MARCH 1996 ----------------------------In this issue------------------------------------------ Voices in Contemporary Theatre Andrew Kraft's CyberTheatre Monthly TRE Trivia Forum Insider's Tips Gossip du jour ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Voices: Andrew Lloyd Webber and the Empty Calories Theory: "What IS it about that guy?" In a recent chat the name of mega-musical composer Andrew Lloyd Webber came up and a frustrated industry insider muttered "What IS it about that guy". The comments that followed were peppered with the adjectives overblown, overrated, derivative, unbelievable and an analogy to "empty calories". When, in another recent discussion, the musical Cats was mentioned, a fan asked what "everyone" had against it - and against Webber in general. There aren't any moderates on the subject of Sir Andrew, who's compositions include earlier collaborations with Tim Rice, Jesus Christ SuperStar, Evita, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and later works like Cats, Starlight Express, and of course Phantom of the Opera, and Sunset Blvd - there are only two camps Webber-sucks and Webber-is-a-demigod, and both factions seem to feel they're a persecuted minority. Certainly the ALW shows are successful - enjoying certain multi-year runs in both New York & London, cast album releases from secondary & foreign language casts, souvenir concessions that rival Disney, and a shelfful of Tony nominations and awards. - So its difficult to say why the pro-ALW folks would feel outnumbered. Their opponent, on the other hand, use bigger words, and generally have a lot more to say than "I don't like it". They specify why they don't approve of these "supershows" in very definite terms, and usually at some length. There are always a few hyper-intellectual types who must belittle anything that is tremendously popular - but the majority of anti-ALW folks don't fall into that class. Rather they argue that all aspects of life, good and bad, sad and funny, beautiful and ugly, safe and scary, should all be reflected in any art form, and that these glitzy spectacles of underground grottos and chandeliers do not deliver much in the way of real human characters and even less of old-fashioned storytelling. - though it must be noted that Webber does not force-feed us happy endings the way the previous generation's mega-musicals did, and the core material in works like Phantom and Sunset Blvd. lend themselves to more layers of interpretation than their detractors may realize (our Phantom discussion here in the forum has been likened to English class for a reason). It can't be denied that a lifetime spent seeing nothing but the same Webraganzas over and over again could be analogized to having dessert without dinner - but the Webber-bashers need to remember is that dessert is a part of dinner. And a theatrical performance, to take the whole art-as-foodstuffs motif a step farther, is often the dessert a larger event in the lives of those attending. The "Dinner and a Show" that celebrates a special anniversary, marks lavish evening in which a young man is working up to propose, or is highlight of a in a once in a lifetime vacation - should be rich in spectacle and magic. There are occasions in which one wants to know what one is getting, and to know it is melodic and colorful - and comfortable. There are times to challenge every tenet we hold to be true as a society, and times to escape to a simpler world where the tenets of melodrama rule the day. So if the all-Webber diet connotes living on empty calories, it must be equally acknowledged that a life spent watching nothing but the deep, dark, & inscrutable is equally absurd. In theatre, as in all things, a balanced diet is important for health and growth - there are two masks up there - one weeping and one smiling, and if no one will ever have an emotional catharsis because Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer have a falling out, no one has bounced out of the theatre whistling after watching the Scott party trudge to the south pole and die. Its true: there is a 6-layer Andrew Lloyd Webber cake out there, and it is largely empty calories, but there's enough meat on the sideboard that no one needs to be fretting about the death of real humanity in theatre. At the very hour the "What is it about that guy" debate raged online, the original members of Steppenwolf gathered to reminisce about their humble beginnings and present success. The Chicago-based "my Uncle has a church-basement" ensemble that beat the odds and survived/thrived by bringing a raw rage to the stage through the works of Sam Shepard and other important new playwrights, spawned such well-known talents as Gary Sinise (Forrest Gump), John Malcovich (Mary Riley, Dangerous Liaisons, Line of Fire), Pat Allen (Nixon), John Mahoney (Frazier), and Laurie Metcalf (Roseanne). Perhaps Malcovich summed up the raw humanity school: ``You don't need to manufacture emotions. What you should be doing is containing them or guiding them, not manufacturing them... Often acting puts a kind of veneer or a kind of sheen on something that should be very raw and very human" Somewhere between Steppenwolf's raw humanity and ALW's Music of the Night, I submit that the American Theatre is providing all the elements for a balanced, and flavorful - and diverse diet - audiences have a bounty of choices and opportunity. It is up to them to make the most of it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ CyberTheatre Monthly The Commercialization of Online Theatre You may have noticed the glaring Lexus ad at the top of the Playbill site. Or the MSN Theatre & Performance Forum ad on the bottom of the Theatre Central site. It has become clear that the theatre sites that we have come to know so well on the 'Net are becoming commercialized. But is this a bad thing? The main reason these sites are going commercial is for the money, plain and simple. But can they really be blamed for trying to recoup some of the losses they have made to date? Theatre Central alone takes almost $500 every month to run, between the actual maintenance and access costs and the time spent on it. Running a web site can be expensive. Until now, the losses have grown to the point where it's no longer feasible to continue without some form of revenue or compensation. It is rare to find the web site that would turn down this potential revenue source, and when approached by advertisers, the sites tend to jump on the bandwagon. The big question, then, is how to gain revenue from a web site without destroying the user experience or turning off users. The three major forms of revenue that have been attempted on the web to date include site sponsorship, page-by-page advertising, and membership fees for users. The first works only if a large company takes an interest in your site. The third works only if your site is a growing community with significant features for paying members. In the past, this has tended to fail more often than not. That leaves the page-by-page advertising source, and is the reason why this form of revenue is the most prevalent on the Internet. But the biggest key is the maintenance of the user experience and the community that the site created in the first place. Advertising can tend to turn off users. It can distort the look and feel of the site, as it has on Playbill, and is also an additional graphic for the average user's 14,400 modem to download. The sites that retain the most users are the ones that integrate the advertising into their look and feel. In addition, placing the ad at the bottom of the page allows the users to look at the meat of the site without waiting for the ad to load. At the same time, an advertiser is bound to pay more for a top-of-page ad than a bottom-of-page ad. There are many trade-offs to consider. What finally matters, however, is the site itself. A site can generate thousands of dollars in revenue, but alienate its user base in the process. In so doing, it makes itself less attractive to the advertisers, and eventually goes out of business. So if you are planning on selling advertising on your site, keep all this in mind. What all this boils down to is more money for the site. The more money a site has, the more it can do. The more features it can add. The more frequently it can be updated. All in all, the commercialization of the theatre-related web sites is a boon, rather than a blight, for it will allow these sites to blossom into truly informative with rich information for the theatre community. Web sites mentioned in this edition of CyberTheatre Monthly: Theatre Central http://www.theatre-central.com/ Playbill http://www.playbill.com/ --- Andrew Quixote Kraft is the creator of Theatre Central, the Directory of Theatre Resources on the 'Net, and the Directory of Theatre Professionals on the Net, a free service allowing theatre professionals to list themselves and their contact information in a searchable database. Theatre Central is the most frequented theatre directory on the Internet, with over 1000 individual page accesses (over 5000 "Hits") and 500 links, and growing every week. Andrew is currently fulfilling his final requirements at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a B.S. in Theatre Arts, specializing in the application of Technology to the Performing Arts. For more information on Theatre Central or the Directory of Theatre Professionals on the Net, for information on Andrew's freelance Web Consulting and Site Creation services, or for comments on this article, please contact Andrew Kraft at akraft@theatre-central.com. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ TRE Trivia * For who or what is the Tony Award is named? * In Sunday in the Park With George, what kind of artwork does each George practice? * What is the name of the theatre cat in Cats? * What was Neil Simon's first play? * What two ingredients are necessary for a person to fly in Peter Pan? Answers to last month's trivia: Jean Valjean is sent to prison for stealing a loaf of bread The Flintstones' star Rosie O'Donnel played Rizzo in the revival of Grease! Bob Fosse is the only director to win an Oscar, Tony and Emmy in a single year Walter Cronkite made his Broadway Debut as the book in the 1995 revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying It was Me and My Girl that made "The Lambeth Walk" famous. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Forum Insider Tips: * TheatreWeb is not only a virtual landscape linked to some of the best Theatre-related sites on the Internet, it's a chatroom. Not only can you pick an avatar and use it to smile, wave, flirt with other chatters - you can enjoy privacy through proximity-chatting (only those members who are close to you in the virtual landscape can "hear" your conversation) * You can look at previous months' Guestbook entries in the folders at the top of that bulletin board. * MSN-members visit forums because they are interest in the subject, not to acquire pen-pals. You stand a much better chance of opening up a dialogue in through bulletin board discussion than by asking for E-mail. * Every bulletin board message contains the author's E-mail address, at the top of the message following "From" If you're mailing to someone else on msn, or expect to receive mail from someone else on the network, do not include the @msn.com suffix - that's only for Internet mail. * Many members do not stay for the full hour of a one-hour chat, if you want to be sure to meet someone at a regularly scheduled chat but cannot stay the entire time, pre-arrange a time to meet them. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Gossip du jour... There are murmurs of a new George Furth production (a musical this time) is on the horizon through a little-known regional. And of a Dr. Seuss Musical (!) entitled The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, chronicling the villainous Dr. Terwilliker and the horrors of practicing the piano. A revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber's biggest flop: Jeeves - currently being rewritten for a West End production. And an adaptation of E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime is planned in Toronto. Might either of these be headed for Broadway if they succeed? In any case, we may be certain that future Broadway offerings will include The Apple Doesn't Fall . . . directed by Leonard Nimoy, a new play entitled Tartuffe: Born Again, and a revival of Cole Porter's Fifty Million Frenchmen. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Copyright 1996, Mersinger Theatrical Services