THE NEW GUIDE TO GOING GLOBAL
I spent months talking to the people who bring Broadway to the world. Here are 10 up-to-the-minute takeaways.
Curtain up on the inaugural edition of Jaques, a biweekly newsletter about the international theater industry. This first full post is free for all readers. Welcome! (Wondering what this Jaques thing is all about? Check out last week’s explanatory post.)
In prepping to launch this new endeavor, I’ve spent the last several months talking to industry insiders around the world about the global theater business and I’ve come away with a big-picture perspective on what’s happening internationally.
For this first issue of Jaques, I’m leading with that, pulling together all my reporting and breaking it down into the biggest trends and insights that have emerged along the way. It’s both a broad survey of the things I’ve learned so far and a preview of the topics I’ll dig into in future posts.
But first up: My bullet-list bulletin of global theater news.
ABROAD/WAY BULLETPOINTS
Hot off the press: The Hamilton international tour just announced a Singapore run starting April 19, 2024 following its stop in Abu Dhabi (Jan. 17-Feb. 4, 2024). Produced by the Australia-based Michael Cassel Group, this licensed, English-language replica of the Broadway production (starring a cast of alumni actors from Hamilton outposts around the world) opened last month in Manila (Sept. 17-Nov. 26). In outlets like Tatler Asia and Rappler, Cassel highlighted the Filipino capital’s increasing prominence in the global theater market: “You have amazing audiences that embrace musical theater here [in Manila],” he told Rappler. “It’s a natural choice.”
Meanwhile, Hamilton’s German-language iteration ended its year-long run in Hamburg Oct. 15, days after it won the top prize at the German Musical Theater Awards. In the New York Times, Stage Entertainment’s Stephen Jaekel attributed the shuttering to ticket sales that didn’t meet high expectations: “Economically, it makes more sense for us to have a wonderful one-year run, instead of losing the money that you’ve made by prolonging it for too long,” he said. The closing also prompted some German-language handwringing in Welt, where writer Jakob Hayner blamed the closing on Germans’ resistance to hip-hop and a “provinziell” (provincial) attitude. Via Google Translate: “Hamilton showed great politics as a musical, but the time in Germany doesn’t seem to be ready for that.”
Earlier this month two European productions of Chicago opened on the same day: a Broadway replica production from SOM Produce in Madrid (Oct. 5-Dec. 3) and a non-replica in Milan (Oct. 5-Jan. 28, 2024) from Stage Entertainment.
Director Gísli Örn Gardarsson’s non-replica staging of Disney’s Frozen debuted in Oslo (Oct. 14-Dec. 31). Up next in its Scandinavian tour: Reykjavik, Stockholm, Helsinki and Copenhagen—same creative team, same production, but different local-language casts for each stop.
Japan’s well-known, all-female musical theater troupe Takarazuka Revue Co. canceled performances through Nov. 23, following the sudden death of a 25-year-old company member that is still under investigation. Takarazuka’s statement in The Japan News explains, “[I]t is difficult to resume performances before an environment allowing our members to stand on stage feeling secure and customers to watch them perform [comfortably] is prepared.”
There’s a Madonna jukebox musical in Paris called Holidays, and the New York Times has the deets: Four actors, recorded music tracks, an original plot about a quartet of childhood friends, and a local audience that has at last begun to take an interest in the form. “The newfound popularity of American-style musicals in France means there is a hunger for new titles, while producing costs are lower than on Broadway,” writes Paris-based critic Laura Cappelle. “Holidays came together in a year or so with a budget hovering around $1 million, according to its lead producer, Stéphane Pontacq.”
In her BroadwayDNA newsletter, fellow Substacker Natalie Rine has a nifty roundup of Dear Evan Hansen’s global expansion. Local-language productions in Seoul and Austria/Germany both launch in March 2024, and then an Oz production opens in Oct. 2024 from Sydney Theater Company and Michael Cassel Group.
International goliath (and increasingly influential Broadway landlord) Ambassador Theatre Group abruptly announced a new leader last week, as chief executive Mark Cornell stepped down suddenly to be replaced by Ted Stimpson, formerly of ticketing company Go City. Over at The Stage, editor Alistair Smith speculates it’s a move to make ATG more attractive to buyers: “[It] feels as though … Stimpson has been brought in to build the group up for sale—something that he has experience with and which ATG’s private equity owner Providence probably feels is overdue, given the relatively short turnarounds such businesses tend to work to. […] [One] would expect to see Stimpson focusing on how ATG can expand and make the most of its online ticketing operation, which is already one of the biggest players in UK theatre.”
SPOTLIGHT: THE VIEW FROM 20,000 FEET
Ask dozens of people what’s happening in global theater (like I did), and you’ll get dozens of distinctly individual answers, informed by the specifics of the shows they’ve worked on, the companies they’ve partnered with and the regions where they have the most experience.
Even so, in all my conversations some common themes and trends coalesced. In this first SPOTLIGHT STORY, I highlight:
10 takeaways on the state of the international theater industry in 2023
Quotes and insights from the most active producers of Broadway-style theater around the world, including companies like Disney Theatrical Productions and Stage Entertainment as well as the folks behind trailblazing shows like Chicago and newer international players like Moulin Rouge!
A heatmap of rising markets to watch
A glimpse of what I’ve got planned for future editions of Jaques
Let’s start with that bird’s-eye view, organized into up-to-the-minute upshots:
1. THINKING INTERNATIONALLY IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER—FOR EVERYONE
Talk to anyone on Broadway and beyond, and it becomes clear pretty quickly that interest in global markets is at a new high. That’s due in part to the overall maturity of the most established sectors and the increasing prominence of the successes that can be had abroad in cities like Hamburg and Tokyo. “There’s a lot more awareness and understanding now of the enormous value of what you can do beyond an English-language production,” says Tali Pelman, Stage Entertainment’s Group Creative Managing Director.
But the imperative to look beyond borders is made even more urgent by the realities of creating and producing theater in a post-lockdown world, where rising costs and shifting consumer habits have jacked up the risk. As it gets tougher to make a show’s financials work on Broadway alone, people are looking around the world to shore up the model.
And not just on Broadway. London-based producer Michael Harrison, whose resume includes the current, buzzy revival of Sunset Boulevard with Nicole Scherzinger, recently toured a production of Singin’ In The Rain with a first stop in London followed by a season in Tokyo, a UK tour and a final stint in Toronto.
“In the past there’s always been a link between West End and Broadway, but now it’s got to go beyond that,” Harrison says. “We’ve all got to be a little bit more joined up, because every market is just getting harder and harder on its own.”
2. BUILD IT IN FROM THE BEGINNING
$15 million to $20 million: That’s the new norm for the cost of creating, developing and producing a big new Broadway musical. International producers, investing in an American production in exchange for the rights to present the show in their own markets, have become an important component in raising the hefty sums required for new, large-scale work.
“When you get front money from potential licensors, that means they not only get the territory rights but they’re more likely to actually to do the show because they’ve got a stake in the original production,” says Colin Ingram, the producer of Back to the Future and the internationally ubiquitous Ghost. “It’s a bit like the film world: You’re raising money through distribution deals.”
That’s the kind of math that producers have to be doing from the jump. As Alecia Parker, a leading player in the expansion of Chicago to 63 countries in 36 languages, notes, “The newbie often is surprised by how early you have to start thinking about international rights and creative agreements.”
3. DON’T DO IT ALONE
If there’s one thing everyone I talked to seems to agree on, it’s that no one knows the ins and outs of a territory like the local presenters. Their resources and expertise are invaluable—and so is their ability to shoulder production responsibilities and share risk.
“Those partnerships are key,” says Felipe Gamba, Disney Theatrical’s VP of International Strategy and Licensed Partnerships. “A big part of my job is finding and maintaining relationships with local partners who have the right infrastructure in terms of casting and production, who have access to the right venues, and who have a proven track record to market and ticket a show and get to audiences.”
4. GET READY FOR LOGISTICAL HEADACHES…
The pandemic lockdown prompted a backlog in shows whose international runs needed to be rescheduled—and that bottleneck does’t seem to be going away, as new productions also move in to jostle for berths in territories that have far fewer theaters than Broadway or the West End.
For the biggest Broadway and West End replica productions that do manage to score venues, theatermakers say it’s vital to supplement a show’s original team of creatives with a deep bench of associates trained to help execute multiple productions around the world. “The quicker you can put a team of associates onto a show, or even two teams, the better,” says Dan Hinde, Stage Entertainment’s Group Content Managing Director. “It’s a whole business to get an international expansion going.”
Once it does get going, get prepped for the headaches of securing visas—seemingly tougher than ever to manage—and for sticker shock from the now-astronomical price tags of travel and freight.
5. … AND KEEP UP ON CURRENT EVENTS
Theater doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and world news will always have unexpected impacts. The war in the Ukraine affected the supply chain of wood used to build sets in Germany; the violence in Gaza caused security reverberations from Broadway to Singapore. Exchange rates and currency volatility can also throw a significant wrench into the financial pacts between international partners.
6. REPLICA VS. NON-REPLICA, ENGLISH VS. LOCAL LANGUAGE
Does the show you’re seeing in Madrid look exactly like it does on Broadway? That’s a replica production, produced in partnership with local presenters who license the rights to stage the Broadway version with the participation of the original creative team.
The rules of thumb are: Protect a show’s brand by locking in replica productions in major territories, and let non-replicas come later in a title’s lifespan. International tours travel in the original English, but if a show sits down in a territory for any significant period of time, it’ll connect better with a wider array of audiences if it’s translated into the local language.
But like everything in theater, no rules are hard and fast. The replica/non-replica balance depends on factors like a show’s four-quadrant popularity, the viability of an expensive replica vs. the size of a particular market, and where underlying rights reside. For every title, at every stage in its life, its place on the spectrum between replica and non-replica, English and local language, will be different.
Case in point: Producer Mike Bosner says he’s strategizing very differently for the international rollout of Shucked, the Broadway comedy with a grassroots fanbase, than he did for the Carole King musical Beautiful. “I’m not going to be so precious, and our creative team isn’t going to be so precious, about how we present Shucked in different territories,” he says. “There’s still a style of storytelling that we want to protect, but I don’t think it needs to look, sound, and move the exact same way that it does on Broadway.”
7. GROWTH MARKETS ARE HOMEGROWING THEIR OWN SHOWS, TOO
Once musical theater hits a critical mass of fans in any region (often in the wake of a trailblazing local staging of Phantom of the Opera or The Lion King), a territory’s audience doesn’t just want to see the next big Broadway or West End show. They want homegrown musicals, created by their own nation’s artists and telling stories that carry unique cultural resonance. In South Korea, for example, the entire theater industry is making a concerted push to create their own K-musicals and, eventually, export them around the world. (More on that in the next edition of this newsletter.)
Hopes are similar in Spain, where over the last decade Madrid has swiftly become the bustling Broadway of the Spanish-speaking world. “We have so many great stories and great musicians here,” says Julia Gómez Cora, the former Stage exec who is now an independent producer in Madrid. “What I would like to see more is not only that we have more Broadway shows here, but also more local development of shows.”
8. SOMETIMES SMALLER SHOWS NEED PASSPORTS TOO
It’s easy to focus on the biggest titles traveling the world, but there’s opportunity for smaller-scale productions as well. In the wake of the pandemic, for instance, Broadway Asia found notable traction with the 1980 comic whodunit Shear Madness in China, where there are now eight permanent installations of the show in eight different cities.
9. INTERNATIONAL FESTIVALS AND TOURS ABOUND—BUT NOT IN NEW YORK
I talk a lot about Broadway-scale commercial theater because that’s largely been my focus at Variety, and the commercial sector is where the majority of my contacts are (for now!). But there’s a whole spectrum of international touring shows and festivals around the world, many of them operating on a non-profit/subsidized model. Lately, however, there’s concern that in the epicenter of the American theater industry, New York, opportunities for this kind of work are disappearing as annual events like the Lincoln Center Festival disappear and organizations like Brooklyn Academy of Music reduce and refocus programming. Veterans on the nonprofit scene now worry that New York artists and audiences alike are getting left out of the cultural conversation.
10. EVERYONE GRUMBLES, BUT MOST THINK BROADWAY’S STILL WORTH IT
As Stateside costs become more and more exorbitant, some producers have begun to question whether the high risk of Broadway is worth it when there are other, much more cost-effective locales to develop a show. Even through all the muttering, however, the majority of people I talked to admit, usually grudgingly, that Broadway is still a key stop on the path to international success for most new works.
That’s down to a number of factors, including the massive average ticket price a hit show can command on Broadway, the consumer and industry status conferred on a show by Tony Awards attention, and the ongoing visibility of a permanent production in a city that’s a magnet for international tourists.
“Broadway is a long-term market, and it really promotes your brand on a worldwide basis,” says Carmen Pavlovic, the Sydney-based Global Creatures CEO who’s expanded Moulin Rouge! to nine productions (and counting) around the world. “It’s just really doing heavy lifting for you, bringing in new audiences.”
THE HEATMAP
Spin the globe to look over the most prominent theater markets in the world, and you’ll see long-established outposts (Hamburg, Tokyo, the Australian cities circuit), more recently established hotspots (Seoul, Madrid) and reliable Latin American stops (Mexico City, São Paolo). In all my conversations, three territories stood out as the ones to watch right now:
The Philippines
Filipino audiences have a deep connection to musical theater and musical talent (see: Lea Salonga), making Manila an increasing draw for shows traveling the Pacific Rim. Aussie producer Michael Cassel is so bullish on the territory that he launched the international tour of Hamilton there.India
“It’s the most beautiful theater I’ve ever seen” is basically a verbatim quote from every single person I talked to who’s visited the new Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Center in Mumbai. Broadway types are hoping the venue is the key to unlocking a market where local love for song-and-dance Bollywood suggests it’s a natural for musical theater. The international tour of Sound of Music had a well-received run at the Mambani Center earlier this year; Mamma Mia! is on the docket for November.The Middle East
Matilda just played Dubai; The Phantom of the Opera recently opened in Riyadh; Hamilton hits Abu Dhabi in February. Even given the region’s cultural differences with the west (not to mention concerns over some nations’ track records on human rights), there’s optimism that a solid Middle Eastern circuit could someday shape up.
Wait, what’s up with China? Depends who you ask. Some rave about the lavish venues, the growing consumer interest in musicals, and the increasingly experienced talent both onstage and behind the scenes. Others are more cautious, citing the tension between a younger generation hungry for western culture and a restrictive government that doesn’t always have the best relationship with the U.S. Apparently I’ve been writing about China’s potential for 15+ years: “China Big on Broadway,” reads the headline of this story I wrote wayyy back in 2007. Based on my recent conversations, there may well be more opportunities in China than ever—and just as many cross-cultural hurdles to overcome.
COMING UP IN JAQUES
With all that as background and fodder for further newsletters, here’s what’s on tap for Jaques in the coming weeks:
Market spotlights on South Korea, India and Spain
A breakdown of the cost differences between Broadway and the West End, and the factors responsible for the disparity
Making musicals out of manga
The mystery of panto
How a rollerskating train musical became Germany’s Phantom of the Opera
… and much more. Don’t miss it.