe. There are fewer things that give you that pop, but at least you know, “If I’m on Morning Joe, then we’re going to have a good day at the box office.”
If this sort of information interests you and you have the time, I recommend giving the pieces a listen. Host Stephen Dubner says they are working on a longer, more involved series on the economics of making theater so I am going to keep an eye out for that as well.
