Broadway and Beyond

Kanye West bursts out, Tony's pay attention please

Last night, MTV held its annual MTV Music Video Awards.  And last night, Kanye West bum-rushed the stage while Taylor Swift was accepting her award for Best Female Video to express his opinion, which was different than that of the people who voted for the category.  Watch it here.  So what does this have to do with Broadway?   (Well, first off, if you invite Kanye to the Tony's keep him away from the stage except when he raps.)

Awards ceremonies are big fanfests, and on MTV, the voters are the fans.  MTV knows that it is cannot survive without engaging its viewers.  So they have built two major awards shows around their fans. To make the fans watch the shows, they invite major stars from cross disciplines and give them awards. (Even ESPN has an awards show based on viewers/fan votes.)  So what can The Tony Awards learn from MTV?  Mainly that it is all about the fans and access to the stars.

The Tony Awards are trying to be more relevant and mainstream.  In recent years, they have changed the format of the show as well as brought in TV and Film stars to host the program. In my opinion they need to go further and make the show more about the theatergoers.  To that end, here are a few suggestions:

• Allow the critics to vote for the Tony's again.  Dropping them is just plain stupid.  They are the ones who actually see every performance, as opposed to many Broadway League members who live out of town are unable to attend many of the shows.  As I have reported in a previous blog, as much as 40% of the voters for the Tony awards do not pick up their Tony voter tickets to see the shows.  (This may seem to contradict my previous notion that it doesn't matter to the viewing audience who votes.  However, I think the backlash from the critics and the notion that they will not promote the awards show in their columns in protest is a good reason to think again about the issue.  Even though print media is becoming irrelevant in many cases, it is not dead yet.)
• Add a new set of awards in the major categories called 'Fan Favorite' (or something better).  During the season there would be ads in the Playbill's telling theatergoers where to vote for their favorite shows and performances.  Then the winners could be announced live during the show.  
• Drop Radio City Music Hall and hold the awards ceremony somewhere more intimate and relevant to Broadway.  A Broadway house would be nice, however there would be a lot of logistical problems involved. The problem with Radio City Music Hall is that the stage is too large and the performances look out of place within that space. Therefore the shows are not able to showcase their production numbers in the best possible way. As far as accommodating all the people who would want to attend the awards ceremony, I think many people would be happy not to attend the awards show and would rather attend the parties after the show is over instead.
• Steal some of the ideas that the Grammys have imposed on their show in the past few years. Specifically, I would like to see the Tony Awards mix-and-match stars singing songs together that they normally would not have an opportunity to sing.  (Like this highly unlikely pairing!)  They should also stop trying to do opening medley's of the nominated shows. The results are muddled and do not show off the shows in their best light.
• Quality control: How the production numbers are presented and filmed is crucial.  The television program is a big advertisement for Broadway.  And as such there should be some quality control in place to make sure Broadway looks exciting, engaging and fun.  The TV show director has a tremendously difficult job in presenting the various performances on the stage.  Unfortunately, I am mostly disappointed with how those numbers are filmed.  I feel that The Tony Awards should help the shows put their best foot forward.  As it stands now, the shows have to pay, for musicals upwards of $200,000, to be on the program.  The limits of the stage, finances and schedule make it hard to create numbers that shine on TV, especially when these same numbers are conceived for the stage.  So when those same numbers are filmed poorly, it doesn't help matters.  Some more thought needs to go into the filming of the production numbers.  And I think a smaller theater would help.
• How about the League initiates a month of fan events prior to the Tony Awards.  Currently they are hosting Back2Broadway.  Why not something similar leading up to the awards?

Grammy's, Tony's, Awards and relevance

This year's Grammy Awards on CBS received 2 million more viewers than last year's telecast. So what did they do right that made people tune in. Well to start with, they revamped the awards telecast two years ago and now people are starting to hear, from friends, you better watch the show, it's great! The show is mostly performances and entertainment, and for my money, that's why it attracts a decent audience. 19.2 million viewers tuned in this year and they were treated to some outstanding performances. The Jonas Brothers rocked it out with Stevie Wonder. That was a great pairing of artists. I can't recall if it was last year or the year before, but Mary J Blige performing One with Bono was a major highlight of that year's telecast. It is the surprising pairing of disparate artists singing each others music that makes the show so exciting and interesting to watch. Since these artists would never tour together the broadcast is the only time we'd get to see them performing on the same stage. The one drawback to the number of performances they have on the show is the diminishment of the awards presented on the air.

So what can the Tony Awards learn from the Grammy's? A lot. The Tony's have made some pretty big strides in the last couple of years to add more performances and showcase as many shows running on Broadway as possible. One of the biggest problems they face, however, is recognition by a wide audience. I would guess (and correct me if I am wrong) that the majority of TV watchers are not Broadway theater goers and therefore do not know the various artists and creative talent being honored by the awards. So how do we entice those viewers, the none theater goers, to watch the show? I know that the Broadway League and the American Theater Wing (owners of the Tony Award) are working hard to make the show more of a true showcase of Broadway but they have a long way to go. I would like to see them use the same idea of coupling different artists that would not normally have a chance to sing together to sing songs they may never have a chance to sing. Wouldn't it be fun to see Sting sing a duet with Patti Lupone? Both are Broadway stars that have a significant following and would draw an audience interested in seeing them. I also think that they could expand the number of awards given and thereby create more interest and buzz for winning shows. How about categories for Best Comedy and Best Drama for all plays on top of the Best Revival and Original play categories. Same could go for musicals. After all, awards exist not only to celebrate achievement in the industry but to promote the winning shows so more people will buy tickets. The more categories, the better. So I hope they are thinking along these lines and not just jockeying to see if each producer can get their show on the telecast.

The Tony's should celebrate Broadway, feature well-known stars, introduce new stars and really be a 3 hour long commercial for the industry. Without offending too many people here, I imagine there are very few members of the viewing audience who want to hear an acceptance speech from people they have never heard of or will never see onstage. Those hardworking members or our community deserve their awards and their spotlight but maybe not on prime time.

What are some of your ideas to make the show better?