Getting a job on Broadway these days is harder than it ever was before. Regular plays no longer seem to happen at all; they’re all big show musicals. Even worse, most of them are now based on movies, believe it or not. For instance, the Dolly Parton movie, Nine to Five, is being made into a musical. I love the movie, but I frankly don’t understand why someone decided to turn it into a play.
On top of all this, it seems as though movie actors are getting roles on Broadway more and more often. Some plays seem as if they are “star vehicles” for actors who are already big on the national scene.
That’s just not right. That’s not what Broadway used to be about. There once was a time when getting a job on Broadway was relatively simple if you had talent. And I’m not just talking about the acting roles; writers could create works of art and put them on the stage and gain national followings. Those were the days of Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, the great American playwrights. Nowadays, the most popular new musicals are schlock; pure entertainment plays like Mamma Mia! with no artistic merit.
And the worst part is that in this terrible economy, no producer wants to take a chance on anything. There’s a lot of work that goes into a production of say, Les Misérables, what with the costumes and the barricades and the rotating stage and all the techies that need to be hired, and producers in this economy would rather spend less money on sets and techies and “goodness” and more money on getting Hollywood stars to bring in the audience to see some schlock play that really isn’t very good. This makes it virtually impossible to get a job on Broadway if you’re unknown. Of course, David Mamet is still out there writing, but he’s about the last of the playwrights who could possibly write an original, non-musical play and have it performed by stage actors. Everything else has become like an insurance risk; if it’s unknown it won’t be produced. Broadway has become worse than Hollywood. At least Hollywood gave us Juno.
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