Summary & Insights
0:00:12 In the first episode of the series, we heard about the creation of a new musical called Three Summers of Lincoln, as in Abraham Lincoln.
0:00:18 The show is set during the Civil War and centers around Lincoln’s relationship with the abolitionist Frederick Douglass.
0:00:25 The producers Alan Shore and Richard Winkler commissioned the playwright Joe DiPietro to write the script.
0:00:30 He brought along Daniel Watts as his co-lyricist and then the composer Crystal Monet Hall.
0:00:43 After three years of development, the Lincoln team held some workshop performances in New York that persuaded them they were ready to give the show its world premiere at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego.
0:00:45 Or at least almost ready.
0:00:51 I just felt the narrative at the beginning wasn’t as sharp as the rest of the show.
0:00:53 That’s DiPietro.
0:00:56 The challenge in a musical like this is you’re telling an epic story.
0:01:00 I mean, how many different versions of the Civil War could you write?
0:01:02 There needs to be a spine to it.
0:01:06 How can we have the spine as clear as quickly as possible?
0:01:15 We felt, for instance, that the character of Mary Lincoln, she wasn’t in the score as much, especially given the actress who is going to play that role.
0:01:20 The actress is Carmen Cusack, who has twice been nominated for a Tony Award on Broadway.
0:01:31 And so DiPietro had Daniel Watts and Crystal Monet Hall come to his apartment on the Upper West Side to work on a new song for Mary Lincoln, a duet with Abraham.
0:01:37 Hall played a demo she’d made on her own, a song called Twelve Rooms in Springfield.
0:01:56 The song has the Lincolns thinking about going back home to Illinois if Abraham loses re-election for the presidency, which, considering how badly the war is going, seems likely.
0:02:07 The three of them are sitting around DiPietro’s dining room table.
0:02:15 They’ve got laptops open to a Google Doc and to RhymeZone.com, the modern lyricist’s best friend.
0:02:22 They work together with the ease and trust of collaborators who have by now spent hundreds of hours like this.
0:02:27 It could be something like, does he envision his life in Springfield, like in what’s there in Springfield?
0:02:31 Like old dusty roads and grief.
0:02:36 I’m trying to find a thing he would, what would he be doing, who would he be working with in the office?
0:02:38 He’d be settling lawsuits with farmers, right?
0:02:41 You know, like he’s a country lawyer.
0:02:46 Collection law, Lincoln was a collection lawyer who handled promissory notes, which were common in Frontier, Illinois.
0:02:51 They spend a few minutes searching for the right word before Watts comes up with it.
0:02:54 So, disputes, that’s the word I was looking for.
0:02:55 Disputes is good.
0:02:57 No more country lawyer.
0:02:58 For farmers, disputes.
0:03:00 This is great.
0:03:01 That’s fantastic.
0:03:03 Do you want to do like a little sing-through of this?
0:03:03 Yeah, man.
0:03:04 Miss Crystal, see if this works.
0:03:08 Hall now sings Mary Lincoln’s section of the song.
0:03:37 And then, Abraham’s section.
0:03:40 Back to Springfield, old Abe’s obsolete.
0:03:45 Abandoned my post, a coward’s retreat.
0:03:49 To what’s there in Springfield, but legal pursuits.
0:03:54 One more country lawyer for farmers’ disputes.
0:03:57 And what’s wrong with that life.
0:04:00 Have some hope.
0:04:03 Have some faith.
0:04:06 Our home’s in Springfield.
0:04:10 On Jackson and Dave.
0:04:21 I asked Joe DiPietro how he was thinking about the show’s premiere at La Jolla.
0:04:29 The first preview in La Jolla, I will be as nervous as I am in a Broadway opening because this is the first time the show will meet an audience.
0:04:32 Hopefully we got a lot of it right, but there’ll be surprises.
0:04:34 There’ll be things the audience doesn’t understand.
0:04:36 There’ll be things they don’t react to.
0:04:40 There’ll be jokes that I think are hilarious that the audience does not.
0:04:48 I want people who sort of come in with their arms folded saying, a Lincoln musical, prove it to me.
0:04:53 And to leave saying, wow, that was a thrilling story, thrillingly told.
0:04:57 And it’s made me think about the state of our country.
0:05:03 The anger and the turbulence we feel in this country is nothing new.
0:05:06 We’ve had periods where it’s been maybe muted a bit.
0:05:11 And we’re in a very loud period of turbulence right now, but it’s nothing new.
0:05:17 And I think like both Lincoln and Douglas, you have to fight for the good.
0:05:19 You can’t just push your ideas through either.
0:05:26 You have to actually make people understand why you’re doing what you’re doing and why the way you think things should be is the way that they should be.
0:05:32 Creating a show like this is both High Wire Act and Marathon.
0:05:39 Having tagged along with the Lincoln team for a couple of years, I came to see their project as a bit like war itself.
0:05:46 Every breakthrough haunted by setback, every confidence tempered by anxiety.
0:05:54 For instance, this new song, 12 Rooms in Springfield, was put into the show with great excitement, but then wound up being cut.
0:06:00 And as we learned earlier in the series, there was much worse news than that.
0:06:07 The actor who had been playing Abraham Lincoln quit the show exactly one day before tickets went on sale at the La Jolla Playhouse.
0:06:18 This had me wondering, what’s more surprising that one person backs out of a project that takes so long to develop or that anyone stays in?
0:06:28 Today on Freakonomics Radio, in the third and final episode of our series, Broadway has always been the intended destination for three summers of Lincoln.
0:06:30 Will it actually get there?
0:06:49 This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything, with your host, Stephen Dubner.
0:07:04 The La Jolla Playhouse was founded in 1947 by Gregory Peck, Mel Ferrer, and Dorothy McGuire.
0:07:09 Summer stock for Hollywood luminaries, as one producer puts it.
0:07:11 There are actually four theaters on the site.
0:07:19 It is set on the campus of UC San Diego, and it is a favorite out-of-town destination for ambitious new projects.
0:07:22 Over the years, it has sent 37 shows to Broadway.
0:07:29 But as part of its nonprofit mission, the Playhouse also collaborates with schools and the local military community.
0:07:34 And producing a big new musical like Three Summers of Lincoln is expensive.
0:07:43 It’s very hard to develop a new musical without something participating beyond just our budget.
0:07:47 That is Debbie Buchholz, La Jolla Playhouse Managing Director.
0:07:52 That can be foundation support, that can be individual support, or it can be a commercial producer.
0:07:58 As we heard earlier in this series, live theater suffers from what economists call cost disease.
0:08:10 Any industry that requires a lot of human labor, as opposed to automation, is bound to get more expensive over time, since human wages keep rising even while technology gets cheaper.
0:08:18 For a nonprofit theater like La Jolla, that means collaborating with commercial producers in what’s called an enhancement model.
0:08:22 La Jolla actually started the enhancement model, going back to Big River.
0:08:26 Big River was a 1980s musical that we heard about in part one of this series.
0:08:30 It launched the career of Broadway producer Rocco Landesman.
0:08:41 The commercial producer put more money into the show beyond what the Playhouse was going to spend to enhance the Playhouse’s production to say, could we more fully develop the dance numbers?
0:08:45 Could we more fully orchestrate it so we would hear what a full orchestra would sound?
0:08:46 Could we give it more rehearsal time?
0:08:54 Give me a sense of how much money a commercial producer might put toward a production like yours, dollar figures and or percentage figures.
0:08:55 It varies widely.
0:09:04 It kind of depends at the moment that we’re going to do it, what the piece needs that’s in excess of the resources that we have at that moment to put into it.
0:09:07 Could it be as much as 30 or 40 percent?
0:09:08 Yes, it could be.
0:09:15 So when a show that originates at La Jolla does move on to Broadway, what’s that deal look like from your end?
0:09:17 Is it a dollar figure that you’d be guaranteed?
0:09:20 Is it a percent of first dollars or after recoup?
0:09:21 How does that work?
0:09:25 When it moves on, the Playhouse participates in two levels.
0:09:31 The reason that people come to the Playhouse is because of that well-developed muscle of bringing new work forward.
0:09:35 We are a creative participant, so we get a royalty percentage as well.
0:09:37 Can you put a number on that?
0:09:38 I’d rather not.
0:09:40 It’s comfortably within the industry practice.
0:09:50 What’s classically referred to as the regional theater royalty, which can be anywhere from half a percentage point to three, depending on a lot of different things.
0:09:53 Let’s talk about the Playhouse budget overall.
0:09:54 What are the major contributors?
0:09:56 Where does box office come in?
0:09:58 Where does philanthropy come in?
0:09:59 Government funding?
0:10:03 About a third of our revenue comes in as ticket revenue.
0:10:07 A little more than a third comes in through philanthropy.
0:10:14 We get some governmental support from the city of San Diego and from the county and from the state.
0:10:20 There was actually a fair amount of federal support that came into most regional theaters during the pandemic.
0:10:26 That was inordinately helpful, and I would hope that there’s a world in which that could start again.
0:10:34 Three Summers of Lincoln would have its debut at the La Jolla Playhouse in February of 2025.
0:10:46 That meant starting to assemble cast and crew, a big cast and crew, in January for rehearsals, costume fittings, choreography, tech rehearsals, and much more.
0:10:56 We flew out to see for ourselves, and we checked in with Christopher Ashley, the show’s director.
0:11:02 As we’re speaking now, we’re just starting day one of the second week of two weeks of tech.
0:11:12 For the past 18 years, Ashley has also been the artistic director at La Jolla, although next year he’ll be moving to New York to take over the Roundabout Theater Company.
0:11:19 Ashley has already won a Tony Award for Best Director, and it would surprise no one if he were to win at least one more someday.
0:11:26 He started directing theater in high school, studied English and math at Yale, and afterwards went to work at a bank.
0:11:38 I did systems analysis in foreign exchange, which I enjoyed for a while until I realized, oh, actually my job is to figure out how to shield people’s money from tax liability.
0:11:40 And I was like, that doesn’t seem like a way to spend a life to me.
0:11:48 Ashley took an internship at an off-Broadway theater, and he won a National Endowment for the Arts grant for early career directors.
0:11:53 I was a freelance director for most of my 20s and 30s.
0:11:57 It felt like dating audiences all the time.
0:12:01 My interaction with them was two hours long, and then they would move on and I would move on.
0:12:06 Part of why being an artistic director for me was I didn’t really want to date audiences.
0:12:08 I wanted to have a relationship.
0:12:13 I wanted to, like, talk to them across six plays in a season.
0:12:18 That’s a much richer, fuller conversation about the world than one play for two hours.
0:12:22 Just give me your – however you want to do it.
0:12:24 Day in the life, general job description.
0:12:28 Artistic director feels like you’re wearing a different hat every 10 minutes.
0:12:30 Can you just tell me what that job is?
0:12:32 There are a bunch of hats on my desk.
0:12:33 You’re totally right.
0:12:36 Together with Debbie, we run the theater.
0:12:43 Artistic directors are kind of the primary responsibility for programming and figuring out what’s on the stage.
0:12:49 At La Jolla Playhouse, it’s also very much intended that I direct there, and I do one or two shows a year.
0:12:55 All the education and outreach also falls within artistic director purview.
0:13:04 So we’re out in the schools with a new play every year, which is an amazing experience to watch eight-year-olds see their first play.
0:13:08 Just, like, the flight of imagination that is happening in their heads.
0:13:14 And then I also produce, along with our artistic producing director, each of the individual shows.
0:13:22 And when Ashley is also directing a show, as he is with Three Summers of Lincoln, there is another leveling up.
0:13:26 It’s maybe a little bit like being a general in a war.
0:13:31 You’re not making the individual decisions on the battlefield, but you’re saying what the goals are and what the strategy is.
0:13:41 On an afternoon in early February, after four weeks of rehearsals for Three Summers of Lincoln, Ashley is now leading 130 people through tech rehearsals.
0:13:46 We have two weeks in the space to add the technical elements.
0:13:54 How the set moves, all the automation and actors moving chairs and tables around the scenery that you’ve practiced in the studio.
0:13:56 You add all the lighting aspects.
0:14:03 Lighting designs are tremendously complicated technical feats with these lights that move and change color.
0:14:06 Everything is computerized, right?
0:14:14 So if you stand on the stage and you look back at the house during a technical rehearsal, you’ll see 40 people uplit by their computer screens.
0:14:16 There’s a lighting desk.
0:14:17 There’s a sound desk.
0:14:19 There’s a stage management desk.
0:14:23 There’s a separate desk where all the scenery and props folks are.
0:14:31 It’s full of technicians, all of whom are simultaneously watching the show and building the technical structure.
0:14:41 As Ashley describes the minutiae of tech rehearsal, I feel like he’s giving a perfect illustration of what economists mean by cost disease.
0:14:45 You painstakingly, moment by moment, work things out.
0:14:47 Let’s do these three seconds.
0:14:49 All right, now we know what those three seconds are.
0:14:51 Let’s do the next seven seconds.
0:14:52 It’s very incremental.
0:14:54 It’s very layered.
0:14:55 It’s very stop and go.
0:14:59 And then by a week later, hopefully you can run a number.
0:15:03 And by the end of the two weeks, the goal is that you can actually run the show.
0:15:07 They did get through all that.
0:15:13 And they pretty much were ready to run the show with a brand new actor in the title role.
0:15:18 For most of the show’s development, Lincoln had been played by the Broadway veteran Brian Stokes Mitchell.
0:15:23 When I asked Ashley about this late change, he found a positive way to spin it.
0:15:32 We were fortunate enough to have Brian Stokes Mitchell in each of the three readings and workshops that led us up to the first production we’re about to start.
0:15:39 And then he had personal circumstances that didn’t allow him to be part of the playoff production.
0:15:45 Stokes, as everyone calls him, was extraordinarily popular with the rest of the cast and the creative team.
0:15:48 He was always checking in on folks, almost like a player coach.
0:15:51 So he had a lot of goodwill in the bank.
0:15:54 Still, his sudden departure made people edgy.
0:15:57 I asked Carmen Cusack how she took the news.
0:16:02 As Mary Lincoln, Cusack had been working across from Stokes since the New York workshops.
0:16:10 I had just come back from some heavy stuff, heavy family stuff going on in Texas that I was trying to help sort out.
0:16:18 And as soon as I got back from that, because of that stress, I got the flu and was really in bed sick when I got the call from Christopher Ashley.
0:16:24 So I was already down in the dumps and then he calls and then he says that.
0:16:29 And I was just I was like, yeah, just throw it on the heat, you know, because who else could do this role?
0:16:31 He’s perfect for this role.
0:16:33 Did you think the show might fall apart?
0:16:35 I was concerned.
0:16:41 I was concerned, but I have full trust and admiration for Christopher and just the whole group.
0:16:43 I said, well, are we going to keep going?
0:16:45 And he said, yeah, we’re going to keep going.
0:16:48 We had tried several times to interview Stokes before he dropped out.
0:16:53 We finally got him and the studio booked, but he canceled the day before.
0:16:59 I didn’t know what it meant to leave a show for personal reasons, and it didn’t seem right to pry too much.
0:17:02 But in the absence of fact, rumors flew.
0:17:07 Maybe Stokes dropped out because he just didn’t think the show was good enough.
0:17:12 Maybe he didn’t want to spend a few months living in a hotel room in La Jolla.
0:17:21 Maybe in this moment of such fractured politics, he didn’t want to draw attention as a black actor playing Abraham Lincoln.
0:17:27 Or maybe at 67 years old, he just didn’t feel up for a long out of town run.
0:17:31 He did perform in public shortly after quitting Lincoln.
0:17:37 In New York, he starred in a five-day run of Love Life, an old Kurt Weill, Alan J. Lerner musical.
0:17:43 And he was a featured performer on a five-day Broadway cruise from Miami to Cozumel.
0:17:47 I went to see him in Love Life, and he looked as good as ever.
0:17:51 Whatever the case or whatever the cause for his departure,
0:17:55 Three Summers of Lincoln needed a new Lincoln, ASAP.
0:17:57 So they called in their casting director.
0:17:59 Here’s Christopher Ashley again.
0:18:04 She’s like, here’s 30 people that we think would be fantastic to consider.
0:18:08 So we all bat them around, champion various names,
0:18:13 until we winnow that list down to, I think we ended up with six people.
0:18:18 And then you start figuring out, okay, who’s actually available to come and join us in a month.
0:18:19 And then what do you do?
0:18:21 You send the script to all of those six?
0:18:23 No, no, no. You very much go one at a time.
0:18:27 And most of those six, someone in our group has worked with before,
0:18:30 and all of us have seen many, many performances by them.
0:18:32 It’s a very known group.
0:18:35 You’re not just basing this on an audition.
0:18:37 You’re also basing it on a body of work.
0:18:43 And very, very excited that we’re being joined by Ivan Hernandez as Lincoln.
0:18:44 Tell me about Ivan.
0:18:47 For La Jolla Playhouse aficionados,
0:18:51 he was the Zhivago in the La Jolla Playhouse production of Dr. Zhivago.
0:18:52 About 20 years ago.
0:18:58 If you Google him, you’ll see him all over film, all over television, and all over theater stages.
0:19:07 He’s super smart, beautiful voice, has a kind of center of gravity that I think is a necessary part of Lincoln.
0:19:09 Looks good in a top hat.
0:19:15 I’ve never tried him in a top hat yet, but I did draw one on a picture of him to sort of see what he looked like in my imagination.
0:19:18 And what number was Ivan on that list?
0:19:20 I can’t tell you that, but he was high.
0:19:23 Coming up after the break…
0:19:28 Hi, I’m Ivan Hernandez, and I’m playing Abraham Lincoln in Three Summers of Lincoln.
0:19:29 I’m Stephen Dubner.
0:19:31 This is Freakonomics Radio.
0:19:32 We’ll be right back.
0:19:44 With Brian Stokes Mitchell out as Lincoln, Ivan Hernandez was in.
0:19:51 After several weeks of rehearsal, the director, Christopher Ashley, declared himself pleased with the new casting.
0:19:57 He’s got Lincoln-iness, which is a hard thing to define, but you know it when you see it.
0:19:58 Can you describe it at least?
0:19:59 What do you mean by Lincoln-iness?
0:20:00 It’s a gravitas.
0:20:06 It’s intelligent use of language in rehearsals.
0:20:08 I was like, yeah, he’s really capturing something about Lincoln.
0:20:11 And then we put the costume on, and I thought, wow, he’s really Lincoln.
0:20:19 And then we did a last thing, which is he’d been rehearsing with a beard and a mustache, and we just shaved the mustache, which is unique to Lincoln, right?
0:20:21 You don’t see a lot of beards, no mustaches in the world.
0:20:32 And there was something about, like, all of the work that he’d been done in creating the character, suddenly with that tiny gesture, got all the way across the finish line for me.
0:20:35 Hernandez has a strong musical theater background, including on Broadway.
0:20:40 But in recent years, he’s been doing mostly TV, movies, and commercials.
0:20:44 He played Carrie Bradshaw’s love interest on the recent Sex and the City reboot.
0:20:51 I sat down with him backstage at the La Jolla Playhouse to see how he is adjusting to Lincoln.
0:20:53 Normally, I don’t do regional theater anymore.
0:20:56 I mean, I’m married, I have kids, I live in Los Angeles.
0:21:01 But I just kept thinking, I can’t turn down this part.
0:21:03 I mean, this is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of a role.
0:21:07 It’s just an incredible story, part of history.
0:21:13 So I felt like, if I still want to be an actor, I have to do this.
0:21:14 And I love doing musicals.
0:21:17 I don’t get to do them as often as I used to when I used to live in New York.
0:21:21 It’s incredibly hard work, and it takes all of you.
0:21:24 But it’s very rewarding, too, if it’s the right piece.
0:21:28 I asked Hernandez what tech rehearsal is like from the actor’s perspective.
0:21:32 They’re long hours, but it’s sort of relaxing, too, because you’re going through everything slowly.
0:21:35 So you’re just on stage getting the lights done.
0:21:40 It’s kind of the quiet before the storm of actually performing the show, which is nerve-wracking, too,
0:21:43 because you’re like, I still need to run these lines and go through the show.
0:21:45 Especially you. You’re the late addition, yeah?
0:21:48 Yes, that’s true. It was a lot of words to learn.
0:21:53 Are your fellow cast members particularly sympathetic to your situation?
0:21:59 Yes, all of them have played giant roles on Broadway, and they know exactly what it’s like and what it takes.
0:22:02 The dialogue is one thing.
0:22:11 His Lincoln character also has nine songs, including an early establishing song called This Impossible Position.
0:22:17 All I want is a nation reunited
0:22:25 All I want is a people set free
0:22:31 Oh, but I had a proud coalition
0:22:34 A much tiniful politician
0:22:38 Compromised with conditions
0:22:41 Putting me in this impossible position
0:22:48 I also caught up backstage with Lincoln’s foil, Frederick Douglass, played by Quentin Earl Darrington.
0:23:01 My focus right now is depth and breadth of his complexity in this story to make sure that every T is crossed, every I is dotted, and done so with love, brilliance, and excellence.
0:23:03 How much of it is mental?
0:23:09 I’m very intentional about what comes out of my mouth, especially through song.
0:23:20 So there’s a lot of thought and a lot of time with why I will place a certain thing a certain way, or what I choose to land on, what operative words or colors that I want to shape.
0:23:22 It’s like a scalpel.
0:23:23 Precision.
0:23:25 Could you give an example?
0:23:39 Yeah, there’s a moment in the show where I’m grieving, and the grief that is expressed could be very uncontrolled and boisterous and loud and kind of have no form or shape, crying out.
0:23:43 But we’ve been playing with it, and we’re doing just the opposite.
0:23:45 It’s almost a silent grief.
0:23:56 I sing it right in the point of the axis between my eyes and my forehead, and I just leave it there, and don’t push, and allow the sound text to do what they do.
0:24:25 It’s an interesting way of palatizing sound, because you’ll get a lot of force and power from me, and this is completely opposite, and it’s perfect for the moment.
0:24:38 So I think when the average ticket buyer, especially someone that doesn’t know much about the theater or maybe doesn’t see a lot of theater, when they come to buy a Broadway ticket, you know, it’s pretty expensive.
0:24:43 I think when you pay that much for something, you just want to sit back and say, okay, entertain me.
0:24:54 My sense is that many theatergoers may not know or care or bother to think much, why should they, about what it takes to get this thing on stage in front of them.
0:25:08 So for them, it’s an entertainment that they’ve bought, but behind that ticket are, as we’re seeing in the theater there during tech rehearsals, hundreds of people working for months and months.
0:25:08 Oh, yes.
0:25:19 And when I look at it from the economic side, a $200 or $400 ticket, it’s a lot of money, but it begins to seem like chump change when I look at what it takes to do this.
0:25:23 So from the performer side, how does it work?
0:25:30 Can you describe for me how it has been for you to earn your living as a theater performer?
0:25:33 Woo, man, do we have enough time?
0:25:35 I’ve got nothing to do.
0:25:41 It’s interesting how you said that about the ticket price versus what it costs to build the thing, right?
0:25:43 It’s a lot.
0:25:45 And it seems like just a drop in the bucket.
0:25:53 There’s so many hours upon hours, upon days, upon years of our lives that we put into our projects.
0:25:56 I ask myself many times, why do I keep doing this?
0:25:59 For me, it’s a calling.
0:26:00 It’s greater than me.
0:26:02 So I keep going.
0:26:11 And I just keep learning how to find peace, find balance, find resolve in the grueling aspect of it.
0:26:18 I think that is one of the greatest successes of an artist’s journey is finding that balance.
0:26:23 Because you will always have devastating days and you will always have extremely joyful mountaintop days.
0:26:29 But it’s how you, in the midst of all of that, continue to keep saying yes to the next, to the next, to the next.
0:26:30 That’s difficult.
0:26:35 So you got a new Lincoln between when we last saw the show and now, right?
0:26:36 Yes.
0:26:38 What’s that transition been like for you?
0:26:46 The transition was difficult because I was focused on where we were and what we were building.
0:26:53 I’ll tell you today where I am, we have our dear brother, Ivan Hernandez, and he is brilliant.
0:26:57 I cannot wait for audiences to get a chance to see him.
0:27:04 How did you have to adjust your work in this show to playing with a different Lincoln from Stokes to Ivan?
0:27:06 One clear example are keys.
0:27:07 We changed the keys of the show.
0:27:10 Stokes has a beautiful, rich baritone.
0:27:12 Ivan’s a much higher singer.
0:27:15 So we lifted some keys and arranged some things, a duet.
0:27:19 So I’m singing much higher than I was before, which is cool for me.
0:27:22 My range is kind of all over the place and it’s fun.
0:27:23 It’s fun to sing there.
0:27:25 He doesn’t give an inch.
0:27:29 He’s certainly no fool.
0:27:33 He didn’t even flinch.
0:27:37 As stubborn as a mule.
0:28:01 The songs in Three Summers of Lincoln fit comfortably in the Broadway idiom, but there is a freshness about them.
0:28:05 The composer, Crystal Monet Hall, is a first-time Broadway composer.
0:28:08 Here is Carmen Cusack, who plays Mary Lincoln.
0:28:15 Crystal is such a sophisticated, interesting, soulful writer.
0:28:17 I love singing her stuff.
0:28:20 Just when you think you know what the melody is, you don’t.
0:28:22 She says, no, we’re not going there.
0:28:27 I kind of winked at her a few times when I knew I was hitting the wrong note and she wanted this other thing.
0:28:30 She would kind of look up at me and be like, I know, I know, I did it wrong.
0:28:30 I’m sorry.
0:28:41 And here’s Cusack at tech rehearsal singing a song called In Each Letter, where Mary Lincoln asks her husband to show mercy by pardoning Union soldiers who deserted their posts.
0:29:09 These tech rehearsals run for hours, sometimes late into the night.
0:29:12 The pace is remarkably slow.
0:29:24 The performers are in costume with full hair and makeup, but they spend most of their time just standing in place while technical decisions are made and memorialized and rehearsed.
0:29:27 The creative team takes notes, notes, more notes.
0:29:33 It’s easy to find yourself asking, what exactly does all this add up to?
0:29:38 Yes, it’s a commercial enterprise, but what’s the larger purpose of all this work?
0:29:41 It tells a story that’s important today.
0:29:47 That is Alan Shore, the producer in Boston who came up with and commissioned the Lincoln idea.
0:29:49 It talks about leadership.
0:29:55 It talks about how one man, two men, could change the world.
0:30:00 One of the lyrics, there’s a country out there waiting for us better than this.
0:30:07 And there is, you know, we’re a great country, but there is a country out there better than where we are today.
0:30:09 And we should all strive to make this a better country.
0:30:12 Let’s talk about the capitalization of this show.
0:30:18 As little as we possibly can.
0:30:32 As a business person from the past and as a fiduciary, I will do everything that I can to keep cost at the lowest possible amount without sacrificing the art of the show.
0:30:39 Today, an average musical costs anywhere from $17 to $30 million.
0:30:43 I think we’ll be at the very low end of that number.
0:30:49 Talk about how much you’ve raised so far and then what the plan is for the next 12 months or so.
0:30:52 We’re raising about $4 million to get us through La Jolla.
0:30:55 How many investors are involved in that?
0:30:58 There may be about 20 to 25.
0:31:02 Can you just talk about the state of investing now?
0:31:06 You know, what’s a typically small investment and typically large investment?
0:31:10 The smallest investment that most shows allow is $25,000.
0:31:13 And it goes up from there.
0:31:18 We’ve had people at this stage of our production coming in with $250,000.
0:31:21 We’re talking about pre-Broadway right now.
0:31:30 Once a show has established itself as something that’s definitely going to Broadway, it really has the potential to be a great show.
0:31:34 Then you will see $250,000, $500,000, even a million dollars come in.
0:31:44 My guess is things will go great in La Jolla because I know the product that we’ve achieved so far, this really is a special, special musical.
0:31:49 I believe that after La Jolla, people will be throwing money at the project.
0:31:58 After the break, Three Summers of Lincoln opens, and maybe the future of theater isn’t so bleak.
0:31:59 I’m Stephen Dubner.
0:32:01 This is Freakonomics Radio.
0:32:02 We’ll be right back.
0:32:18 In 2023, the culture critic Isaac Butler wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times with the headline,
0:32:22 American Theater is Imploding Before Our Eyes.
0:32:26 And he called for a federal bailout of nonprofit theater.
0:32:31 There’s certainly plenty of evidence to back up his imploding thesis.
0:32:39 Beloved regional theaters shutting down, the donor class, especially younger donors, showing a lack of interest in theater.
0:32:44 And live theater faces massive competition from Netflix and other streamers.
0:32:51 In response to Butler’s piece, the Indiana University arts economist Michael Rushton wrote this.
0:32:56 You cannot save an art form if people are not interested in attending.
0:33:01 But Rushton, when we called him up, noted that Butler’s claim is not new.
0:33:15 If you read cultural commentators in the 1920s, they talk about the death of theater because of the invention of cinema and the radio.
0:33:16 It didn’t really happen.
0:33:21 It may be that there is going to be a natural downsizing in theater.
0:33:23 Industries ebb and flow.
0:33:32 And the fact that some theaters are closing and some theaters are finding we can’t do as many plays per year as we used to does not mean that theater is dying.
0:33:42 I’ve seen data from the Broadway League that the average annual household income of a Broadway ticket buyer is, do you want to guess the number?
0:33:46 I’m going to guess the average household income is going to be over $100,000.
0:33:48 Yeah, it’s over 250.
0:33:48 Okay.
0:33:50 $250,000.
0:33:55 How do you think about the population of Broadway ticket buyers, then?
0:33:57 Are they just rich by definition?
0:34:00 Is a Broadway ticket, therefore, a luxury good?
0:34:03 And if so, is that a good thing or bad thing?
0:34:14 I’m not sure I would call live performance a luxury good because it’s not necessarily that expensive relative to other things that people spend money on.
0:34:17 So, yes, a night out at the live theater is going to cost one a lot.
0:34:24 But people do spend lots of money to go on trips or go to amusement parks or go to live sporting events.
0:34:32 So, I think that live theater needs to be thinking about how do we turn this into something people really want to do?
0:34:40 Our biggest selling point is that there are live, breathing individuals on a stage right in front of you.
0:34:45 You recently published a book called The Moral Foundations of Public Funding for the Arts.
0:34:52 What can you tell us about cause and effect with cultural institutions?
0:35:00 Is it that successful economies and cultures have the wealth to support these institutions and that’s why they exist?
0:35:07 Or do those cultural institutions contribute to the success of an economy and culture?
0:35:25 I’m not sure whether we can say that high culture necessarily leads to economic riches, but it can lead to riches in other ways in terms of greater understanding, greater insight, greater appreciation of beauty, those intrinsic goods that make our lives better.
0:35:33 Do you feel that the arts in the U.S. have contributed to a greater culture of understanding and insight and appreciation of beauty?
0:35:41 One would hope so, and one would think that our greatest playwrights have given us insights into social dynamics and the family.
0:35:51 If you think of Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams and all of our great authors and poets and composers, they have helped us understand ourselves somewhat.
0:35:54 And I think that has made our lives richer.
0:35:57 I happen to be on your team, Michael.
0:36:00 I feel very much the same way personally that you’re describing.
0:36:16 That said, when I look at the relatively tiny number of people who attend theater, who attend opera, who attend classical music, even who go to museums, I think, well, there is a small portion of any population that likes that stuff.
0:36:21 And the vast majority in our country at this moment in time simply don’t.
0:36:37 So what’s your best argument that it does deserve public funding, even though the share of the population who partakes is relatively tiny and that share of the population tends to be able to afford it themselves already?
0:36:50 The justification for public funding for the arts, even though the audiences tend to skew towards the well-off, is that you want to preserve the very best of our culture for future generations.
0:36:58 You want to preserve it for current generations who may not have discovered it, but who might find real meaning in it.
0:37:10 So just keeping that opportunity alive and not letting those opportunities die out so that all we have is whatever commercial culture finds it can make a dollar out of is important.
0:37:14 What’s the last thing you saw, a live performance, that moved you?
0:37:24 Last live performance I went to was a very, very low-budget outdoor performance of Henry IV Part I, and it was wonderful.
0:37:26 Where was this, and who were the performers?
0:37:30 This was in Bloomington, and it was just a local amateur theater company.
0:37:36 The audience was very diverse and sitting in lawn chairs or just on the grass.
0:37:47 The costumes were really makeshift, but the actors and the audience alike were just so involved in the performance and all the action and the sword fights.
0:37:49 There were no star performers at all.
0:37:58 It’s not Shakespeare’s best-known play, and yet it was just a terrific night out and something that I will not forget.
0:38:05 Musical theater is a magic trick.
0:38:10 That’s Jeffrey Seller, a lead producer on Hamilton, Rent, and others.
0:38:29 When an artist lines up in the perfect way music, dialogue, lyric, movement, character, and story in a way that makes me go from the back of my seat to the front of my seat,
0:38:46 That makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up, and makes me cry, and fills me with joy, and affects me in my, to use a Yiddish word, kishkas, my guts.
0:38:49 We can get you in your guts.
0:39:03 We’re going to entertain you and inspire you and do it with illumination and education, but most important, we’re going to lift you out of your chair and take you to a place you’ve never been.
0:39:12 Will three summers of Lincoln be able to do that, to lift people out of their chairs and take them to a place they’ve never been?
0:39:15 We’re about to find out.
0:39:22 Hi, I’m Christopher Ashley, the artistic director here at L.A. Playhouse, also the director of the show.
0:39:25 Thank you for your patience tonight, we’re about to get started.
0:39:30 So, tonight is our very first public performance of this world for their music.
0:39:39 You are the first audience for this musical ever, and we’re delighted to meet you.
0:40:12 Audiences at the La Jolla Playhouse loved Three Summers of Lincoln.
0:40:23 Tickets sold very well, and Christopher Ashley told me that the Playhouse’s surveys showed that roughly 95% of the audience was either satisfied or very satisfied with the show.
0:40:36 The San Diego Union Tribune called it a thrilling and handsome production and noted that the show seems to kick into a higher gear whenever Quentin Darrington is singing as Frederick Douglass.
0:40:49 Carmen Cusack as Mary Lincoln and Ivan Hernandez, the last-minute Abraham, were also well-received and well-reviewed, although, to be honest, I did find myself missing Brian Stokes Mitchell as Lincoln.
0:41:01 And I did hear some audience members grumbling that they had come to see the show expecting Stokes in the lead role, but who knows, maybe he’ll be back in the show if and when it makes it to Broadway.
0:41:19 The producer Alan Shore told me they hope to bring the show to New York in 2026, provided they can raise the rest of the roughly $20 million it costs to mount a show this size, and provided there is a suitable theater available, neither of which are guaranteed.
0:41:29 Between now and then, there will be more rewrites, more streamlining, more reconsideration of everything.
0:41:31 Here’s Christopher Ashley again.
0:41:40 I do think there’s something about the process that is insane, and also the most satisfying thing you can possibly do with your life.
0:41:45 It’s intensely collaborative, the process of making a new show together.
0:41:55 Every day, you say something, and then someone does something with that thing you’ve said that is better and richer and more exciting than you had in your head.
0:42:02 And that keeps on taking the process further, higher, and deeper into the center of the story.
0:42:06 Once you’ve had that experience, it’s a little bit like crack, and you don’t want to give it up.
0:42:13 For now, everyone in Lincoln is back to juggling their other projects.
0:42:19 Quentin Darrington is producing a show called I Dream, about Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy.
0:42:26 Joe DiPietro wrote a play that recently opened in Kansas City, called An Old-Fashioned Family Murder.
0:42:31 He told us that murder mysteries and comedies are what regional theaters are looking for these days.
0:42:38 And how about Daniel Watts, the super energetic co-lyricist and co-choreographer on Three Summers of Lincoln?
0:42:49 There’s a piece about Pelé that I have been writing that started what I thought was just a piece about him and his story, which is fascinating.
0:42:50 Is that for you to perform in as well?
0:42:51 Yes.
0:43:04 I ended up going to Brazil during the last World Cup and ultimately ended up being at Pelé’s bedside, watching the World Cup final with him 11 days before he passed away.
0:43:04 You’re kidding.
0:43:05 I’m not kidding.
0:43:06 How did that happen?
0:43:08 See, now that’s a whole other podcast.
0:43:16 Is it a whole other podcast?
0:43:18 I’ve heard worse ideas.
0:43:24 This series was a blast to make, and I’d like to thank everyone for letting us watch them work.
0:43:41 The entire Three Summers of Lincoln crew, the La Jolla Playhouse crew, and all the producers and academics and others we spoke with, including a lot of people who were very helpful but whose voices you didn’t hear, including Jane Abramson, Sue Frost, Frank Rich, Michael Riedel, and Scott Zeiger.
0:43:43 Big thanks to everyone.
0:43:53 Coming up next time on the show, you take a film like the Martha Stewart film.
0:43:57 I’m told between 30 and 40 million people saw that movie.
0:44:03 Documentary film used to be thought of as the unsmiling cousin of its flashy Hollywood counterpart.
0:44:07 Thanks to streamers like Netflix, that has changed.
0:44:11 And the director, R.J. Cutler, is one of the biggest beneficiaries.
0:44:20 We talked to him about celebrity culture, life lessons from baseball, and what he won’t do for his art.
0:44:24 I’m not going to make a propaganda film about anybody.
0:44:30 Also, we need your voice if you are willing to lend it.
0:44:37 We are working on an episode about how seemingly obsolete technologies like the candle continue to thrive.
0:44:42 So tell us about something that you are not willing to let go of and why.
0:44:47 Use your phone to record a voice memo and send it to radio at Freakonomics.com.
0:44:52 Make sure to get yourself in a quiet place and include your name and where you live.
0:44:56 Again, send that voice recording to radio at Freakonomics.com.
0:44:58 Subject line, obsolete.
0:45:01 We will be back next week.
0:45:02 Until then, take care of yourself.
0:45:05 And if you can, someone else, too.
0:45:09 Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio.
0:45:12 You can find our entire archive on any podcast app.
0:45:17 Also at Freakonomics.com, where we publish transcripts and show notes.
0:45:23 This series was produced by Alina Kullman and mixed by Jasmine Klinger with help from Jeremy Johnston.
0:45:29 Thanks also to Jason Gambrell for field recording in New York and Alec Moore for field recording in La Jolla.
0:45:42 The Freakonomics Radio Network staff also includes Augusta Chapman, Dalvin Abawaji, Eleanor Osborne, Ellen Frankman, Elsa Hernandez, Gabriel Roth, Greg Rippin, John Schnars, Morgan Levy, Neil Carruth, Sarah Lilly, Tao Jacobs, and Zach Lipinski.
0:45:48 Our theme song is Mr. Fortune by the Hitchhikers, and our composer is Luis Guerra.
0:45:50 As always, thanks for listening.
0:45:58 My big takeaway is that podcasts make the world go round.
0:46:02 Yes, I promise you that is literally my belief system.
0:00:18 The show is set during the Civil War and centers around Lincoln’s relationship with the abolitionist Frederick Douglass.
0:00:25 The producers Alan Shore and Richard Winkler commissioned the playwright Joe DiPietro to write the script.
0:00:30 He brought along Daniel Watts as his co-lyricist and then the composer Crystal Monet Hall.
0:00:43 After three years of development, the Lincoln team held some workshop performances in New York that persuaded them they were ready to give the show its world premiere at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego.
0:00:45 Or at least almost ready.
0:00:51 I just felt the narrative at the beginning wasn’t as sharp as the rest of the show.
0:00:53 That’s DiPietro.
0:00:56 The challenge in a musical like this is you’re telling an epic story.
0:01:00 I mean, how many different versions of the Civil War could you write?
0:01:02 There needs to be a spine to it.
0:01:06 How can we have the spine as clear as quickly as possible?
0:01:15 We felt, for instance, that the character of Mary Lincoln, she wasn’t in the score as much, especially given the actress who is going to play that role.
0:01:20 The actress is Carmen Cusack, who has twice been nominated for a Tony Award on Broadway.
0:01:31 And so DiPietro had Daniel Watts and Crystal Monet Hall come to his apartment on the Upper West Side to work on a new song for Mary Lincoln, a duet with Abraham.
0:01:37 Hall played a demo she’d made on her own, a song called Twelve Rooms in Springfield.
0:01:56 The song has the Lincolns thinking about going back home to Illinois if Abraham loses re-election for the presidency, which, considering how badly the war is going, seems likely.
0:02:07 The three of them are sitting around DiPietro’s dining room table.
0:02:15 They’ve got laptops open to a Google Doc and to RhymeZone.com, the modern lyricist’s best friend.
0:02:22 They work together with the ease and trust of collaborators who have by now spent hundreds of hours like this.
0:02:27 It could be something like, does he envision his life in Springfield, like in what’s there in Springfield?
0:02:31 Like old dusty roads and grief.
0:02:36 I’m trying to find a thing he would, what would he be doing, who would he be working with in the office?
0:02:38 He’d be settling lawsuits with farmers, right?
0:02:41 You know, like he’s a country lawyer.
0:02:46 Collection law, Lincoln was a collection lawyer who handled promissory notes, which were common in Frontier, Illinois.
0:02:51 They spend a few minutes searching for the right word before Watts comes up with it.
0:02:54 So, disputes, that’s the word I was looking for.
0:02:55 Disputes is good.
0:02:57 No more country lawyer.
0:02:58 For farmers, disputes.
0:03:00 This is great.
0:03:01 That’s fantastic.
0:03:03 Do you want to do like a little sing-through of this?
0:03:03 Yeah, man.
0:03:04 Miss Crystal, see if this works.
0:03:08 Hall now sings Mary Lincoln’s section of the song.
0:03:37 And then, Abraham’s section.
0:03:40 Back to Springfield, old Abe’s obsolete.
0:03:45 Abandoned my post, a coward’s retreat.
0:03:49 To what’s there in Springfield, but legal pursuits.
0:03:54 One more country lawyer for farmers’ disputes.
0:03:57 And what’s wrong with that life.
0:04:00 Have some hope.
0:04:03 Have some faith.
0:04:06 Our home’s in Springfield.
0:04:10 On Jackson and Dave.
0:04:21 I asked Joe DiPietro how he was thinking about the show’s premiere at La Jolla.
0:04:29 The first preview in La Jolla, I will be as nervous as I am in a Broadway opening because this is the first time the show will meet an audience.
0:04:32 Hopefully we got a lot of it right, but there’ll be surprises.
0:04:34 There’ll be things the audience doesn’t understand.
0:04:36 There’ll be things they don’t react to.
0:04:40 There’ll be jokes that I think are hilarious that the audience does not.
0:04:48 I want people who sort of come in with their arms folded saying, a Lincoln musical, prove it to me.
0:04:53 And to leave saying, wow, that was a thrilling story, thrillingly told.
0:04:57 And it’s made me think about the state of our country.
0:05:03 The anger and the turbulence we feel in this country is nothing new.
0:05:06 We’ve had periods where it’s been maybe muted a bit.
0:05:11 And we’re in a very loud period of turbulence right now, but it’s nothing new.
0:05:17 And I think like both Lincoln and Douglas, you have to fight for the good.
0:05:19 You can’t just push your ideas through either.
0:05:26 You have to actually make people understand why you’re doing what you’re doing and why the way you think things should be is the way that they should be.
0:05:32 Creating a show like this is both High Wire Act and Marathon.
0:05:39 Having tagged along with the Lincoln team for a couple of years, I came to see their project as a bit like war itself.
0:05:46 Every breakthrough haunted by setback, every confidence tempered by anxiety.
0:05:54 For instance, this new song, 12 Rooms in Springfield, was put into the show with great excitement, but then wound up being cut.
0:06:00 And as we learned earlier in the series, there was much worse news than that.
0:06:07 The actor who had been playing Abraham Lincoln quit the show exactly one day before tickets went on sale at the La Jolla Playhouse.
0:06:18 This had me wondering, what’s more surprising that one person backs out of a project that takes so long to develop or that anyone stays in?
0:06:28 Today on Freakonomics Radio, in the third and final episode of our series, Broadway has always been the intended destination for three summers of Lincoln.
0:06:30 Will it actually get there?
0:06:49 This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything, with your host, Stephen Dubner.
0:07:04 The La Jolla Playhouse was founded in 1947 by Gregory Peck, Mel Ferrer, and Dorothy McGuire.
0:07:09 Summer stock for Hollywood luminaries, as one producer puts it.
0:07:11 There are actually four theaters on the site.
0:07:19 It is set on the campus of UC San Diego, and it is a favorite out-of-town destination for ambitious new projects.
0:07:22 Over the years, it has sent 37 shows to Broadway.
0:07:29 But as part of its nonprofit mission, the Playhouse also collaborates with schools and the local military community.
0:07:34 And producing a big new musical like Three Summers of Lincoln is expensive.
0:07:43 It’s very hard to develop a new musical without something participating beyond just our budget.
0:07:47 That is Debbie Buchholz, La Jolla Playhouse Managing Director.
0:07:52 That can be foundation support, that can be individual support, or it can be a commercial producer.
0:07:58 As we heard earlier in this series, live theater suffers from what economists call cost disease.
0:08:10 Any industry that requires a lot of human labor, as opposed to automation, is bound to get more expensive over time, since human wages keep rising even while technology gets cheaper.
0:08:18 For a nonprofit theater like La Jolla, that means collaborating with commercial producers in what’s called an enhancement model.
0:08:22 La Jolla actually started the enhancement model, going back to Big River.
0:08:26 Big River was a 1980s musical that we heard about in part one of this series.
0:08:30 It launched the career of Broadway producer Rocco Landesman.
0:08:41 The commercial producer put more money into the show beyond what the Playhouse was going to spend to enhance the Playhouse’s production to say, could we more fully develop the dance numbers?
0:08:45 Could we more fully orchestrate it so we would hear what a full orchestra would sound?
0:08:46 Could we give it more rehearsal time?
0:08:54 Give me a sense of how much money a commercial producer might put toward a production like yours, dollar figures and or percentage figures.
0:08:55 It varies widely.
0:09:04 It kind of depends at the moment that we’re going to do it, what the piece needs that’s in excess of the resources that we have at that moment to put into it.
0:09:07 Could it be as much as 30 or 40 percent?
0:09:08 Yes, it could be.
0:09:15 So when a show that originates at La Jolla does move on to Broadway, what’s that deal look like from your end?
0:09:17 Is it a dollar figure that you’d be guaranteed?
0:09:20 Is it a percent of first dollars or after recoup?
0:09:21 How does that work?
0:09:25 When it moves on, the Playhouse participates in two levels.
0:09:31 The reason that people come to the Playhouse is because of that well-developed muscle of bringing new work forward.
0:09:35 We are a creative participant, so we get a royalty percentage as well.
0:09:37 Can you put a number on that?
0:09:38 I’d rather not.
0:09:40 It’s comfortably within the industry practice.
0:09:50 What’s classically referred to as the regional theater royalty, which can be anywhere from half a percentage point to three, depending on a lot of different things.
0:09:53 Let’s talk about the Playhouse budget overall.
0:09:54 What are the major contributors?
0:09:56 Where does box office come in?
0:09:58 Where does philanthropy come in?
0:09:59 Government funding?
0:10:03 About a third of our revenue comes in as ticket revenue.
0:10:07 A little more than a third comes in through philanthropy.
0:10:14 We get some governmental support from the city of San Diego and from the county and from the state.
0:10:20 There was actually a fair amount of federal support that came into most regional theaters during the pandemic.
0:10:26 That was inordinately helpful, and I would hope that there’s a world in which that could start again.
0:10:34 Three Summers of Lincoln would have its debut at the La Jolla Playhouse in February of 2025.
0:10:46 That meant starting to assemble cast and crew, a big cast and crew, in January for rehearsals, costume fittings, choreography, tech rehearsals, and much more.
0:10:56 We flew out to see for ourselves, and we checked in with Christopher Ashley, the show’s director.
0:11:02 As we’re speaking now, we’re just starting day one of the second week of two weeks of tech.
0:11:12 For the past 18 years, Ashley has also been the artistic director at La Jolla, although next year he’ll be moving to New York to take over the Roundabout Theater Company.
0:11:19 Ashley has already won a Tony Award for Best Director, and it would surprise no one if he were to win at least one more someday.
0:11:26 He started directing theater in high school, studied English and math at Yale, and afterwards went to work at a bank.
0:11:38 I did systems analysis in foreign exchange, which I enjoyed for a while until I realized, oh, actually my job is to figure out how to shield people’s money from tax liability.
0:11:40 And I was like, that doesn’t seem like a way to spend a life to me.
0:11:48 Ashley took an internship at an off-Broadway theater, and he won a National Endowment for the Arts grant for early career directors.
0:11:53 I was a freelance director for most of my 20s and 30s.
0:11:57 It felt like dating audiences all the time.
0:12:01 My interaction with them was two hours long, and then they would move on and I would move on.
0:12:06 Part of why being an artistic director for me was I didn’t really want to date audiences.
0:12:08 I wanted to have a relationship.
0:12:13 I wanted to, like, talk to them across six plays in a season.
0:12:18 That’s a much richer, fuller conversation about the world than one play for two hours.
0:12:22 Just give me your – however you want to do it.
0:12:24 Day in the life, general job description.
0:12:28 Artistic director feels like you’re wearing a different hat every 10 minutes.
0:12:30 Can you just tell me what that job is?
0:12:32 There are a bunch of hats on my desk.
0:12:33 You’re totally right.
0:12:36 Together with Debbie, we run the theater.
0:12:43 Artistic directors are kind of the primary responsibility for programming and figuring out what’s on the stage.
0:12:49 At La Jolla Playhouse, it’s also very much intended that I direct there, and I do one or two shows a year.
0:12:55 All the education and outreach also falls within artistic director purview.
0:13:04 So we’re out in the schools with a new play every year, which is an amazing experience to watch eight-year-olds see their first play.
0:13:08 Just, like, the flight of imagination that is happening in their heads.
0:13:14 And then I also produce, along with our artistic producing director, each of the individual shows.
0:13:22 And when Ashley is also directing a show, as he is with Three Summers of Lincoln, there is another leveling up.
0:13:26 It’s maybe a little bit like being a general in a war.
0:13:31 You’re not making the individual decisions on the battlefield, but you’re saying what the goals are and what the strategy is.
0:13:41 On an afternoon in early February, after four weeks of rehearsals for Three Summers of Lincoln, Ashley is now leading 130 people through tech rehearsals.
0:13:46 We have two weeks in the space to add the technical elements.
0:13:54 How the set moves, all the automation and actors moving chairs and tables around the scenery that you’ve practiced in the studio.
0:13:56 You add all the lighting aspects.
0:14:03 Lighting designs are tremendously complicated technical feats with these lights that move and change color.
0:14:06 Everything is computerized, right?
0:14:14 So if you stand on the stage and you look back at the house during a technical rehearsal, you’ll see 40 people uplit by their computer screens.
0:14:16 There’s a lighting desk.
0:14:17 There’s a sound desk.
0:14:19 There’s a stage management desk.
0:14:23 There’s a separate desk where all the scenery and props folks are.
0:14:31 It’s full of technicians, all of whom are simultaneously watching the show and building the technical structure.
0:14:41 As Ashley describes the minutiae of tech rehearsal, I feel like he’s giving a perfect illustration of what economists mean by cost disease.
0:14:45 You painstakingly, moment by moment, work things out.
0:14:47 Let’s do these three seconds.
0:14:49 All right, now we know what those three seconds are.
0:14:51 Let’s do the next seven seconds.
0:14:52 It’s very incremental.
0:14:54 It’s very layered.
0:14:55 It’s very stop and go.
0:14:59 And then by a week later, hopefully you can run a number.
0:15:03 And by the end of the two weeks, the goal is that you can actually run the show.
0:15:07 They did get through all that.
0:15:13 And they pretty much were ready to run the show with a brand new actor in the title role.
0:15:18 For most of the show’s development, Lincoln had been played by the Broadway veteran Brian Stokes Mitchell.
0:15:23 When I asked Ashley about this late change, he found a positive way to spin it.
0:15:32 We were fortunate enough to have Brian Stokes Mitchell in each of the three readings and workshops that led us up to the first production we’re about to start.
0:15:39 And then he had personal circumstances that didn’t allow him to be part of the playoff production.
0:15:45 Stokes, as everyone calls him, was extraordinarily popular with the rest of the cast and the creative team.
0:15:48 He was always checking in on folks, almost like a player coach.
0:15:51 So he had a lot of goodwill in the bank.
0:15:54 Still, his sudden departure made people edgy.
0:15:57 I asked Carmen Cusack how she took the news.
0:16:02 As Mary Lincoln, Cusack had been working across from Stokes since the New York workshops.
0:16:10 I had just come back from some heavy stuff, heavy family stuff going on in Texas that I was trying to help sort out.
0:16:18 And as soon as I got back from that, because of that stress, I got the flu and was really in bed sick when I got the call from Christopher Ashley.
0:16:24 So I was already down in the dumps and then he calls and then he says that.
0:16:29 And I was just I was like, yeah, just throw it on the heat, you know, because who else could do this role?
0:16:31 He’s perfect for this role.
0:16:33 Did you think the show might fall apart?
0:16:35 I was concerned.
0:16:41 I was concerned, but I have full trust and admiration for Christopher and just the whole group.
0:16:43 I said, well, are we going to keep going?
0:16:45 And he said, yeah, we’re going to keep going.
0:16:48 We had tried several times to interview Stokes before he dropped out.
0:16:53 We finally got him and the studio booked, but he canceled the day before.
0:16:59 I didn’t know what it meant to leave a show for personal reasons, and it didn’t seem right to pry too much.
0:17:02 But in the absence of fact, rumors flew.
0:17:07 Maybe Stokes dropped out because he just didn’t think the show was good enough.
0:17:12 Maybe he didn’t want to spend a few months living in a hotel room in La Jolla.
0:17:21 Maybe in this moment of such fractured politics, he didn’t want to draw attention as a black actor playing Abraham Lincoln.
0:17:27 Or maybe at 67 years old, he just didn’t feel up for a long out of town run.
0:17:31 He did perform in public shortly after quitting Lincoln.
0:17:37 In New York, he starred in a five-day run of Love Life, an old Kurt Weill, Alan J. Lerner musical.
0:17:43 And he was a featured performer on a five-day Broadway cruise from Miami to Cozumel.
0:17:47 I went to see him in Love Life, and he looked as good as ever.
0:17:51 Whatever the case or whatever the cause for his departure,
0:17:55 Three Summers of Lincoln needed a new Lincoln, ASAP.
0:17:57 So they called in their casting director.
0:17:59 Here’s Christopher Ashley again.
0:18:04 She’s like, here’s 30 people that we think would be fantastic to consider.
0:18:08 So we all bat them around, champion various names,
0:18:13 until we winnow that list down to, I think we ended up with six people.
0:18:18 And then you start figuring out, okay, who’s actually available to come and join us in a month.
0:18:19 And then what do you do?
0:18:21 You send the script to all of those six?
0:18:23 No, no, no. You very much go one at a time.
0:18:27 And most of those six, someone in our group has worked with before,
0:18:30 and all of us have seen many, many performances by them.
0:18:32 It’s a very known group.
0:18:35 You’re not just basing this on an audition.
0:18:37 You’re also basing it on a body of work.
0:18:43 And very, very excited that we’re being joined by Ivan Hernandez as Lincoln.
0:18:44 Tell me about Ivan.
0:18:47 For La Jolla Playhouse aficionados,
0:18:51 he was the Zhivago in the La Jolla Playhouse production of Dr. Zhivago.
0:18:52 About 20 years ago.
0:18:58 If you Google him, you’ll see him all over film, all over television, and all over theater stages.
0:19:07 He’s super smart, beautiful voice, has a kind of center of gravity that I think is a necessary part of Lincoln.
0:19:09 Looks good in a top hat.
0:19:15 I’ve never tried him in a top hat yet, but I did draw one on a picture of him to sort of see what he looked like in my imagination.
0:19:18 And what number was Ivan on that list?
0:19:20 I can’t tell you that, but he was high.
0:19:23 Coming up after the break…
0:19:28 Hi, I’m Ivan Hernandez, and I’m playing Abraham Lincoln in Three Summers of Lincoln.
0:19:29 I’m Stephen Dubner.
0:19:31 This is Freakonomics Radio.
0:19:32 We’ll be right back.
0:19:44 With Brian Stokes Mitchell out as Lincoln, Ivan Hernandez was in.
0:19:51 After several weeks of rehearsal, the director, Christopher Ashley, declared himself pleased with the new casting.
0:19:57 He’s got Lincoln-iness, which is a hard thing to define, but you know it when you see it.
0:19:58 Can you describe it at least?
0:19:59 What do you mean by Lincoln-iness?
0:20:00 It’s a gravitas.
0:20:06 It’s intelligent use of language in rehearsals.
0:20:08 I was like, yeah, he’s really capturing something about Lincoln.
0:20:11 And then we put the costume on, and I thought, wow, he’s really Lincoln.
0:20:19 And then we did a last thing, which is he’d been rehearsing with a beard and a mustache, and we just shaved the mustache, which is unique to Lincoln, right?
0:20:21 You don’t see a lot of beards, no mustaches in the world.
0:20:32 And there was something about, like, all of the work that he’d been done in creating the character, suddenly with that tiny gesture, got all the way across the finish line for me.
0:20:35 Hernandez has a strong musical theater background, including on Broadway.
0:20:40 But in recent years, he’s been doing mostly TV, movies, and commercials.
0:20:44 He played Carrie Bradshaw’s love interest on the recent Sex and the City reboot.
0:20:51 I sat down with him backstage at the La Jolla Playhouse to see how he is adjusting to Lincoln.
0:20:53 Normally, I don’t do regional theater anymore.
0:20:56 I mean, I’m married, I have kids, I live in Los Angeles.
0:21:01 But I just kept thinking, I can’t turn down this part.
0:21:03 I mean, this is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of a role.
0:21:07 It’s just an incredible story, part of history.
0:21:13 So I felt like, if I still want to be an actor, I have to do this.
0:21:14 And I love doing musicals.
0:21:17 I don’t get to do them as often as I used to when I used to live in New York.
0:21:21 It’s incredibly hard work, and it takes all of you.
0:21:24 But it’s very rewarding, too, if it’s the right piece.
0:21:28 I asked Hernandez what tech rehearsal is like from the actor’s perspective.
0:21:32 They’re long hours, but it’s sort of relaxing, too, because you’re going through everything slowly.
0:21:35 So you’re just on stage getting the lights done.
0:21:40 It’s kind of the quiet before the storm of actually performing the show, which is nerve-wracking, too,
0:21:43 because you’re like, I still need to run these lines and go through the show.
0:21:45 Especially you. You’re the late addition, yeah?
0:21:48 Yes, that’s true. It was a lot of words to learn.
0:21:53 Are your fellow cast members particularly sympathetic to your situation?
0:21:59 Yes, all of them have played giant roles on Broadway, and they know exactly what it’s like and what it takes.
0:22:02 The dialogue is one thing.
0:22:11 His Lincoln character also has nine songs, including an early establishing song called This Impossible Position.
0:22:17 All I want is a nation reunited
0:22:25 All I want is a people set free
0:22:31 Oh, but I had a proud coalition
0:22:34 A much tiniful politician
0:22:38 Compromised with conditions
0:22:41 Putting me in this impossible position
0:22:48 I also caught up backstage with Lincoln’s foil, Frederick Douglass, played by Quentin Earl Darrington.
0:23:01 My focus right now is depth and breadth of his complexity in this story to make sure that every T is crossed, every I is dotted, and done so with love, brilliance, and excellence.
0:23:03 How much of it is mental?
0:23:09 I’m very intentional about what comes out of my mouth, especially through song.
0:23:20 So there’s a lot of thought and a lot of time with why I will place a certain thing a certain way, or what I choose to land on, what operative words or colors that I want to shape.
0:23:22 It’s like a scalpel.
0:23:23 Precision.
0:23:25 Could you give an example?
0:23:39 Yeah, there’s a moment in the show where I’m grieving, and the grief that is expressed could be very uncontrolled and boisterous and loud and kind of have no form or shape, crying out.
0:23:43 But we’ve been playing with it, and we’re doing just the opposite.
0:23:45 It’s almost a silent grief.
0:23:56 I sing it right in the point of the axis between my eyes and my forehead, and I just leave it there, and don’t push, and allow the sound text to do what they do.
0:24:25 It’s an interesting way of palatizing sound, because you’ll get a lot of force and power from me, and this is completely opposite, and it’s perfect for the moment.
0:24:38 So I think when the average ticket buyer, especially someone that doesn’t know much about the theater or maybe doesn’t see a lot of theater, when they come to buy a Broadway ticket, you know, it’s pretty expensive.
0:24:43 I think when you pay that much for something, you just want to sit back and say, okay, entertain me.
0:24:54 My sense is that many theatergoers may not know or care or bother to think much, why should they, about what it takes to get this thing on stage in front of them.
0:25:08 So for them, it’s an entertainment that they’ve bought, but behind that ticket are, as we’re seeing in the theater there during tech rehearsals, hundreds of people working for months and months.
0:25:08 Oh, yes.
0:25:19 And when I look at it from the economic side, a $200 or $400 ticket, it’s a lot of money, but it begins to seem like chump change when I look at what it takes to do this.
0:25:23 So from the performer side, how does it work?
0:25:30 Can you describe for me how it has been for you to earn your living as a theater performer?
0:25:33 Woo, man, do we have enough time?
0:25:35 I’ve got nothing to do.
0:25:41 It’s interesting how you said that about the ticket price versus what it costs to build the thing, right?
0:25:43 It’s a lot.
0:25:45 And it seems like just a drop in the bucket.
0:25:53 There’s so many hours upon hours, upon days, upon years of our lives that we put into our projects.
0:25:56 I ask myself many times, why do I keep doing this?
0:25:59 For me, it’s a calling.
0:26:00 It’s greater than me.
0:26:02 So I keep going.
0:26:11 And I just keep learning how to find peace, find balance, find resolve in the grueling aspect of it.
0:26:18 I think that is one of the greatest successes of an artist’s journey is finding that balance.
0:26:23 Because you will always have devastating days and you will always have extremely joyful mountaintop days.
0:26:29 But it’s how you, in the midst of all of that, continue to keep saying yes to the next, to the next, to the next.
0:26:30 That’s difficult.
0:26:35 So you got a new Lincoln between when we last saw the show and now, right?
0:26:36 Yes.
0:26:38 What’s that transition been like for you?
0:26:46 The transition was difficult because I was focused on where we were and what we were building.
0:26:53 I’ll tell you today where I am, we have our dear brother, Ivan Hernandez, and he is brilliant.
0:26:57 I cannot wait for audiences to get a chance to see him.
0:27:04 How did you have to adjust your work in this show to playing with a different Lincoln from Stokes to Ivan?
0:27:06 One clear example are keys.
0:27:07 We changed the keys of the show.
0:27:10 Stokes has a beautiful, rich baritone.
0:27:12 Ivan’s a much higher singer.
0:27:15 So we lifted some keys and arranged some things, a duet.
0:27:19 So I’m singing much higher than I was before, which is cool for me.
0:27:22 My range is kind of all over the place and it’s fun.
0:27:23 It’s fun to sing there.
0:27:25 He doesn’t give an inch.
0:27:29 He’s certainly no fool.
0:27:33 He didn’t even flinch.
0:27:37 As stubborn as a mule.
0:28:01 The songs in Three Summers of Lincoln fit comfortably in the Broadway idiom, but there is a freshness about them.
0:28:05 The composer, Crystal Monet Hall, is a first-time Broadway composer.
0:28:08 Here is Carmen Cusack, who plays Mary Lincoln.
0:28:15 Crystal is such a sophisticated, interesting, soulful writer.
0:28:17 I love singing her stuff.
0:28:20 Just when you think you know what the melody is, you don’t.
0:28:22 She says, no, we’re not going there.
0:28:27 I kind of winked at her a few times when I knew I was hitting the wrong note and she wanted this other thing.
0:28:30 She would kind of look up at me and be like, I know, I know, I did it wrong.
0:28:30 I’m sorry.
0:28:41 And here’s Cusack at tech rehearsal singing a song called In Each Letter, where Mary Lincoln asks her husband to show mercy by pardoning Union soldiers who deserted their posts.
0:29:09 These tech rehearsals run for hours, sometimes late into the night.
0:29:12 The pace is remarkably slow.
0:29:24 The performers are in costume with full hair and makeup, but they spend most of their time just standing in place while technical decisions are made and memorialized and rehearsed.
0:29:27 The creative team takes notes, notes, more notes.
0:29:33 It’s easy to find yourself asking, what exactly does all this add up to?
0:29:38 Yes, it’s a commercial enterprise, but what’s the larger purpose of all this work?
0:29:41 It tells a story that’s important today.
0:29:47 That is Alan Shore, the producer in Boston who came up with and commissioned the Lincoln idea.
0:29:49 It talks about leadership.
0:29:55 It talks about how one man, two men, could change the world.
0:30:00 One of the lyrics, there’s a country out there waiting for us better than this.
0:30:07 And there is, you know, we’re a great country, but there is a country out there better than where we are today.
0:30:09 And we should all strive to make this a better country.
0:30:12 Let’s talk about the capitalization of this show.
0:30:18 As little as we possibly can.
0:30:32 As a business person from the past and as a fiduciary, I will do everything that I can to keep cost at the lowest possible amount without sacrificing the art of the show.
0:30:39 Today, an average musical costs anywhere from $17 to $30 million.
0:30:43 I think we’ll be at the very low end of that number.
0:30:49 Talk about how much you’ve raised so far and then what the plan is for the next 12 months or so.
0:30:52 We’re raising about $4 million to get us through La Jolla.
0:30:55 How many investors are involved in that?
0:30:58 There may be about 20 to 25.
0:31:02 Can you just talk about the state of investing now?
0:31:06 You know, what’s a typically small investment and typically large investment?
0:31:10 The smallest investment that most shows allow is $25,000.
0:31:13 And it goes up from there.
0:31:18 We’ve had people at this stage of our production coming in with $250,000.
0:31:21 We’re talking about pre-Broadway right now.
0:31:30 Once a show has established itself as something that’s definitely going to Broadway, it really has the potential to be a great show.
0:31:34 Then you will see $250,000, $500,000, even a million dollars come in.
0:31:44 My guess is things will go great in La Jolla because I know the product that we’ve achieved so far, this really is a special, special musical.
0:31:49 I believe that after La Jolla, people will be throwing money at the project.
0:31:58 After the break, Three Summers of Lincoln opens, and maybe the future of theater isn’t so bleak.
0:31:59 I’m Stephen Dubner.
0:32:01 This is Freakonomics Radio.
0:32:02 We’ll be right back.
0:32:18 In 2023, the culture critic Isaac Butler wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times with the headline,
0:32:22 American Theater is Imploding Before Our Eyes.
0:32:26 And he called for a federal bailout of nonprofit theater.
0:32:31 There’s certainly plenty of evidence to back up his imploding thesis.
0:32:39 Beloved regional theaters shutting down, the donor class, especially younger donors, showing a lack of interest in theater.
0:32:44 And live theater faces massive competition from Netflix and other streamers.
0:32:51 In response to Butler’s piece, the Indiana University arts economist Michael Rushton wrote this.
0:32:56 You cannot save an art form if people are not interested in attending.
0:33:01 But Rushton, when we called him up, noted that Butler’s claim is not new.
0:33:15 If you read cultural commentators in the 1920s, they talk about the death of theater because of the invention of cinema and the radio.
0:33:16 It didn’t really happen.
0:33:21 It may be that there is going to be a natural downsizing in theater.
0:33:23 Industries ebb and flow.
0:33:32 And the fact that some theaters are closing and some theaters are finding we can’t do as many plays per year as we used to does not mean that theater is dying.
0:33:42 I’ve seen data from the Broadway League that the average annual household income of a Broadway ticket buyer is, do you want to guess the number?
0:33:46 I’m going to guess the average household income is going to be over $100,000.
0:33:48 Yeah, it’s over 250.
0:33:48 Okay.
0:33:50 $250,000.
0:33:55 How do you think about the population of Broadway ticket buyers, then?
0:33:57 Are they just rich by definition?
0:34:00 Is a Broadway ticket, therefore, a luxury good?
0:34:03 And if so, is that a good thing or bad thing?
0:34:14 I’m not sure I would call live performance a luxury good because it’s not necessarily that expensive relative to other things that people spend money on.
0:34:17 So, yes, a night out at the live theater is going to cost one a lot.
0:34:24 But people do spend lots of money to go on trips or go to amusement parks or go to live sporting events.
0:34:32 So, I think that live theater needs to be thinking about how do we turn this into something people really want to do?
0:34:40 Our biggest selling point is that there are live, breathing individuals on a stage right in front of you.
0:34:45 You recently published a book called The Moral Foundations of Public Funding for the Arts.
0:34:52 What can you tell us about cause and effect with cultural institutions?
0:35:00 Is it that successful economies and cultures have the wealth to support these institutions and that’s why they exist?
0:35:07 Or do those cultural institutions contribute to the success of an economy and culture?
0:35:25 I’m not sure whether we can say that high culture necessarily leads to economic riches, but it can lead to riches in other ways in terms of greater understanding, greater insight, greater appreciation of beauty, those intrinsic goods that make our lives better.
0:35:33 Do you feel that the arts in the U.S. have contributed to a greater culture of understanding and insight and appreciation of beauty?
0:35:41 One would hope so, and one would think that our greatest playwrights have given us insights into social dynamics and the family.
0:35:51 If you think of Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams and all of our great authors and poets and composers, they have helped us understand ourselves somewhat.
0:35:54 And I think that has made our lives richer.
0:35:57 I happen to be on your team, Michael.
0:36:00 I feel very much the same way personally that you’re describing.
0:36:16 That said, when I look at the relatively tiny number of people who attend theater, who attend opera, who attend classical music, even who go to museums, I think, well, there is a small portion of any population that likes that stuff.
0:36:21 And the vast majority in our country at this moment in time simply don’t.
0:36:37 So what’s your best argument that it does deserve public funding, even though the share of the population who partakes is relatively tiny and that share of the population tends to be able to afford it themselves already?
0:36:50 The justification for public funding for the arts, even though the audiences tend to skew towards the well-off, is that you want to preserve the very best of our culture for future generations.
0:36:58 You want to preserve it for current generations who may not have discovered it, but who might find real meaning in it.
0:37:10 So just keeping that opportunity alive and not letting those opportunities die out so that all we have is whatever commercial culture finds it can make a dollar out of is important.
0:37:14 What’s the last thing you saw, a live performance, that moved you?
0:37:24 Last live performance I went to was a very, very low-budget outdoor performance of Henry IV Part I, and it was wonderful.
0:37:26 Where was this, and who were the performers?
0:37:30 This was in Bloomington, and it was just a local amateur theater company.
0:37:36 The audience was very diverse and sitting in lawn chairs or just on the grass.
0:37:47 The costumes were really makeshift, but the actors and the audience alike were just so involved in the performance and all the action and the sword fights.
0:37:49 There were no star performers at all.
0:37:58 It’s not Shakespeare’s best-known play, and yet it was just a terrific night out and something that I will not forget.
0:38:05 Musical theater is a magic trick.
0:38:10 That’s Jeffrey Seller, a lead producer on Hamilton, Rent, and others.
0:38:29 When an artist lines up in the perfect way music, dialogue, lyric, movement, character, and story in a way that makes me go from the back of my seat to the front of my seat,
0:38:46 That makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up, and makes me cry, and fills me with joy, and affects me in my, to use a Yiddish word, kishkas, my guts.
0:38:49 We can get you in your guts.
0:39:03 We’re going to entertain you and inspire you and do it with illumination and education, but most important, we’re going to lift you out of your chair and take you to a place you’ve never been.
0:39:12 Will three summers of Lincoln be able to do that, to lift people out of their chairs and take them to a place they’ve never been?
0:39:15 We’re about to find out.
0:39:22 Hi, I’m Christopher Ashley, the artistic director here at L.A. Playhouse, also the director of the show.
0:39:25 Thank you for your patience tonight, we’re about to get started.
0:39:30 So, tonight is our very first public performance of this world for their music.
0:39:39 You are the first audience for this musical ever, and we’re delighted to meet you.
0:40:12 Audiences at the La Jolla Playhouse loved Three Summers of Lincoln.
0:40:23 Tickets sold very well, and Christopher Ashley told me that the Playhouse’s surveys showed that roughly 95% of the audience was either satisfied or very satisfied with the show.
0:40:36 The San Diego Union Tribune called it a thrilling and handsome production and noted that the show seems to kick into a higher gear whenever Quentin Darrington is singing as Frederick Douglass.
0:40:49 Carmen Cusack as Mary Lincoln and Ivan Hernandez, the last-minute Abraham, were also well-received and well-reviewed, although, to be honest, I did find myself missing Brian Stokes Mitchell as Lincoln.
0:41:01 And I did hear some audience members grumbling that they had come to see the show expecting Stokes in the lead role, but who knows, maybe he’ll be back in the show if and when it makes it to Broadway.
0:41:19 The producer Alan Shore told me they hope to bring the show to New York in 2026, provided they can raise the rest of the roughly $20 million it costs to mount a show this size, and provided there is a suitable theater available, neither of which are guaranteed.
0:41:29 Between now and then, there will be more rewrites, more streamlining, more reconsideration of everything.
0:41:31 Here’s Christopher Ashley again.
0:41:40 I do think there’s something about the process that is insane, and also the most satisfying thing you can possibly do with your life.
0:41:45 It’s intensely collaborative, the process of making a new show together.
0:41:55 Every day, you say something, and then someone does something with that thing you’ve said that is better and richer and more exciting than you had in your head.
0:42:02 And that keeps on taking the process further, higher, and deeper into the center of the story.
0:42:06 Once you’ve had that experience, it’s a little bit like crack, and you don’t want to give it up.
0:42:13 For now, everyone in Lincoln is back to juggling their other projects.
0:42:19 Quentin Darrington is producing a show called I Dream, about Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy.
0:42:26 Joe DiPietro wrote a play that recently opened in Kansas City, called An Old-Fashioned Family Murder.
0:42:31 He told us that murder mysteries and comedies are what regional theaters are looking for these days.
0:42:38 And how about Daniel Watts, the super energetic co-lyricist and co-choreographer on Three Summers of Lincoln?
0:42:49 There’s a piece about Pelé that I have been writing that started what I thought was just a piece about him and his story, which is fascinating.
0:42:50 Is that for you to perform in as well?
0:42:51 Yes.
0:43:04 I ended up going to Brazil during the last World Cup and ultimately ended up being at Pelé’s bedside, watching the World Cup final with him 11 days before he passed away.
0:43:04 You’re kidding.
0:43:05 I’m not kidding.
0:43:06 How did that happen?
0:43:08 See, now that’s a whole other podcast.
0:43:16 Is it a whole other podcast?
0:43:18 I’ve heard worse ideas.
0:43:24 This series was a blast to make, and I’d like to thank everyone for letting us watch them work.
0:43:41 The entire Three Summers of Lincoln crew, the La Jolla Playhouse crew, and all the producers and academics and others we spoke with, including a lot of people who were very helpful but whose voices you didn’t hear, including Jane Abramson, Sue Frost, Frank Rich, Michael Riedel, and Scott Zeiger.
0:43:43 Big thanks to everyone.
0:43:53 Coming up next time on the show, you take a film like the Martha Stewart film.
0:43:57 I’m told between 30 and 40 million people saw that movie.
0:44:03 Documentary film used to be thought of as the unsmiling cousin of its flashy Hollywood counterpart.
0:44:07 Thanks to streamers like Netflix, that has changed.
0:44:11 And the director, R.J. Cutler, is one of the biggest beneficiaries.
0:44:20 We talked to him about celebrity culture, life lessons from baseball, and what he won’t do for his art.
0:44:24 I’m not going to make a propaganda film about anybody.
0:44:30 Also, we need your voice if you are willing to lend it.
0:44:37 We are working on an episode about how seemingly obsolete technologies like the candle continue to thrive.
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Việc một ngôi sao sân khấu Broadway đột ngột rời khỏi vai chính của một vở nhạc kịch lớn mới chỉ một ngày trước khi vé được bán ra sẽ là một thảm họa với hầu hết các vở diễn. Thế nhưng, với nhóm sản xuất Three Summers of Lincoln, đây lại trở thành một thử thách căng thẳng và hợp tác khác trong quá trình kéo dài nhiều năm để đưa một câu chuyện thời Nội chiến về Abraham Lincoln và Frederick Douglass lên sân khấu. Góc nhìn hậu trường này ghi lại hành trình của vở nhạc kịch qua một buổi thực hành áp lực cao ở New York, buổi ra mắt thế giới tại Nhà hát La Jolla Playhouse danh tiếng, và bộ máy con người và tài chính khổng lồ cần thiết để biến điều đó thành hiện thực. Ở phần cốt lõi, tập phim khám phá liệu một dự án đầy tham vọng về lịch sử như vậy có thể sống sót qua nền kinh tế bất ổn của nhà hát hiện đại và cuối cùng tìm được đường đến Broadway hay không.
Quá trình sáng tạo được hé lộ như một hành động giải quyết vấn đề tập thể tỉ mỉ và thường khắc nghiệt. Chúng ta được lắng nghe khi nhà biên kịch, nhà soạn nhạc và nhà viết lời họp quanh một bàn ăn, tìm kiếm từ ngữ hoàn hảo (“tranh chấp”) cho một bài hát mới trong khi chế tác một bản song ca xúc động cho gia đình Lincoln. Sự hợp tác thân mật này tương phản với quy mô khổng lồ của các “buổi diễn tập kỹ thuật,” nơi một đạo diễn như Christopher Ashley giám sát 130 người, cẩn thận xếp lớp ánh sáng, âm thanh và chuyển động trong nhiều tuần — một ví dụ hoàn hảo cho “căn bệnh chi phí” đang làm khổ ngành biểu diễn trực tiếp, nơi nghệ thuật thâm dụng lao động ngày càng trở nên đắt đỏ hơn. Câu chuyện nhấn mạnh rằng công việc này vừa là một “màn trình diễn mạo hiểm trên dây vừa là một cuộc chạy marathon,” đầy ắp những đột phá và thất bại, bao gồm việc cắt bỏ một bài hát vừa mới được thêm vào.
Về mặt tài chính, tập phim mổ xẻ hệ sinh thái mong manh nuôi dưỡng các vở nhạc kịch mới. Tổ chức phi lợi nhuận La Jolla Playhouse dựa vào “mô hình gia tăng giá trị,” nơi các nhà sản xuất thương mại bơm thêm vốn để nâng tầm sản xuất, hy vọng cho một chuyển giao lên Broadway trong tương lai và một khoản tiền bản quyền nhỏ. Với chi phí trung bình của một vở nhạc kịch Broadway là 17-30 triệu đô la, các nhà sản xuất phải tập hợp một mảng ghép các nhà đầu tư, với số vốn bắt đầu từ 25.000 đô la. Thực tế tài chính này tồn tại song song với một cuộc tranh luận sôi nổi về giá trị văn hóa và tương lai của sân khấu, trong khi các nhà kinh tế lưu ý rằng mặc dù khán giả Broadway trung bình có thu nhập hộ gia đình trên 250.000 đô la, nhưng tài trợ công vẫn được cho là cần thiết để bảo tồn nghệ thuật cho các thế hệ tương lai và giá trị nội tại mà nó mang lại.
Cuối cùng, câu chuyện là một minh chứng cho sự kiên cường và niềm tin. Sau một màn trình diễn thành công tại La Jolla với diễn viên thay thế Lincoln (Ivan Hernandez) vào phút chót, nhóm sản xuất hướng tới một buổi công chiếu trên Broadway được kỳ vọng vào năm 2026, với điều kiện huy động thêm hàng triệu đô la nữa và tìm được một nhà hát phù hợp. Động lực để tiếp tục, bất chấp sự không chắc chắn, được tóm gọn bởi đạo diễn Christopher Ashley, người mô tả ma thuật hợp tác đầy lôi cuốn của sân khấu: quá trình hàng ngày khi ai đó lấy ý tưởng của bạn và biến nó trở nên “tốt hơn, phong phú hơn và thú vị hơn những gì bạn hình dung trong đầu.” Tập phim khiến chúng ta suy ngẫm liệu vở diễn cụ thể này có thành công hay không, nhưng với một sự trân trọng sâu sắc đối với đội quân nghệ sĩ và nghệ nhân đã dành nhiều năm cuộc đời cho những cuộc theo đuổi sáng tạo vĩ đại như vậy.
Những Góc Nhìn Đáng Ngạc Nhiên
- “Căn bệnh Chi phí” của Sân khấu Trực tiếp: Các buổi diễn tập kỹ thuật tỉ mỉ từng giây, có sự tham gia của hơn một trăm kỹ thuật viên, minh họa rõ ràng tại sao biểu diễn trực tiếp lại đắt đỏ và khó mở rộng quy mô, vì nó kháng lại sự tự động hóa vốn giúp giảm chi phí trong các ngành công nghiệp khác.
- Sự Giàu có của Khán giả Broadway: Dữ liệu cho thấy thu nhập hộ gia đình hàng năm trung bình của người mua vé Broadway là trên 250.000 đô la, vẽ nên bức tranh về cơ sở người tiêu dùng chính của loại hình nghệ thuật này giàu có hơn đáng kể so với dân số chung.
- Đời sống Mong manh của một Bài hát: Một bài hát mới, “Twelve Rooms in Springfield,” được chế tác hết sức cẩn thận và hào hứng trong căn hộ của nhà văn, được đưa vào vở diễn, và sau đó bị cắt bỏ hoàn toàn trước buổi công chiếu — một ví dụ rõ ràng cho tính chất tạm thời, lặp đi lặp lại của công việc sáng tạo.
- Phần Bản quyền Nhỏ của Nhà hát Địa phương: Khi một vở diễn chuyển từ một nhà hát phi lợi nhuận địa phương như La Jolla lên Broadway, nhà hát đó chỉ nhận được một khoản tiền bản quyền nhỏ, thường dao động từ nửa phần trăm đến ba phần trăm thu nhập của vở diễn.
- Mô hình Đầu tư “Gia tăng Giá trị”: Các nhà sản xuất thương mại không chỉ tài trợ thẳng cho các vở diễn; họ thường cung cấp thêm vốn để “gia tăng giá trị” cho sản xuất của một nhà hát phi lợi nhuận, cho phép có dàn nhạc đầy đủ hơn, thêm thời gian diễn tập hoặc thiết kế tốt hơn, với hy vọng về một chuyển giao thương mại trong tương lai.
Những Điều Có thể Rút ra Thực tiễn
- Đón nhận Sự Lặp lại và Sẵn sàng Hy sinh Đứa con Cưng: Các dự án sáng tạo, đặc biệt là những dự án hợp tác như một vở nhạc kịch, đòi hỏi sự tinh chỉnh không ngừng. Hãy chuẩn bị sẵn sàng để chỉnh sửa lại, viết lại, và thậm chí cắt bỏ tác phẩm bạn yêu thích (như một bài hát đã viết xong) nếu nó không phục vụ cho sản phẩm cuối cùng.
- Xây dựng Lòng tin Hợp tác Sâu sắc: Khả năng làm việc ăn ý của nhóm sáng tạo xung quanh một chiếc bàn, sử dụng các công cụ như Google Docs chia sẻ, xuất phát từ hàng trăm giờ hợp tác trước đó. Đầu tư thời gian để xây dựng sự thoải mái và niềm tin đó là điều cần thiết cho việc giải quyết vấn đề áp lực cao với tốc độ nhanh.
- Có Kế hoạch Dự phòng cho các Vai trò then chốt: Việc một diễn viên chính rời đi là một rủi ro thảm khốc. Có một danh sách ngắn các ứng viên thay thế tiềm năng đã được thẩm định trước, được ủng hộ bởi các thành viên trong nhóm đã từng làm việc với họ, có thể biến một cuộc khủng hoảng thành một sự chuyển giao có thể quản lý được.
- Hiểu rõ Cơ cấu Tài chính của Loại hình Nghệ thuật: Dù bạn là người sáng tạo hay nhà đầu tư, hãy hiểu rõ các mô hình tài trợ. Đối với sân khấu quy mô lớn, điều này bao gồm các quỹ phi lợi nhuận, các thỏa thuận gia tăng giá trị thương mại, và thực tế rằng một vở diễn cần huy động hàng triệu đô la từ các cá nhân với khoản đóng góp từ 25.000 đô la trở lên từ rất lâu trước khi nó có mặt trên sân khấu Broadway.
一齣備受矚目的全新音樂劇，竟在門票開售前一天突然更換擔綱主演的百老匯明星——對多數製作而言，這無異於災難性打擊。然而對於《林肯的三個夏天》創作團隊來說，這不過是多年艱辛歷程中又一場需要緊密協作的嚴峻挑戰。這部作品旨在將亞伯拉罕·林肯與弗雷德里克·道格拉斯在南北戰爭時期的故事搬上舞台。本篇幕後紀實將追溯這部音樂劇的創作軌跡：從紐約高壓環境下的工作坊，到頂尖劇院拉霍亞劇院的世界首演，乃至促成這一切所必需的人力與資金運作體系。故事核心探討著一個問題：如此宏大的歷史題材作品，能否在當代戲劇界動盪的經濟環境中存活，並最終登上百老匯舞台？
創作過程被揭示為一場精密而煎熬的集體解題之旅。我們得以旁聽劇作家、作曲家和作詞家圍坐餐桌旁的討論：他們既要為林肯夫婦譜寫感人肺腑的二重唱，又需為新歌尋找最精準的詞彙（最終鎖定「爭執」一詞）。這種親密無間的合作模式，與動輒百人規模的「技術彩排」形成鮮明對比——導演克里斯多福·阿什利需連續數週協調130名工作人員，逐幀調整燈光、音效與走位。這種勞動密集型的藝術創作，正是導致現場表演成本呈指數級增長的「成本弊病」典型例證。整個敘事強調著：這項工作既是「高空鋼索行走」，也是「馬拉松長跑」，充斥著突破與挫折，甚至包含對剛剛添加的歌曲的毅然刪減。
從財務角度剖析，本集揭示了支撐新音樂劇的脆弱生態系統。非營利機構拉霍亞劇院採用「升級模式」——商業製作人注入額外資金提升製作水準，以期未來移師百老匯時能獲取微薄版稅。面對百老匯音樂劇平均1700萬至3000萬美元的製作成本，製作人必須拼湊起由眾多投資者組成的資金網絡，單筆投資門檻常以2.5萬美元起跳。這種資金現實與關於戲劇文化價值及未來的激烈辯論並存：經濟學者指出，雖然百老匯觀眾平均家庭年收入超過25萬美元，但仍有主張認為公共資金應為後代保存藝術，維護其內在價值。
這終究是一個關於韌性與信念的故事。在臨陣換將（伊萬·埃爾南德斯接替林肯一角）的拉霍亞劇院成功演出後，團隊將目光投向2026年的百老匯首演——前提是再籌集數百萬資金並確保劇場檔期。儘管前路未卜，驅動眾人前行的力量正如克里斯多福·阿什利導演所描述的那種令人著迷的劇場協作魔力：每天見證他人將你的構想變得「比腦海中的藍圖更豐盈、更精妙、更震撼」。本集雖未斷言這部作品能否成功，卻讓我們對投身如此宏偉創作、奉獻數載光陰的藝術家大軍，生出由衷的敬意。
驚人洞見
- 現場戲劇的「成本弊病」：動用上百名技術人員、逐秒打磨的技術彩排，生動解釋了現場表演為何成本高昂且難以規模化——它抗拒其他產業藉自動化降低成本的模式。
- 百老匯觀眾的財富圖景：數據顯示百老匯購票者平均家庭年收入超25萬美元，勾勒出該藝術形式主要消費群體遠比普羅大眾富裕的現實。
- 歌曲的短暫生命：新曲〈斯普林菲爾德的十二間房〉在創作者公寓中精心打磨後插入劇本，卻在首演前被全段刪除——這戲劇性過程凸顯了創作工作中迭代與無常的本質。
- 地區劇院的版稅分成：當作品從拉霍亞等非營利地區劇院移師百老匯時，原劇院僅能獲得0.5%至3%的微薄版稅。
- 「升級」投資模式：商業製作人不僅投資劇目，更常通過追加資金「升級」非營利劇院的製作，用以擴充樂團規模、延長排練時間或提升設計水準，以期未來商業轉製。
實用啟示
- 擁抱迭代，勇於割捨：創意項目（尤其是音樂劇這類協作藝術）需要持續打磨。必須準備好修改、重寫，甚至刪除鍾愛的部分（如已完成的歌曲），若其無助於最終呈現。
- 建立深度協作信任：創作團隊能圍坐餐桌無縫協作，使用共享Google文檔等工具，皆源自數百小時的前期合作積累。為建立這種默契與信任投入時間，對高壓快節奏的創作至關重要。
- 為關鍵崗位制定應急方案：主演更迭是災難性風險。預先準備經團隊成員背書的候選人名單，能將危機轉化為可控的過渡。
- 理解藝術形式的財務架構：無論身為創作者或投資者，都應瞭解資金模式。對大型劇場作品而言，這包括非營利基金會、商業升級協議，以及劇目在登陸百老匯前，需以單筆2.5萬美元起步的規模募集數百萬資金的事實。
La repentina salida de una estrella de Broadway del papel principal de un importante nuevo musical justo un día antes de que salieran a la venta las entradas sería un desastre para la mayoría de las producciones. Sin embargo, para el equipo detrás de Tres veranos de Lincoln, se convirtió en otro desafío intenso y colaborativo dentro de un proceso de años para llevar a escena una historia de la era de la Guerra Civil sobre Abraham Lincoln y Frederick Douglass. Este vistazo tras bambalinas traza el viaje del musical a través de un taller de alto riesgo en Nueva York, su estreno mundial en el prestigioso La Jolla Playhouse, y la inmensa maquinaria humana y financiera necesaria para hacerlo realidad. En esencia, el episodio explora si un proyecto históricamente tan ambicioso puede sobrevivir a la turbulenta economía del teatro moderno y finalmente llegar a Broadway.
El proceso creativo se revela como un acto meticuloso y a menudo agotador de resolución colectiva de problemas. Escuchamos mientras el dramaturgo, el compositor y el letrista se reúnen alrededor de una mesa de comedor, buscando la palabra perfecta (“disputas”) para una nueva canción mientras crean un conmovedor dúo para los Lincoln. Esta colaboración íntima contrasta con la escala colosal de los “ensayos técnicos”, donde un director como Christopher Ashley supervisa a 130 personas, superponiendo meticulosamente iluminación, sonido y movimiento durante semanas, un ejemplo perfecto de la “enfermedad de los costos” que afecta a las artes escénicas en vivo, donde el arte intensivo en mano de obra se vuelve exponencialmente más caro. La narrativa subraya que este trabajo es tanto un “acto de funambulismo como una maratón”, lleno de avances y reveses, incluido cortar una canción que acababa de agregarse.
Financieramente, el episodio analiza el frágil ecosistema que sustenta los nuevos musicales. El sin fines de lucro La Jolla Playhouse depende de un “modelo de mejora”, donde productores comerciales inyectan fondos adicionales para elevar una producción, con la esperanza de una futura transferencia a Broadway y un pequeño porcentaje de regalías. Dado que el musical promedio de Broadway cuesta entre 17 y 30 millones de dólares, los productores deben reunir un mosaico de inversores, con participaciones que parten de los 25.000 dólares. Esta realidad financiera coexiste con un apasionado debate sobre el valor cultural y el futuro del teatro, donde los economistas señalan que, si bien el público promedio de Broadway tiene ingresos familiares superiores a 250.000 dólares, todavía se argumenta que la financiación pública es necesaria para preservar el arte para las generaciones futuras y el bien intrínseco que proporciona.
Finalmente, la historia es una de resiliencia y creencia. Tras una exitosa temporada en La Jolla con un reemplazo de último minuto para Lincoln (Iván Hernández), el equipo mira hacia una esperada apertura en Broadway en 2026, sujeta a recaudar millones más y asegurar un teatro. El impulso para continuar, a pesar de la incertidumbre, queda resumido por el director Christopher Ashley, quien describe la magia colaborativa y adictiva del teatro: el proceso diario de que alguien tome tu idea y la haga “mejor, más rica y más emocionante de lo que tenías en tu cabeza”. El episodio nos deja contemplando si este espectáculo específico tendrá éxito, pero con un profundo aprecio por el ejército de artistas y artesanos que dedican años de sus vidas a tales monumentales esfuerzos creativos.
Perspectivas Sorprendentes
- La “Enfermedad de los Costos” del Teatro en Vivo: Los minuciosos ensayos técnicos, segundo a segundo, que involucran a más de un centenar de técnicos, ilustran vívidamente por qué las artes escénicas en vivo son tan caras y difíciles de escalar, ya que resisten la automatización que reduce costos en otras industrias.
- La Riqueza del Público de Broadway: Los datos muestran que el ingreso familiar anual promedio de un comprador de entradas de Broadway supera los 250.000 dólares, pintando una imagen de la base de consumidores primaria de esta forma de arte como significativamente más adinerada que la población general.
- La Vida Efímera de una Canción: Una nueva canción, “Doce habitaciones en Springfield”, fue creada con gran cuidado y emoción en el apartamento de un escritor, insertada en el espectáculo y luego eliminada por completo antes del estreno; un ejemplo crudo de la naturaleza impermanente e iterativa del trabajo creativo.
- El Porcentaje de Regalías del Teatro Regional: Cuando un espectáculo pasa de un teatro regional sin fines de lucro como La Jolla a Broadway, el teatro recibe solo un pequeño porcentaje de regalías, típicamente entre medio punto porcentual y el tres por ciento de los ingresos de la producción.
- El Modelo de Inversión de “Mejora”: Los productores comerciales no solo financian espectáculos directamente; a menudo proporcionan fondos adicionales para “mejorar” la producción de un teatro sin fines de lucro, permitiendo una orquesta más completa, más tiempo de ensayo o mejor diseño, con la esperanza de una futura transferencia comercial.
Conclusiones Prácticas
- Adopta la Iteración y Estate Dispuesto a Eliminar Tus “Criaturas”: Los proyectos creativos, especialmente los colaborativos como un musical, requieren un refinamiento constante. Prepárate para reelaborar, reescribir e incluso cortar material que amas (como una canción completamente escrita) si no sirve al producto final.
- Construye una Confianza Colaborativa Profunda: La capacidad del equipo creativo para trabajar sin problemas alrededor de una mesa, utilizando herramientas como documentos compartidos de Google, surgió de cientos de horas de colaboración previa. Invertir tiempo para construir esa facilidad y confianza es esencial para resolver problemas de alto riesgo y ritmo rápido.
- Ten un Plan de Contingencia para Roles Clave: La salida de un actor principal es un riesgo catastrófico. Tener una lista previamente evaluada de reemplazos potenciales, respaldada por miembros del equipo que hayan trabajado con ellos antes, puede convertir una crisis en una transición manejable.
- Comprende la Arquitectura Financiera de Tu Forma de Arte: Ya seas creador o inversor, conoce los modelos de financiación. Para el teatro a gran escala, esto incluye fundaciones sin fines de lucro, acuerdos comerciales de mejora, y el hecho de que un espectáculo necesita recaudar millones de dólares de individuos en incrementos de 25.000 dólares o más mucho antes de pisar un escenario de Broadway.
A saída súbita de uma estrela da Broadway do papel principal de um grande novo musical, apenas um dia antes da venda de ingressos começar, seria um desastre para a maioria das produções. No entanto, para a equipe por trás de Three Summers of Lincoln, isso se tornou apenas mais um desafio intenso e colaborativo em um processo de anos para levar ao palco uma história da era da Guerra Civil sobre Abraham Lincoln e Frederick Douglass. Este olhar nos bastidores traça a jornada do musical através de um *workshop* de alto risco em Nova York, sua estreia mundial no prestigiado La Jolla Playhouse, e a imensa maquinaria humana e financeira necessária para tornar isso possível. Em sua essência, o episódio explora se um projeto historicamente ambicioso como este pode sobreviver à turbulência econômica do teatro moderno e, finalmente, chegar à Broadway.
O processo criativo é revelado como um ato meticuloso e muitas vezes exaustivo de resolução coletiva de problemas. Acompanhamos o dramaturgo, o compositor e o letrista reunidos em torno de uma mesa de jantar, procurando a palavra perfeita (“disputas”) para uma nova música enquanto elaboravam um dueto comovente para os Lincolns. Esta colaboração íntima contrasta com a escala colossal dos “ensaios técnicos”, onde um diretor como Christopher Ashley supervisiona 130 pessoas, sobrepondo meticulosamente iluminação, som e movimento durante semanas – um exemplo perfeito da “doença dos custos” que aflige as artes ao vivo, onde a arte intensiva em mão de obra se torna exponencialmente mais cara. A narrativa enfatiza que este trabalho é tanto um “ato de equilíbrio quanto uma maratona”, repleto de avanços e contratempos, incluindo cortar uma música que acabara de ser adicionada.
Financeiramente, o episódio dissecou o frágil ecossistema que sustenta novos musicais. O La Jolla Playhouse, uma instituição sem fins lucrativos, depende de um “modelo de aprimoramento”, onde produtores comerciais injetam fundos extras para elevar uma produção, na esperança de uma futura transferência para a Broadway e de uma pequena royalties. Com o custo médio de um musical da Broadway variando entre US$ 17 e US$ 30 milhões, os produtores devem reunir um mosaico de investidores, com participações a partir de US$ 25.000. Esta realidade financeira coexiste com um debate apaixonado sobre o valor cultural e o futuro do teatro, onde economistas observam que, embora o público médio da Broadway tenha renda familiar superior a US$ 250.000, ainda se argumenta que o financiamento público é necessário para preservar a arte para as gerações futuras e pelo bem intrínseco que ela proporciona.
No final, a história é uma de resiliência e crença. Após uma temporada de sucesso em La Jolla com um substituto de última hora para Lincoln (Ivan Hernandez), a equipe mira uma abertura esperada na Broadway em 2026, dependente da captação de mais milhões e da garantia de um teatro. A motivação para continuar, apesar da incerteza, é resumida pelo diretor Christopher Ashley, que descreve a magia colaborativa e viciante do teatro: o processo diário de alguém pegar sua ideia e torná-la “melhor, mais rica e mais emocionante do que você imaginava”. O episódio nos deixa contemplando se este espetáculo específico terá sucesso, mas com um profundo apreço pelo exército de artistas e artesãos que dedicam anos de suas vidas a empreendimentos criativos tão monumentais.
Insights Surpreendentes
- A “Doença dos Custos” do Teatro ao Vivo: Os meticulosos ensaios técnicos, segundo a segundo, envolvendo mais de uma centena de técnicos, ilustram vividamente por que a performance ao vivo é tão cara e difícil de escalonar, pois resiste à automação que reduz custos em outras indústrias.
- A Riqueza do Público da Broadway: Dados mostram que a renda familiar média anual de um comprador de ingressos da Broadway ultrapassa US$ 250.000, pintando um quadro da base consumidora primária desta forma de arte como significativamente mais rica do que a população geral.
- A Vida Efêmera de uma Canção: Uma nova música, “Twelve Rooms in Springfield”, foi elaborada com grande cuidado e entusiasmo no apartamento de um escritor, inserida no espetáculo e depois cortada completamente antes da estreia – um exemplo marcante da natureza impermanente e iterativa do trabalho criativo.
- O Corte de Royalties dos Teatros Regionais: Quando um espetáculo se transfere de um teatro regional sem fins lucrativos, como o La Jolla, para a Broadway, o teatro recebe apenas uma pequena royalty, tipicamente entre meio ponto percentual e três por cento dos ganhos da produção.
- O Modelo de Investimento de “Aprimoramento”: Os produtores comerciais não apenas financiam espetáculos diretamente; eles frequentemente fornecem fundos extras para “aprimorar” a produção de um teatro sem fins lucrativos, permitindo uma orquestra mais completa, mais tempo de ensaio ou melhor cenografia, na esperança de uma futura transferência comercial.
Conclusões Práticas
- Aceite a Iteração e Esteja Disposto a Sacrificar Seus “Xodós”: Projetos criativos, especialmente colaborativos como um musical, exigem refinamento constante. Esteja preparado para retrabalhar, reescrever e até cortar material que você ama (como uma canção completamente escrita) se ela não servir ao produto final.
- Construa uma Confiança Colaborativa Profunda: A capacidade da equipe criativa de trabalhar perfeitamente em torno de uma mesa, usando ferramentas como Google Docs compartilhados, veio de centenas de horas de colaboração prévia. Investir tempo para construir essa facilidade e confiança é essencial para a resolução de problemas de alto risco e ritmo acelerado.
- Tenha um Plano de Contingência para Funções-Chave: A saída de um ator principal é um risco catastrófico. Ter uma lista pré-selecionada de potenciais substitutos, defendida por membros da equipe que já trabalharam com eles, pode transformar uma crise em uma transição gerenciável.
- Compreenda a Arquitetura Financeira da Sua Forma de Arte: Seja você um criador ou um investidor, conheça os modelos de financiamento. Para o teatro em grande escala, isso inclui fundações sem fins lucrativos, acordos comerciais de aprimoramento e o fato de que um espetáculo precisa levantar milhões de indivíduos em incrementos de US$ 25.000 ou mais, muito antes de pisar em um palco da Broadway.
It’s been in development for five years and has at least a year to go. On the eve of its out-of-town debut, the actor playing Lincoln quit. And the producers still need to raise another $15 million to bring the show to New York. There really is no business like show business. (Part three of a three-part series.)
- SOURCES:
- Christopher Ashley, artistic director of La Jolla Playhouse.
- Debby Buchholz, managing director of La Jolla Playhouse.
- Carmen Cusack, actor.
- Quentin Earl Darrington, actor.
- Joe DiPietro, playwright and lyricist.
- Crystal Monee Hall, composer, singer, actor.
- Ivan Hernandez, actor.
- Michael Rushton, professor of arts administration at Indiana University.
- Jeffrey Seller, Broadway producer.
- Alan Shorr, Broadway producer.
- Daniel Watts, writer, choreographer, actor.
- RESOURCES:
- 3 Summers of Lincoln (2025).
- “Review: Visceral ‘3 Summers of Lincoln’ is thrilling and thought-provoking,” by Pam Kragen (San Diego Union-Tribune, 2025).
- “What’s Wrong with the Theatre is What’s Wrong With Society,” by Michael Rushton (ArtsJournal, 2023).
- “American Theater Is Imploding Before Our Eyes,” by Isaac Butler (New York Times, 2023).
- The Moral Foundations of Public Funding for the Arts, by Michael Rushton (2023).
- EXTRAS:
- “How to Make the Coolest Show on Broadway,” by Freakonomics Radio (2024).
- “You Can Make a Killing, but Not a Living,” by Freakonomics Radio (2024).
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