Theater Economics Quotes

I don't know of any American playwrights who earn the bulk of their living writing plays. Many of the older ones teach, while a growing number of younger ones write for series television.

My fears about where theater is going - it's the Hollywood model, where people are chasing the almighty dollar and making commercial decisions based on nothing more than generating income for themselves and their theaters.

You can't make money on Broadway. You make nothing. You maybe make like $1,350 a week after you pay out all the producers.

God knows I've had productions where there were actors in my plays who were making more money per week than I was.

Unfortunately, because the theater is always a poor relation when it comes to making the nut, it's not easy to get the audience in to see a play, unless you have a name that is recognizable, that the audience wants to see and is prepared to pay the $125 to see.

Unless you are wealthy, you cannot afford to act or direct one play and remain unemployed the rest of the time.

The economics of being a playwright are abysmal. I like to think of the work I do out in Hollywood as a way to actually make a life in the theater easier.

I don't think that the theater should necessarily pay.

There is a problem on the so-called commercial stage in New York. The price of a ticket is exorbitant, and there are no longer original productions possible, apparently, on the commercial stage. They are all plays that were taken from either England or smaller theaters, off-Broadway theaters, and so on. The one justification there used to be for the commercial theater was that it originated everything we had, and now it originates nothing. But the powers that be seem perfectly content to have it that way. They don't risk anything anymore, and they simply pick off the cream.

Quite a few operas are still being commissioned around the world, although nothing apart from audience popularity can ensure more than a few performances.

the theater is the only money-making business I know in which haste apparently rules from first to last.

The economics of theater are painful. I still think that the theater community should be looking much more rigorously at how to let the playwright keep the money they make.

Plays are getting smaller and smaller, not because playwrights minds are shrinking but because of the economics.

Broadway doesn't pay that much.

The majority of great work that's being done in the theater is happening Off Broadway, where you can't make a living.

The modern economics of the theater is such that we write plays with fewer and fewer characters.

The reason why Absurdist plays take place in No Man's Land with only two characters is primarily financial.

A play that works well and is done quite a lot - I've never done the math - but it's probably more remunerative than a movie.