“The arts is dying in this country”: The crisis threatening live shows
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What recent events have impacted major musical productions?
They were some of the biggest stage productions in the country, starring some of the biggest names in the business.
Natalie Bassing-Bray, just a gift. What a performer. I was blown away.
The peak of Australian musical theatre right now. Rob Mills, so phenomenally talented. Perfect for the role. But in the space of just two weeks, Beetlejuice and Waitress the Musical have both had their tours cut short, the cast left devastated.
The amount of work and effort that every single person in this cast and crew and, you know, company have put into this show is devastating that it comes to an end so abruptly.
Now, stars like Natalie Bassingthwaite are sounding the alarm as the industry struggles to stay afloat amid rising costs and weakening sales.
Oh, my heart, it's hurting so much for this industry of ours across the board. You know, it's not just musical theatre, it's theatre, it's festivals, it's shows of any kind. The arts is dying in this country and that hurts my heart beyond anything.
I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to 7am. Today, arts executive John Glenn on the crisis threatening the future of theatre and live shows and what can be done to save the industry.
It's Wednesday, July 1. So, John, in the last two weeks, two big musical productions, Beetlejuice and Waitress, were both cancelled without much warning. So to begin with, tell me a bit about what we know about why those decisions were made.
It's not just that one. It was also Back to the Future recently and just last week, Aida, the big opera that was going to be coming to Australia exclusively, has cancelled for the second year in a row. CHOIR SINGS So it's definitely a trend at the moment with major productions. And I'm not sure that people understand the scale and the cost of these productions. There's multi-millions of dollars that go into getting a show ready for its first performance in its first season. When you think about building sets, company management that then does auditions, does the casting and setting up the lighting design, sound design, and then going into rehearsals.
And all of that costs millions and millions of dollars to get just to the very first performance of the very first season.
Once you get performing, there's also hundreds of thousands of dollars per week in running costs for salaries and venue costs and labor costs and all those sorts of things. So the theory of a music theater production is that once you get on stage, you want enough ticket sales to pay for the weekly running costs, but to then start chipping away at the initial costs of the production that millions have already spent. And I think particularly with productions like Back to the Future, Beetlejuice and Waitress, I mean, Beetlejuice is a very expensive show. I want something to believe in All I've done Take me where my soul can The sets and costumes are very expensive. It would have a very expensive weekly running cost.
And so, you know, all of the economics of that just don't add up if you don't have enough in the box office when you start your season.
So it sounds like these productions are getting locked into a bit of a death spiral here with rising costs, slow sales. How bad does it have to get for the call to be made to actually cancel a show's run? I mean, producers would have to be really looking down the barrel of significant financial losses.
Yeah, well, you can imagine if their sales are not strong up front, it's the spiral, as you say, of not having sufficient sales up front and then not seeing much of an advance starting to appear in other cities. The other problem is the routing. So being able to secure a sensible route for a tour across the country and A big musical survives on the success of their season in Sydney and Melbourne and certainly Brisbane as well now before you even consider other markets like Adelaide and Perth. You need to see those advanced sales.
How are rising costs affecting the theatre industry?
You need to know that you can seamlessly go from one market to another. It's extraordinary how expensive it is to move a production like that from one city to another.
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