When Jonathan Haas first arrived in New York in 1976, playing in a Broadway pit orchestra was, well, less than prestigious. “It was the last stop on the train,” he says. “It was not considered anything that would give you bragging rights.” But since then, the music world has changed its tune. “To be a Broadway musician [now] represents the highest level of musical excellence.”
This is why New York University, where Haas is the co-director of NYU Orchestras, added to its program earlier this fall with a new ensemble course: the Broadway Orchestra. Taught by longtime Broadway bass player and music coordinator-contractor-director-supervisor John Miller and Tony-winning music director, conductor, and vocal arranger Ted Sperling, the class will prepare students with the skills—musical and business—to help them forge a path to playing in a Broadway pit.
Of course, NYU and other schools like it have long offered degrees in instrumental performance. “What differentiates this is that it is a full-on study of—and the performance of—Broadway, both in practicum as well as in history,” says Haas.
Sperling and Miller’s curriculum teaches the breadth of style required of Broadway musicians, specific sight-reading and performance requirements unique to Broadway, as well as the logistics of landing a job in a freelance field.
The goal, musically, is for their students to be able to tackle the unique confluence of genres present in the Broadway repertoire—sometimes within a single score. “To succeed in this business, it’s really great if you can be a master of all of [these styles] and know how to play several different ones in the course of one evening,” says Sperling.
Courtesy New York University
Plus, the duo is prepared to inform students of the distinct challenges within each instrumental section, and build their skillset to tackle them. For example, “Broadway has this long tradition of woodwind doublers, where each musician in the reed section plays three to five instruments. That’s pretty specific to Broadway,” says Sperling. More generally, “playing a stringed instrument in a Broadway orchestra is very different from playing it in a symphony. Playing in a rock band is very different from having to follow a conductor. And, playing in a jazz situation is very different from having to do something that’s reliable eight times a week but still feels free and jazzy. We’re trying to synthesize [all of this].”
Students will learn this hands on—plus the mechanics of playing a show and following a conductor—as they learn the scores to Guys & Dolls and (this spring) Anything Goes while performing as the orchestra for the two musicals put on by NYU Tisch School of the Arts, in conjunction with the students in the university’s vocal performance program.
These young musicians will combine exploration of the musical theatre canon with the even-more necessary discipline of sight-reading. “For a lot of these younger people, the way into the business is by being a substitute for someone who has the permanent position on a show,” Sperling explains. “You don’t even get any rehearsal as a substitute; you have to leap in and just do a performance.”
But Broadway Orchestra is “not just a course in ‘how to sight-read’,” Sperling clarifies. It’s learning about the structure and history of Broadway music. “City of Angels, for example. What are the specific challenges of that score? What is it like to sight-read it? Then, how does it get better when we actually rehearse it? And what is it like to do just a plain orchestra rehearsal? What is it like when you add a singer to it? We’ll invite some people who worked on the original production to talk to us about how things evolved, things that they learned they liked or didn’t.”
On top of these artistic skills, Miller asserts that an advantage of his course is its focus on helping students actually get hired. “How to have people know of you, how you can best work on a website, how you can best network,” says Miller. “I wish I would have known this when I left University of Michigan.”
Courtesy New York University
Unlike careers in classical orchestras, there is no procedure of sending in tapes and resumés, no protocol of blind auditions to earn your chair. “Broadway and freelance work has no such animal of auditions,” says Miller. “Part of this is to let [the students] know what it is that puts you in the category of people wanting to work with you.”
Who better to teach them than the perpetually employed stalwarts of the business: Miller and Sperling? “Our faculty, who are coming in with this incredible expertise that you can’t find most anyplace other than in New York City” is a main reason why NYU is the birthing ground for a formal program of this kind, according to Haas. “Being in New York City here at NYU is a real bonus because not only is [Broadway] an alternative, it can be a way of life for a musician. That’s why it belongs in a place like NYU, because that’s what we’re trying to do here.”
Ruthie Fierberg is the Senior Features Editor of Playbill covering all things theatre and co-hosting the Opening Night Red Carpet livestreams on Playbill’s Facebook. Follow her on Twitter @RuthiesATrain, on Instagram @ruthiefierceberg, or via her website.
In the beginning, there was a play. Well, a worry about a play—specifically “the health and well-being of the well-made play on Broadway,” according to TDF Executive Director Victoria Bailey.
Victoria Bailey Joan Marcus
The organization known today as TDF, previously the Theatre Development Fund, began in 1968 with the mission to cultivate a Broadway environment where the play was still the thing. “[The founders] would’ve hoped that there would always be good, strong plays—good stories told well,” Bailey, who has led TDF since 2001, continues. “They were not interested in saving the world for Hello, Dolly!, which doesn’t mean they diminished or dismissed it. [They wanted to know] ‘What did you need to do to make sure serious drama and discourse was happening?’”
The simple answer: make sure people see the “serious dramas.” So they bought tickets and gave them to people. “Their idea was that they would raise money to buy tickets to worthy plays (and Harold Clurman was the determiner of the worthy plays),” says Bailey, “and they would then give those tickets to teachers, to students, to people who wouldn’t otherwise have them.”
With money from the Rockefeller Foundation, TDF bought up tickets to The Great White Hope and gave them away for free. Of course, the founders quickly realized the lack of sustainability in this model; the key to longevity would be to acquire tickets at a discount and resell them. In 1970, TDF tested a small summer experiment: the TKTS Booth.
No one knew if there would be interest in lining up for theatre tickets in the seedy district. But on its second day (a rainy matinée Wednesday), “they came around the corner and all they could see was umbrellas,” Bailey says. “From the beginning [the Booth] did what it was supposed to do. That provided identity, it provided net revenue to pay the rent and then begin the rest of the programs. Had it not been for the Booth, we probably would not have become the organization that we’ve become.”
A Sign of the Times: 1968 As TDF celebrates its 50th anniversary, it joins the ranks of institutions like the Public Theater, Classic Stage Company, Roundabout Theatre Company, Center Theatre Group, all of which celebrated 50 years within the last 24 months—speaking to a cultural moment when respect for and preservation of the arts became a priority.
“The Kennedys came in and there was an emphasis on culture and a cultural conversation again,” says Bailey. “And Jackie Kennedy made the artists glamorous.” The 20th Century Fund and the Rockefeller Foundation actively investigated ways to support the arts—and Broadway was fertile ground to sow.
Of course, in 1968 there was no Off-Broadway; TDF fulfilled its mission by specifically building Broadway audiences. For a nominal annual fee, TDF membership afforded and continues to afford inexpensive tickets (from $9–$49) to shows in advance. (Find out how to become a TDF member today.)
Today, Broadway remains the starting point for the organization’s initiatives, but as Broadway theatres house longer-running hits with less turnover Bailey recognizes “our ‘textbook’ will have to change moving forward. You’re talking a lot more about [ticket offers for] Off-Broadway, music, dance.
“If our mission is to build audiences and help strengthen the theatre by building audiences” it only makes sense to expand those offerings.
What Helps Audiences, Helps the Theatre The building of the Booth in 1973 stuck a proverbial stake in the ground, making Broadway accessible financially. With each new initiative (funded in part by $5 Booth ticket fees and membership dues), TDF has made the theatre accessible from a distinct standpoint: physical, intellectual, emotional, and geographic. Impartial to any one show or one sector of the industry, its only interest is in the theatre writ large by way of the people in the seats. TDF is the people’s organization.
“It’s about responding to populations,” says TDF’s Director of Communications David LeShay, who has been with the nonprofit for 25 years. “There was a period of time where, if you came to TDF and asked ‘Would you like to do this for us,’ we would say yes,” Bailey adds. “That’s how we got the Costume Collection”—referring to the Queens warehouse of living history, where Broadway and Off-Broadway shows can donate costumes at the end of a run, and other productions (from regional to high school) can rent quality, authentic dressing at an affordable price. Still, for all its weight in legacy, the Costume Collection is not exactly an audience-builder.
Now, TDF selects and creates its programming more judiciously. “The impulse comes when you see the need,” says Bailey. “Then you have to ask yourself: Noble or not, worthy or not, is it on mission?”
The TDF Accessibility Programs (TAP), started in 1979, fulfilled both criteria. It began with a push to make theatres physically accessible to ticketholders in wheelchairs, or who couldn’t climb stairs. “This was before ADA [the Americans with Disabilities Act, which passed in 1990],” says Bailey. “It happened because someone picked up the phone and said, ‘I want to go to the theatre and I can’t climb stairs.’”
TAP has extended beyond stipulations addressing mobility needs. From coordinating interpreted and open-caption performances for Deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences to innovations with audio description for blind and low vision ticket buyers to school matinées catered to students with these needs, TDF has established itself as the catchall to raze any blockade that prevents existing theatre-lovers from attending performances. They get things done. More than that, TDF is in the business of creating theatregoers.
Cultivation Through Education “What makes any of us go to the theatre is, in large part, if we go as kids,” says Bailey. TDF sparks a passion for the performing arts through teaching, manifesting the idea that “theatre is for me.”
The Introduction to Theatre Program, which still brings New York City public school students to Broadway as part of their curriculum, was the baby step in 1995—exposing kids to performance; the Young Playwrights program a bigger step—encouraging writing and creativity outside the four walls of a theatre. But the Open Doors program, renamed this year the Wasserstein Project for its founder, playwright Wendy Wasserstein, was a gamechanger.
“When the Wasserstein Project started it was one group of eight kids and by the time I got to TDF it was six or seven groups of eight kids and it was our first big funding application for the program,” says Bailey. “Now, it’s 25 groups a year and it’s 2,700 alumni out of the program.”
But TDF knows it’s not enough to send students to free theatre; you have to make it possible to integrate theatre as a practice—which is why they gift free memberships (plus a $100 credit) to alumni. The Wasserstein Project is not an empty promise, it’s audience retention.
Not only do those alumni become the young professional theatregoers for whom producers clamor, these graduates impart their love of theatre to the next generation. “We’ve opened doors for [Wasserstein] alums that are now teachers in New York City high schools, who are bringing their kids into the Stage Doors Program because they got it in the first place,” Bailey boasts of the tangible results. So successful is the Wasserstein Project, it earned a Tony Honor for Excellence in 2012.
A Family Affair But it’s not just individuals. A recent TDF study revealed that 90 percent of theatregoers say Broadway is special because it is a source of fond memories and family bonding. TDF (accidentally on purpose) found a way to develop audiences family by family with the launch of autism-friendly performances.
As with any of their programs, TDF responded to a call—this time a more public outcry. “There was an incident in London, about ten years ago,” Bailey recalls. “The kid got agitated and verbal and they were told they had to leave; there was a lot of outrage.”
Lisa Carling, TDF’s Director of Accessibility Programs, immediately began wondering how they could help kids on the autism spectrum—kids who often display sensory sensitivities, who cannot sit still for long periods of time, who may speak or shout unexpectedly—visit Broadway?
“This is a very neglected audience,” Carling says. But what TDF had not realized, was that the families with children on the spectrum had been neglected, too. “[But] no one was going to the theatre in the family because you couldn’t,” says Bailey.
Now, as one mother says, “It is as if I am able to take my son on an outing that a ‘typical’ family would enjoy because the playing field is leveled for him.” She specifically cherishes the chance to “make memories with my son that will last a lifetime.” And that family will remember theatre gave that to them.
The initiative created an opportunity for theatre in kids with disabilities, but also for their siblings and parents who, Bailey hopes, will continue to be lifelong fans.
The relaxed performances led to another unpredicted result: families with children with disabilities independently attend regular performances on Broadway. The autism-friendly performances presented the circumstances to help children understand the routine of visiting the theatre and what to expect. “There are a lot of young people who needs the supports of being able to leave, who need the house lights not to go out,” Bailey. “We’re introducing a group of people to the theatre who then might be able to go on their own.”
Lisa Carling and Harry Smolin
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood Reflecting on the five decades of TDF history, about every seven years the organization undertakes a new segment of theatre access, while continually mining its existing branches. Next up: making theatre accessible outside of the midtown Manhattan hub.
Create New York is TDF’s most recent endeavor, one that partners with local organizations that prioritize the arts. TDF provides free tickets to members of that group—like The Dream Center in Harlem—to see four shows in one year: one Broadway, one Off-Broadway, one in their neighborhood, and one Dealer’s Choice.
“I think it’s really important that everyone gets to go to Broadway because Broadway belongs to all of New York; I think they need to know there are smaller theatres because that’s what you can afford in the long haul; and you need to know that every neighborhood in this city has art in it,” says Bailey. But the key is that these groups bring theatre back to their community.
After a year of theatre, TDF grants $2,500 to organize a community event around a theme connecting the four works. As neighbors gather, their curiosity in the origin of the event delivers an organic segue way to talk about the theatre that inspired it and build awareness for the arts.
Building on national programs like the National Open Caption Initiative and training for autism-friendly performances in regional theatres, this type of outreach to decentralized locations—where people need to learn theatre is for them—characterizes the next frontier for TDF. As Bailey says, “We’re the ones who want to be able to say, ‘Let’s see if we can create an appetite for theatre in this community.’”
Create New York group with Nick Rashad Burroughs (center), The Dream Center’s Cathleen Meredith (third from right) and TDF’s Allie Relihan (far right)
What the Future Holds Creating an appetite means answering to what people seek in their arts and entertainment. The 2017 study of Public Participation in the Arts from the NEA shows 50 percent of people go to theatre to feel excited and 40 percent go to feel engaged. “Entertainment doesn’t mean dumbed down; to be challenged is entertaining,” Bailey urges.
TDF’s executive director urges there is much work to be done in how the industry attracts audiences in the first place. “What’s next is how we talk about theatre. Not ‘a hilarious comedy from the director of starring the star of,’ because if you’ve never been [to the theatre before] you don’t know the ‘director of.’ You didn’t see that play, and you don’t know who that actor is, and ‘hilarious comedy’ actually doesn’t tell you what you want to know.
“People want to know what the story’s about,” Bailey says. “It’s about how we tell stories, who tells the stories, and how we make sure that people want to hear those stories.”
And so TDF is embarking on its research phase. “I want to start testing: what if half the people got a show description that said this and the other half got a show description that said that? What would that look like and what would I learn?” she wonders. “I’m fascinated in doing research that actually helps people and that is rooted in real life experience.”
Here to Stay For half a century, the behemoth of good will has tackled tickets, accessibility, mentorship and education, community, and, in turn, its own identity. In its consistent response to audience needs, TDF fortifies the industry. Ten years ago, on October 17, 2008, TDF renovated the Times Square booth that launched its impact, erecting the now iconic red steps at 47th Street and Broadway. “[The renovation] was a way of saying ‘Trailer gone. Here forever,’” says Bailey. And with that permanent home, TDF continues to climb.
As the offshoots of its work unfurl from New York City across the country, its guiding principle “that the arts are essential and that everyone should have access to them” remains intact. Though the founders worried about the fate of drama and discourse, the billboards of Times Square seem to shout that theatre is alive and well and people are not only talking about it, they’re loving it.
** Think you learned about all of TDF’s accomplishments and programs? Think again. Flip through the full timeline of TDF’s 50 years and all of their offerings, provided by TDF:
Ruthie Fierberg is the Senior Features Editor of Playbill covering all things theatre and co-hosting the Opening Night Red Carpet livestreams on Playbill’s Facebook. Follow her on Twitter @RuthiesATrain, on Instagram @ruthiefierceberg, or via her website.
Five decades after bursting into the national consciousness, the work and life of Gloria Steinem, writer, organizer, and activist, is brought to the stage in Emily Mann’s Gloria: A Life, starring Christine Lahti as the inimitable Steinem. For Mann, a Tony-nominated playwright and director, the commission was an easy one to accept. As she says, “I wouldn’t have the life I have without Gloria.”
Gloria: A Life Playbill - Opening Night
Recalling her earlier days as a college student in the ’70s, Mann adds, “It was Gloria who said that you could live a full life and be a feminist and believe the radical idea that human beings are equal to men. It was a great relief. It was a revelation.” Steinem was not only drawing attention to the discrimination women faced at the time, she was also activating a generation of women to fight back. “We found our voices,” says Mann. “Anger can be, as she calls it, an energy cell. A way to fuel you rather than paralyze you.”
That same anger is recognizable in a new wave of feminism today, and part of the reason Steinem is once again at the fore of advocacy and women’s rights. But even without the urgency of her message, Mann believes that it’s the nature of Steinem’s teaching that has allowed her to remain relevant.
“She has a capacity for deep listening beyond almost anyone I’ve ever encountered,” says Mann. “When you’re listening and then responding, with your truth, this is how we progress as human beings. We’ve been sitting around campfires for millennia sharing our stories and learning from each other.”
Mann has woven this philosophy of conversation as a catalyst for change into the structure of the play, directed by Tony winner Diane Paulus and currently running at Off-Broadway’s Daryl Roth Theatre. While the first act weaves together details from Steinem’s life and career, the second act is a Talking Circle in which audiences are invited to carry the play’s themes into a conversation of their own and hopefully beyond the walls of the theatre.
“Gloria, at this moment in time, can give us such hope. And the power and vision that we need right now,” says Mann. “Gloria: A Life is a very healing piece and it’s a way for people to find a way to cope and to find community. We need that right now. Men, women, and people of all ethnicities and generations.”
Even before Hamilton hit Broadway, the Tony, Pulitzer Prize, and Olivier Award winner used his platform to send inspiration into the world in 140 characters. Miranda has culled the best of these tweets for the book, illustrated by Jonny Sun.
Best known to theatre fans as the creator and leading actor of the Tony-winning works Hamilton and In The Heights, Miranda has also written the score for Bring It On: The Musical and songs for Disney’s animated feature Moana—the latter which earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song for “How Far I’ll Go.” He is set to star in Disney’s upcoming Mary Poppins Returns,arriving in movie theatres in December.
Miranda also has a number of additional projects in the works, including a television adaptation of Kingkiller Chronicles for Showtime.
With shows like Pretty Woman and Mean Girls recently opening on Broadway and more like Beetlejuice, King Kong, and Tootsie following suit, we look at other movies that were turned into musicals for the Great White Way.
Flip through some of the many movies turned musicals below:
Do You Know All of These Broadway Musicals Based on Movies?
Here’s your chance to be a part of the carnaval del barrio.
Anthony Ramos Teresa Wood
The big screen adaptation of In the Heights is holding a worldwide digital casting search for young talent to help bring Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes’ Tony-winning musical to the big screen.
Warner Bros. is accepting submissions via Cast It Talent through November 7. Those who wish to audition are instructed to choose from one of four packets of sides and perform a provided scene and song on camera. Applicants are encouraged to be familiar with speaking Spanish.
While the sides contain lines for Nina, Daniela, Usnavi, and Sonny, these are not necessarily the roles that performers will be considered for.
The film, directed by Jon M. Chu, is expected to begin production in early summer 2019. A release date is set for June 26, 2020.
As recently announced, Hamilton alum Anthony Ramos, who can currently be seen in A Star Is Born, has been tapped to play Usnavi—the part originally played by Miranda himself—who introduces audiences to the Washington Heights community and its array of characters. Ramos previously played the role in a concert presentation at Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center.
See Lin-Manuel Miranda Stop By the Kennedy Center Production of In the Heights
PS Classics co-founder Philip Chaffin will release an album of 17 classics from the American Songbook, including tunes by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg, and Alan and Marilyn Bergman, on Will He Like Me?, a new song-cycle that spans a modern gay relationship from first meeting to final goodbye.
Set for a November 9 release, Will He Like Me? weaves together nearly a century of American popular songs to re-contextualize it in a post-marriage equality world. Krasker produces the album that is conducted by Richard Carsey and features arrangements and orchestrations by John Baxindine.
The project is special for Chaffin and his partner Tommy Krasker, who formed PS Classics in 2000. “Although the idea for the album had been percolating for a while, it was actually a chance remark in 2013 by Steve Sondheim that kicked it into high gear,” Krasker said. “Philip and I were working on Philip’s fourth solo disc, a salute to lyricist Dorothy Fields, and he wanted to sing her classic ‘Remind Me.’ The refrain went ‘Remind me not to find you so attractive. Remind me that the world is full of men.’ It was written for a woman, and didn’t have an ‘alternate version’ for a man to sing. You couldn’t just change ‘men’ to ‘women,’ because it had to rhyme with two other words later. So I wrote to Steve, knowing how much he loved Dorothy Fields’ work, and asked if he’d supply an alternate lyric. And he was lovely and came up with two, which were wonderful, but he also said, ‘You know, it’s 2013. I think you should just sing the lyric as is.’
“Suddenly a wealth of songs opened up to us. Songs Philip hadn’t been able to sing, because they were meant for a woman to sing about a man, or because the actions described—say, cooking breakfast for someone you love—didn’t conform to standard gender stereotypes.”
The track list follows: “Will He Like Me?” (Jerry Bock & Sheldon Harnick) “It’s a Nice Face/When I Marry Mr. Snow” (Cy Coleman & Dorothy Fields/Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein II) “Cooking Breakfast for the One I Love” (Billy Rose & Henry Tobias) “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was” (Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart) “Man With a Load of Mischief” (John Clifton & Ben Tarver) “Charity’s Soliloquy” (Cy Coleman & Dorothy Fields) “An Occasional Man” (Hugh Martin & Ralph Blane) “Lovely, Lonely Man” (Richard M. Sherman & Robert B. Sherman) “A Tender Spot”/”Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe” (Ervin Drake/Harold Arlen & E.Y. Harburg) “Tom” (Michael John LaChiusa) “But I Could Cook” (Harold Arlen & Dorothy Fields) “I Got Lost in His Arms”/”Don’t Ever Leave Me” (Irving Berlin/Jerome Kern & Oscar Hammerstein II) “Who Gave You Permission?” (Billy Goldenberg & Alan & Marilyn Bergman) “Windflowers” (Jerome Moross & John Latouche)
Will He Like Me? can be pre-ordered on Amazon.com.
