How to make a hit Broadway show in 2024
And the current state of the theater industry
I shrieked a bit when it was announced Sarah Snook’s West End one-woman production of The Picture of Dorian Gray was coming to Broadway next spring. I’d been waiting for this since Snook’s run in the show began earlier this winter. In fact, I expected it. The same thing had happened with Jodie Comer’s Prima Facie—which was another prestige play that started on the West End, got success, and moved across the pond to Broadway for a short run.
Huh, I thought to myself. Prima Facie was also a one-woman show, starring a mega-famous A-list actress from a prestige television show. Then I started thinking about all the other shows I’d seen or wanted to see over the last three years—Plaza Suite with Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, Funny Girl with Beanie Feldstein, A Doll’s House with Jessica Chastain, Cabaret with Eddie Redmayne, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window with Oscar Isaac, Chicago with Ariana Madix. What did all of these shows happen to have in common? Starring celebrity names. Okayyyy. I kept investigating, scrolling through Broadway productions of the last few years. That’s when I started noticing a Broadway nomenclature, a checklist of sorts for what “makes” a successful Broadway show right now.
Point blank: Broadway still hasn’t financially come back from its pre-pandemic days. And because of that, a show can’t just be good anymore—a Broadway show now has to be a financial success. Forget the reviews or the Tony noms. None of it matters if there aren’t ticket sales.
The creativity that bred a show like Hamilton isn’t the priority right now. Instead it feels a little like everyone’s grasping for the same million-dollar lottery ticket, but stumbling or just plain falling flat on their face. People are throwing stuff at the wall, seeing what sticks and doesn’t both—creatively and financially. It’s like a bingo card, and each square is a possible component of a Broadway show.
Don’t be mistaken, I will be sat come spring 2025 at whatever theater Sarah Snook will grace in her one-woman rendition of The Picture of Dorian Grey. I actually can’t wait. But once you see the business patterns of Broadway that inform the “creativity” we see executed on stage, you can’t unsee them.
Make your ticket prices so expensive that theater reverts to the highly exclusive, prestige art form it once was
While scoring a ticket for a Broadway show isn’t nearly as much of a feat as getting a ticket to the Era’s Tour, they still cost a pretty penny. In fact, Broadway ticket prices are currently at an all-time high. These days you can expect to pay an average of $128 to see a show on stage. To put this into perspective, Broadway League states ticket prices were about $103.11 during the 2015/2016 season—the same season that saw the opening of Hamilton, which was easily the hottest ticket in town for nearly two years. While ticket prices are high, Broadway League’s 2022/2023 End of Year report states actual admissions are 16.8% lower than the record-breaking 2018/2019 season. That lower admission is perhaps part of why we’re seeing such high ticket prices. The big whigs of Broadway have to make a profit after all, so they’re compensating for money lost from low attendance.
Hire a buzzy celebrity to star in your show
For Broadway producers to justify that $128 price tag, they’ve got to deliver a product that feels worth it. So they give us celebrities they think we’ll want to see sweating on stage a few feet away from us. There’s Ariana Madix in Chicago, Edie Redmayne in Caberet, Hugh Jackman in The Music Man, Beanie Feldstein in Funny Girl, Lola Tung’s short run in Hadestown, Jeremy Strong and Michael Imperioli in Enemy of the People, the entire cast of Merrily We Roll Along. The list goes on. Once upon a time, it was more of a novelty for a Hollywood actor or singer to make the jump from screen to stage. It often meant a pay cut, but it was indicative of that actor’s desire to show that they could handle the strenuous work of ten shows a week. Now it’s pretty much a guaranteed fact.
Favor a show with a small, lean cast
Ensemble casts still exist on Broadway, but it can sometimes be more cost-effective to have a smaller cast, especially when it comes to plays. When Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick starred in a 2022 rendition of Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite together, they were only joined by three other castmates with minor parts. Smaller casts mean less people on payroll, rather than a ton of people they can’t afford. “But no one would ever hire a bunch of people they can’t afford!” you might be thinking to yourself. Think again. As they were simultaneously being nominated for Tony awards, the cast of the 2022 musical Paradise Square also wasn’t getting paid on time—which was in large part because the show was never correctly budgeted, as the show’s former production stage manager said to Variety in July 2022.
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Revive a once-popular musical…
Everyone loves a comeback, especially Broadway. The business always knows it’s got a relatively sure thing when they revive a classic play or musical. You’ve already got an existing text people are fans of. There’s a high likelihood some high school theater kid in New Jersey has already listened to the soundtrack (or watched a bootleg of the whole show on YouTube). Hugh Jackman in The Music Man was basically every Gen X white woman’s sex dream come to life, while Lea Michele in Funny Girl felt like a meta art imitating life for any extremely online, now-20 something recovering Glee fan. There’s plenty of conversation in all corners of the entertainment industry about how there’s little to no original content anymore, and it comes down to this basic fact: it’s easier to make money off an existing zeitgeist than to try to make one on your own.
…or make an original jukebox or genre-bending musical that appeals to a wider audience
If you are going to make something new, you have to push the envelope. Take a page out of Moulin Rouge! or & Juliet’s book by creating a jukebox musical, using modern tunes that even the most theater-apathetic New York tourist can tap their feet to. Or maybe you, like just about everyone else, want to replicate the success of Hamilton with a genre-bending production that defies people’s expectations of what a musical should be. Need some inspo? Well, Six uses rock music and the setting of a rock band competition to create its own historical reinvention of the stories of Henry VIII’s six wives so, ya know… sky’s the limit.
Don’t hire many theater actors
Hey, they’ve gotta free up that budget for Lea Michele, remember? The theater is already a cut-throat business that’s hard to find financial success in. According to Backstage.com, most non-celebrity Broadway actors can expect salary between $45,000 and $220,000. The growing reliance on celebrity names to star in shows and bring in more crowds means other trained theater actors don’t get their chance at a big break that could give them opportunities to book other jobs. No hard feelings, kid. That’s just *jazz hands* show bizz, baby.
And if you do, make sure they’re semi-famous on TikTok
Not quite a celebrity, but in this modern era, a TikTok personality with a mild amount of fame is the closest thing most theater actors can get to the same level of recognizability as the A-listers currently taking their jobs. And it’s something they can leverage to book bigger jobs. To make it on Broadway these days, you have to be someone people want to see—someone that can help really sell a show. That’s part of how Amber Ardolino went from ensemble dancer and swing to briefly starring in A Beautiful Noise, and Julie Benko went from Fanny Bryce understudy to everyone’s favorite underdog Fanny Bryce during the chaotic Beanie-Feldstein-to-Lea-Michele Fanny hand-off in the Funny Girl revival.
Make it a one-woman show
It’s pretty simple: Starring celeb that will encourage high-priced ticket purchases + They’re the only person in your cast, therefore the only actor you need to pay = The smartest business decision you could ever make.