ABROAD/WAY BULLETPOINTS FOR APRIL 15, 2025
New ticket data out of Seoul and London, musical theater training programs in Tokyo and São Paulo, Filipino talent on Broadway, and more
Welcome to the latest edition of ABROAD/WAY BULLETPOINTS, my regular roundup of theater headlines from around the world. New to Jaques? Check out this handy explainer.
Theater was the fastest-growing segment of Korean live entertainment ticket sales in 2024, climbing 28% over 2023, according to a Nol Universe analysis of Interpark ticketing data (and reported by Maeil Business Newspaper). Local runs of Kinky Boots, the homegrown musical Frankenstein, and Chicago were the top-selling musicals of the year, with Shear Madness and a Korean play called Hangover among the non-musical sales draws. As revealed in stats previously announced by the Korea Performing Arts Box Office Information System, the nation’s overall theater sales in 2024 hit 665.5 billion Korean won (~$470 million), or 45.9% of the country’s total live entertainment ticket sales revenue for that year.
West End audiences have plateaued year over year, according to a new Society of London Theater report covered in The Stage. “SOLT’s update on attendances for 2024 shows that 17.1 million attended performances—the same as in 2023,” writes Matthew Hemley. “When compared with 2019—the year before theatres shut due to the pandemic lockdowns—attendances are up 11% (from 15.3 million).” There were 18,500 performances in 2024, compared to 19,224 in 2022, the last time similar data was released. Also included the report:
The sector supports 230,000 “full-time equivalent jobs,”
local energy prices have spiked by 120% compared to 2019, and
average ticket prices “remain 5% lower in real terms than in 2019” (when the average price paid was £52.17 or ~$69).
As musical theater markets continue to grow around the globe, training programs for creatives and performers are also on the rise: Japanese news and research outlet Pia reports that the Musical Theater Writing Program—a program produced and planned by Toho, the major Japanese entertainment company, and organized by Japan’s Film and Theater Culture Association—will hold a second edition in 2025 following its inaugural outing last year. The Tokyo initiative (July 20-Aug. 20) will once again be led by two professors from Korea National University of Arts, and a second annual showcase of the students’ new work will be produced in Tokyo in December. Meanwhile, “Brazilian musical theater will gain a new space for intensive training with the São Paulo on Broadway Intensive, an 18-hour program aimed at improving the skills of actors, singers and dancers who work or wish to work in the genre,” according to an announcement from the São Paulo School of Theater’s Performing Arts Training Center. The three-day program (June 19-21) will be taught by local stage pros.
Speaking of Brazil’s biggest theater market: The news arm of internet company Terra has a handy round-up of musical titles coming to São Paulo in 2025, from Bare: A Pop Opera to Beetlejuice to A Chorus Line to homegrown titles like Chatô and the Associated Diaries - 100 Years of a Passion.
Filipino talent on Broadway is getting a spotlight thanks to Lea Salonga and a series of Instagram posts that inspired headlines in Filipino outlets including Spot. Salonga, the Philippines native who was launched into musical theater stardom when she headlined the original West End and Broadway productions of Miss Saigon, noted in an initial IG post that four Broadway shows currently star actors from the Filipino diaspora: Darren Criss (Maybe Happy Ending), Eva Noblezada (Cabaret), Nicole Scherzinger (Sunset Boulevard), and Salonga herself, now in the Sondheim review Old Friends. Subsequent posts added more names to the list, including Tati Córdoba (Real Women Have Curves), Kay Sibal (Six), Conrad Ricamora (Oh, Mary), Claire-Marie Hall (Operation Mincemeat), and more.
The Philippines is a busy and enthusiastic market for Broadway-style musicals. I’ve got the deets in these two deep-dives from the fall:
The Indian premiere of The Phantom of the Opera is “the most successful international musical in the past year” at the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Center in Mumbai, as noted in Fortune India. A statement from NMACC announced a tally of 55,000 audience members across the 32 local performances of Phantom, and “the statement adds that NMACC has so far hosted more than 7,000 artists and welcomed over 2 million visitors. Previous productions include The Sound of Music, Mamma Mia!, Matilda the Musical, Life of Pi, and The Great Indian Musical: Civilization to Nation.”
Broadway ticket prices continue to make international headlines. “When—and why—did Broadway tickets get so expensive?” was the question addressed in a recent radio show on Canada’s CBC (and highlighted on the CBC website). Among the episode’s guests: New York Times reporter Michael Paulson, Toronto theater critic Glenn Sumi, and CBC reporter Jackson Weaver, all weighing in on rising production costs, star casting, Taylor Swift-era pricing, and whether Denzel is worth a $900 ticket. Meanwhile, a story in Aussie Theatre takes a stance and decries the celebrity-powered trend: “[T]he price tags attached to seeing these A-list actors in person are leaving many fans—and wallets—feeling painfully excluded.”
Ahead of a three-week run of Six in Barcelona, there’s an interview with “the queen of the musical” Julia Gómez Cora, “the visionary who, against all odds, transformed Madrid’s Gran Vía into the Spanish Broadway,” writes Karelia Vázquez in La Vanguardia (via Google Translate). In the interview, Gómez Cora, the former Stage Entertainment exec who won the medal of the Community of Madrid for her major role in the rise of Madrid’s theater market, discusses the appeal of Six—including its Gen-Z authors, pop music and an 80-minute run time (“young audiences can’t sit still for three and a half hours anymore”)—and what makes a city a good theater destination (particularly complementary local offerings, which in Madrid include “gastronomy, shopping, and a visit to the Bernabéu [Stadium]”). Of her latest show, she notes: “Six isn’t going to be shown outside of Barcelona, and 15% of the tickets were bought by people from Madrid.”
Get a closer look at Madrid’s booming theater market in this story from last year, including insights from Gómez Cora:
The Ontario government will pony up $35 million CAD (or ~$25 million USD) over three years to help rebuild a major theater venue for the region’s venerable Shaw Festival. The festival had previously announced that the venue’s ongoing disrepair would force the fest to shutter the 305-seat house. The new building, writes Joshua Chong in the Toronto Star, will include “about 20% more seats, accessible front-of-house areas and new rehearsal space. The project is expected to be completed by the spring of 2029.”
In an update to a recent SPOTLIGHT STORY of mine: The Berlin-based, Australian director Barrie Kosky is at work on a new musical adaptation of Yentl, his first project developed in the U.S., according to Joshua Barone in The New York Times. It’s one of three shows recently announced as part of the Civis Hope Commissions at the Fisher Center at Bard, the university in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. Based on a short story by Isaac Bashevis Singer (which was famously adapted into a 1983 movie by director-star Barbra Streisand), the new stage version of Yentl will have a book and lyrics by Lisa Kron (Fun Home) and a score by frequent Kosky collaborator Adam Benzwi. The project is described as “a return to the source material, with a style rooted in Yiddish theater and music hall traditions.”
AND ICYMI
Get a fuller look at Kosky’s European work and his initial forays in the U.S. in last month’s interview with this busy director:
THE AUSTRALIAN DIRECTOR CANONIZING AMERICAN MUSICALS ON GERMAN STAGES
Barrie Kosky brought Broadway to Berlin in a big way—and he's got even more musicals on the way.