Theater Kids Revisited

 

[Last June, I posted “Theater Kids,” devoted entirely to “How To Tell If You’re a Theatre Kid,” an excerpt from John DeVore’s memoir, Theatre Kids: A True Tale of Off-Off Broadway (Applause, Theatre & Cinema Books, 2024), published on the American Theatre magazine website.  This past January, a New York Times article caught my attention, so now I’m going to revisit the topic of “theater kids.”  I think the titles of the individual articles I’m reposting pretty well reveal what this collection is about.

[In the introduction to the 23 June 2025 post, I define what a theater kid is:

a young person, usually a student, who is deeply passionate about and involved in theatrical performance.  They are often characterized by their enthusiastic embrace of performing arts, particularly musicals, and may exhibit traits like spontaneously breaking into song—almost always one from a musical—or quoting lines from shows.

[I go on to say, “I wasn’t a theater kid,” referencing my autobiographical post “A Broadway Baby” (22 September 2010)—though I acknowledge that that label did fit me.

[The three articles below are the New York Times report that started off a little brouhaha in the theater world, the Playbill article that called attention to that to-do, and a management association article that lays out the insiders’ response.  If you were a theater kid, or you knew one, you might find the exchange interesting—perhaps even touching.] 

“HOW ‘THEATER KID’ MORPHED INTO A POLITICAL INSULT”
by Sopan Deb 

[The New York Times article ran on 8 January 2026 in “Arts” (Section C).  It was posted online on 21 December 2025 as “Move Aside, Snowflake: ‘Theater Kid’ Is the New Go-To Political Insult.”]

Used as a pejorative, usually by the right, the phrase tags ‘the outsiders, the weirdos.’

Move over Karen and snowflake. There’s a new go-to political put-down: Theater kid.

Last month, the comedian Tim Dillon referred to New York City’s mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani, as a “theater kid,” arguing that Mr. Mamdani’s victory speech was “a little cringe.”

[Tim Dillon (b. 1985) is a stand-up comic, podcaster, and actor known for his unrestrained satirical humor and social commentary. He hosts the popular podcast The Tim Dillon Show, which covers news, politics, and culture and airs at 9 a.m. (Pacific Time) Saturdays on YouTube (video) and Spotify (audio). The referenced show about Mayor-Elect Mamdani was broadcast on 8 November 2025, four days after Mamdani won the New York City mayoral election.]

After Mr. Mamdani appeared in the Oval Office for a surprisingly cordial meeting with President Trump [Friday, 21 November 2025], Jack Posobiec, a Trump loyalist and conspiracy theorist, wrote on X, “Theater kids always crumble if you actually press them.” (He also released an episode of his podcast titled “MAGA vs The Theater Kids: Do You Want Drama or Do You Want Victory?”)

Mr. Mamdani, a former improv student, actually is a theater fan. But he’s not the only target.

When Senator Alex Padilla, Democrat of California, was forcibly removed from a news conference in June after trying to question Kristi Noem, the [now-former] homeland security secretary, The Daily Caller [right-wing news and opinion website based in Washington, D.C. and founded by political commentator Tucker Carlson and political advisor Neil Patel] published an article with the headline ”Democrat Theater Kid Learns He’s Not Above the Law.”

Weeks later, the conservative publication American Thinker [daily online magazine dealing with American politics from a politically conservative viewpoint] ran an article saying that Mr. Padilla and a Who’s Who list of prominent Democrats were, you guessed it, theater kids. After a group of Democratic lawmakers released a video last month reminding troops that they could refuse illegal orders, Joe Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center [U.S. government agency responsible for national and international counterterrorism efforts], described them as ”theater kids encouraging an insurrection.”

You get the picture, which raises the question: What did theater kids do to attract so much scorn?

It depends on whom you ask.

For Scott Jennings, a conservative CNN commentator, the increased use of the term is a result of “performance-based radicalism” on the left. As an example, he cited a video from 2019 that resurfaced in the final weeks before a special election for a House seat in Tennessee. It showed the Democratic candidate, Aftyn Behn, in tears, being dragged out of Gov. Bill Lee’s office during a sit-in protest, which called for the removal of a state legislator accused of sexual assault. (Ms. Behn lost by 9 percentage points in a district that Mr. Trump carried by 22 points last year.)

“These people are a sandwich board and a megaphone short of the loony bin,” Mr. Jennings said in an interview. “They think it’s actual politics. They think this is something good, and the rest of us are looking at it going, ‘Man, there go the theater kids again.’”

It’s not clear when the term gained currency, but an early example of its use as a pejorative dates to the final weeks of the 2024 presidential campaign when the conservative operative Matt Whitlock said on social media that Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, was “just a theater kid performing a sketch.”

Caricaturing political opponents with simple insults has become a hallmark of Trump-era politics. Think “Low Energy” Jeb Bush. Republicans, led by the president, have elevated name-calling to an art form, but Democrats have dabbled, too, with mixed results.

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, called Republicans “weird” and turned it into a calling card of his candidacy. More recently, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a leading Democratic critic of Mr. Trump who has worked to position himself for a possible 2028 presidential run, has taken to mimicking the president’s approach — calling him “Dozy Don,” among other insults.

Social media has made such put-downs catch on faster.

“In politics, just like in journalism, you’re always trying to make 10 words five, five words three, two words one, right?” Matt Gorman, a Republican strategist, said. “The way to do that really effectively, and we’ve seen this for generations, is you find ways to short-circuit that through connotations.”

Using “theater kids” pejoratively is a way of tagging opponents as dramatic and performative without having to use those words, Mr. Gorman said.

Theater kids became an indelible part of the culture when television series and films like “Glee,” “High School Musical” and “Smash” [see “‘What I learned from Smash (if I didn’t know anything about theater)’” by RonAnnArbor (9 June 2013)] hit the airwaves, though the popularity of those shows set theater kids up as the subject of parody.

“We are a ton of energy and we can be chaotic, but I find that that’s not actually the qualities that people are pointing out when they talk about the theater kid,” said Zhailon Levingston, a director of the upcoming Broadway production of “Cats: The Jellicle Ball.” “What they’re talking about is the person who refuses to stay silent in the face of something that needs to be spoken to.”

For the last half-century or so, it hasn’t been considered “cool” to be a theater aficionado, said Julia Knitel, who was nominated for a Tony Award for her performance in the musical “Dead Outlaw” [2025].

“‘Theater kid’ being the bullied party is a tale as old as time,” Ms. Knitel said. “We’ve always been the outsiders, the weirdos. It’s a quick cultural shorthand to treat us as the underdog.”

Some see a more harmful motive for deploying the moniker as a political insult.

“My initial reaction was just that it feels homophobic,” said Jacob Kerzner, an assistant professor of musical theater at Syracuse University. Mr. Kerzner added that theater is an unusual art in that “you couldn’t replace theater with any other art form in this context.”

“‘They’re all painters now’ doesn’t quite have the same ring to it,” he said.

Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, the author of a recent biography of Lin-Manuel Miranda [Lin-Manuel Miranda: The Education of an Artist (Simon & Schuster, 2025)], said that using the term was part of a larger culture battle.

“A lot of kids playfully adopt the ‘theater kid’ moniker, even with its tinge of attention-seeking excess, because theater offers a space for performing a wider range of emotions and identities than much of our society allows,” Mr. Pollack-Pelzner said in an email. “Since right-wingers want to crack down on exploring gender, race and sexuality in schools, it’s sadly not surprising that they’d try to wield ‘theater kid’ as an insult to discredit progressive politics.”

The dings against theater lovers have come mostly from the right, but not exclusively so. Dhaaruni Sreenivas, a data scientist who has worked for Democratic consulting firms, wrote on X that the perception of the Democratic Party “as a safe space for rule-following theater kids is really bad for our image.” She followed that up with a Substack post [Substack is an online, ad-free platform that enables writers, podcasters, and creators to publish content directly to subscribers via email, while offering options for monetization through paid subscriptions] titled, “Theater Kids and Playing Risk.”

“You know the kids in ‘Glee’? Super cheerful and go-getters?” Ms. Sreenivas, who was a delegate for Kamala Harris at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, said in an interview. “They’re kind of despised by their peers. And it’s a problem because Americans kind of are nerdist. They do not like nerds.”

To Ms. Sreenivas, theater kids are “desperate for the approval of authority figures” and “really want to follow the rules and get rewarded for it.” Basically, she added, “they want to perform being good kids.”

Not everyone minds the moniker. Theater kids, Ms. Knitel said, are emotionally intelligent, empathetic, communicative, charismatic and in touch with their feelings. Those qualities, she said, don’t align with the “current administration.”

“They don’t want us to be empathetic and they don’t want us to care about those around us,” she said, “and they don’t want us to be open to expanding our horizons and feeling things deeply, because then we’re not as easily going to fall in line.”

[Sopan Deb is a New York Times reporter covering breaking news and culture.]

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“IN RESPONSE TO NEW YORK TIMES,
EDUCATIONAL THEATRE ASSOCIATION LAUNCHES
PROUD THEATRE KID CAMPAIGN”
by Diep Tran

[Playbill, the National Theatre Magazine, picked up the story with a report on 23 December 2025 revealing that the Educational Theatre Association had taken umbrage at the content of the Times’ article.]

The campaign is in response to an article that said that “theatre kid” is the new conservative insult.

On December 21, the New York Times published an article with the headline: “Move Aside, Snowflake: ‘Theater Kid’ Is the New Go-To Political Insult” [that's the online title; see above]. It attributed the rise of conservative pundits using “theatre kid” as an insult, to denote a “performance-based radicalism”—such as a conspiracy theorist calling incoming New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani a theatre kid (though Mamdani has said he listens to Hamilton and Dear Evan Hansen in the car).

In response, the Educational Theatre Association has launched the Proud Theatre Kid campaign to celebrate theatre kids everywhere. Said Dr. Jennifer Katona, executive director of EdTA, “This weekend, our members made it clear that the New York Times article touched a nerve. We felt it was important to stand up as leaders of the theatre education community and affirm what ‘theatre kid’ really means: creativity, discipline, collaboration, and empathy. The response today has been overwhelming, and it underscores the pride and unity of this community.”

The Association asked its followers to share why they are proud theatre kids. One respondent, who is a reverend, wrote: “My son is 14 and is confident, kind, and creative. I couldn’t be prouder! What a wonderful life both of us have found in the theatre. The world needs more of what theatre creates.”

Another respondent wrote: “The best description of theatre that I’ve ever heard is ‘the gym for empathy.’ It strengthened my ability to listen, to express complex ideas, and to put myself in others’ shoes. I can see why that’s threatening to certain politicians and pundits.” 

The Educational Theatre Association is a nonprofit focused on theatre education, serving as a professional association for theatre educators. EdTA is the parent organization of the International Thespian Society, a student honor society that has inducted more than 2.5 million thespians since 1929. Additionally, EdTA operates the Educational Theatre Foundation, the organization’s philanthropic arm dedicated to increasing opportunity and access to school theatre.

Said a representative from EdTA: “At the heart of this campaign is a simple belief: if even one student misses out on the life-changing impact of theatre education, we are all worse off. We want our community to stand together and refuse to let anyone else define what ‘theatre kid’ means.”

EdTA and Playbill are currently collaborating on a new Content Creator Scholarship that will send three students to the 2026 International Thespian Festival.

[Diep Tran is an arts journalist and editor based in New York City.  She is currently the Editor in Chief of Playbill.  Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, NBC News, New York magazine, Time Out New York, Backstage, CNN, Salon, Primetimer, Broadway News, New York Theatre Guide and other publications.  Her previous day jobs include being features editor of Broadway.com and senior editor of American Theatre magazine.  In 2023, she was named on Gold House’s A100 list as one of 100 most impactful Asians.  She loves musical theater, period dramas, and sci-fi/fantasy TV shows.]

*  *  *  *
“TEACHERS’ GROUP LAUNCHES
EFFORT TO RECLAIM ‘THEATER KID’”
by Mark Athitakis  

[EdTA’s position and its response were laid out in Associations Now in a 13 January 2026 post.  Associations Now is a daily news platform of the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE), which serves professionals in the association management field.]

The Educational Theatre Association’s #ProudTheatreKid campaign caught attention on social media, providing a boost to its advocacy message. 

A national theater organization launched a pop-up campaign to push back against the increasingly pejorative use of the term “theater kid,” galvanizing its member base in support of its advocacy goals.

On December 21, the New York Times published an article titled “Move Aside, Snowflake: ‘Theater Kid’ Is the New Go-To Political Insult” [see above]. The story showed how the term has been used to criticize New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani, Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA), and other Democratic lawmakers.

The story naturally caught the attention of the Educational Theatre Association (EdTA), which represents theater-education professionals and supports middle- and high-school theater students through its awards and foundation programs. 

“We absolutely felt like there was no space to not respond,” said EdTA Executive Director Dr. Jennifer Katona.

According to Katona, the organization has two million alumni across its 97 years of existence. “That’s two million theater kids,” she said. “The theater kid is our brand. It’s who we are, it’s who we care about, it’s who we talk about every day. We take a lot of pride in that, and we truly believe that a theater program in a school is not just about the performances, but about all the skills that are developed for students’ involvement in that, and also what that program does to the school and the community at large.” [See the post on this blog “The Relation of Theater to Other Disciplines” (21 July 2011).]

Though EdTA’s staff was largely off for the holiday break, it developed a rapid social-media response, using the hashtag #ProudTheatreKid on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. “Theatre kids are academically strong,” the posts read in part. “They are emotionally intelligent. They are collaborative leaders and creative thinkers.” Readers were encouraged to share their own theater experiences growing up.

The posts struck a chord with EdTA members theater fans in general. The Broadway industry bible Playbill covered the campaign [see above], and the posts drew more than 1,200 shares on Facebook and more than 7,700 likes on Instagram. “If it wasn’t up by that evening, it was the next day,” Katona said. “It’s probably four or five times the reshares, if not more, that we usually get,” she said.

More than just attempting to blunt the use of “theater kid” as an insult, the campaign has given EdTA a platform to promote its advocacy work entering 2026. Last week, EdTA used the term “proud theatre kid” as a way to encourage registration for its annual March advocacy summit, which includes a visit with legislators on Capitol Hill and workshops on how participants can promote theater education in their own communities. 

“This comes at a time of years of their craft being under attack, with no-drag bills, the slicing of budgets, and the way some of our states and teachers have been censored,” Katona said. “So this felt like a line in the sand for everybody. This is really propelling us into action. It goes beyond just asking people to change your Facebook status. It’s: Let’s try to come together and go to DC and talk about the value of what we do. That’s where we’re taking it.”

[Mark Athitakis, a contributing editor for Associations Now, has written on nonprofits, the arts, and leadership for a variety of publications.  He is a coauthor (with Mark Lasswell) of The Dumbest Moments in Business History (Portfolio. 2004).]

Theater Education & Training, Part 1

 

[Even casual readers of Rick On Theater will probably know that theater and arts education—that is, teaching about theater and the arts, not necessarily training in the arts themselves—is of particular interest and concern to me.  I have blogged on the subject often over the years I have maintained ROT, as I have on theater and performance in schools.  A quick look at the archive for this blog over on the left of the screen will reveal this.

[In that spirit, I’ve gathered several articles on theater education and training, some about academic theater programs and others concerning the professional training working artists received.  One source, American Theatre magazine, devoted the Winter 2024 issue to this topic, but I’m beginning with a pair of articles from other publications.  Since I haven’t decided on all the pieces I’ll be putting up on ROT, I can’t tell readers how long the series will be yet.]

“25 BROADWAY PROFESSIONALS SHARE THEIR TRAINING”
by Andrew Gans

[One of several pieces on the Playbill website (Playbill: Broadway, Off-Broadway, London News, Listings and Tickets | Playbill), all published on 6 September 2024, that concern the professional training that current denizens of Broadway got before they became working theater artists, Andrew Gans’s “25 Broadway Professionals Share Their Training” will be part of the series of articles I’m posting on ROT.

[Playbill published a number of pieces which I won’t be reposting, but I want to draw readers’ attention to two of them because they directly relate to ”25 Broadway Professionals”: “Where Did the Creatives of the 2023-24 Broadway Season Go to School?” and “Where Did the Actors of the 2023-24 Broadway Season Go to School?” both by the PlaybiIll staff, are lists of the top 10 universities where the current crop of Broadway playwrights, directors, designers, composers, and actors got their schooling; the lists are available at Where Did the Creatives of the 2023–24 Broadway Season Go to School? | Playbill and Where Did the Actors of the 2023–24 Broadway Season Go to School? | Playbill.

[A note about the links embedded in the article below: Playbill provided links to recent listings from the magazine of the credits of some of the artists included.  You’ll see that not all the artists have these connections, but I have left the ones that are provided in my repost for interested readers.  (The first link, by the way, is to a list of other Playbill articles on this subject.)]

A mix of actors, designers, directors, and stage managers recall the schools that were part of their journey to the Main Stem [i.e., the Theater District in Manhattan].

Last year, Playbill launched its new feature series, How Did I Get Here, which spotlights not only actors, but directors, designers, musicians, and others who work on and off the stage to create the magic that is live theatre.

Since that time, over 70 artists have shared their journeys to Broadway, including the many conservatories, colleges, and graduate schools that were pivotal to their eventual success.

Below, as part of Playbill's Back to School Week coverage, we compiled 25 theatre professionals' answers to the question, "Where did you train/study?" Read their responses, and click here for the full series of interviews.

Stage manager Christopher Kee Anaya-Gorman

I received my BFA in Stage Management from the University of Arizona [Tucson] (go Wildcats!). It was an excellent program to learn within, and that’s been more evident as I met younger stage managers coming out of school and discussing their programs. At the U of A, I worked alongside MFA students as an undergrad on main stage productions with full performance schedules, understudy rehearsals, automation, fly rail, traps, etc., all in conjunction with our coursework.

[For anyone who’s not familiar with U.S. college and university degrees, a BFA is a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, an undergraduate degree; an MFA is a graduate degree, a Master of Fine Arts, usually a two-year program. There are also some universities that grant DFA degrees, a Doctor of Fine Arts. Fine arts degrees are, of course, not limited to theater; they’re awarded in the visual arts, music, and dance as well, for instance.

[The fly rail is another name for the fly system, or the theatrical rigging system that’s an arrangement of ropes, pulleys, counterweights, and related devices in a theater that enables a stage crew to hoist (fly) components such as curtains, lights, scenery, stage effects, and even actors into the space above the stage, the fly loft.]

Director and actor Michael Arden

I attended the Interlochen Arts Camp and Academy [Green Lake Township, Grand Traverse County, Michigan] and The Juilliard School of Drama [New York City].

Actor Roman Banks

I consider my training ongoing, but I officially trained for a year at Shenandoah Conservatory [Winchester, Virginia] as a musical theatre major! However, high school programs like YoungArts [an American charity based in Miami, Florida, to help nurture emerging high school artists] and the Georgia Governor's Honors Program [a four-week summer educational program for intellectually gifted and artistically talented high school students in the State of Georgia] taught me key lessons about ethics and my craft that I still utilize today.

Costume designer Gregg Barnes

I have my BFA in English Literature from San Diego State University [California] and an MFA in design from New York University.

Music director and conductor Kristen Blodgette

I began taking piano lessons when I was four years old. I took piano lessons, violin lessons (violin lessons didn’t last long, as I was terrible), voice lessons, and played French Horn. I ultimately graduated from the Cincinnati-College Conservatory of Music [Ohio] with a degree in Piano Performance and attended graduate school at CCM in Opera and Accompanying. I had a graduate assistantship in the opera department and had the wonderful opportunity to work in most of the voice studios and the opera studio.

Vocal, text and dialect coach Gigi Buffington

I trained with [dialect coach] Robert Neff Williams in his two-year Voice, Speech and Shakespeare program after two years with [acting coach] Maggie Flanigan at William Esper Studio [New York City acting school dedicated to the technique of Sanford Meisner (1905-97)]. A decade later, I received my master's at The Guildhall School of Music & Drama in Training Actors (Voice) followed by a Post Graduate Award from the University of Warwick in Teaching Shakespeare to Actors and Artists.

Actor Jonathan Burke

I began my training as an actor major at the Baltimore School for the Arts [Maryland] for high school and trained at the Arena Players [Youtheater; the oldest continuously operating African-American community theater in the U.S.; Baltimore] while matriculating through high school. I then went on to receive my BFA in musical theatre from Ithaca College [Ithaca, New York].

Lighting designer Isabella Byrd

I was lucky to have early exposure to the arts growing up, which led me to a public Houston [Texas] school, HSPVA (High School for the Performing and Visual Arts). I dove deep into theatre then while also studying dance at the Houston Ballet Academy. That gave me the confidence to apply for conservatory college track—where I chose CCM, University of Cincinnati—studying lighting design. It was wonderful to work within so many performance styles at school—theatre, musical theatre, opera, and dance.

I did not go to grad school, but instead joke that I went to the school of hard knocks: New York City! This incredible city is fundamental to the artist I am striving to become.

Actor Nick Cearley

I grew up in Fairfield, Ohio, right outside the Cincinnati/Dayton area and went to Fairfield High School. I went to Boston Conservatory [Massachusetts] and got my BFA in Musical Theatre.

Set and costume designer Bunny Christie

I went to Central School of Art [London, England; Christie is Scottish by birth], where I did a foundation course and then a degree in Theatre Design.

Actor Jordan Dobson

Temple University’s musical theatre program in Philadelphia [Pennsylvania]. But every show I do is like an additional education, so I’m still studying!

Actor Hawley Gould

I did so much theatre as a kid. It was really those school shows and community theatres that fostered my love of performance, long before I ever imagined that it could be my literal job. I’ll never forget how Paula Dawson and Ally Van Deuren cast me as a Wickersham Brother [a group of monkeys from Dr. Seuss’s Horton Hears a Who! (1954); characters in the 2000 children’s musical Seussical] in seventh grade and let me dance down the aisles during “Oh, the Thinks You Can Think!” That actually changed my life’s trajectory forever. More "seriously," I received my BFA from NYU [New York University] Tisch School of the Arts, training at the New Studio on Broadway.

Actor Dorian Harewood

I studied at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, training with the great mezzo soprano, Lucile V. Evans.

Actor Judy Kaye

I studied theatre and voice at UCLA [University of California, Los Angeles]. I was part of a course of study called The Acting Specialization. It was something of a conservatory within the theatre major. We studied voice and diction, stage movement, mask and mime, Shakespeare scene study, and acting. I was also a member of the Opera Workshop and the Musical Comedy Workshop.

Actor Telly Leung

I graduated from Carnegie Mellon University's School of Drama [Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania]. 

Musical director, conductor, and arranger John McDaniel

I went to Carnegie Mellon University as an actor, and I have a degree in drama.

Actor Jessie Mueller

I started voice lessons in high school and then went to Syracuse University [Syracuse, New York], studying in their musical theatre and acting programs.

Director Jack O'Brien

As Catherine Sloper states in The Heiress [which O’Brien had staged in Los Angeles], “I was taught by masters.“ I was an English major at the University of Michigan, clueless about my future when I fell under the spell of the late Ellis Rabb’s wonderful APA [Association of Producing Artists] Repertory Company [1959-69], which was in residence at the University. I stalked, pursued, cajoled, and entertained until Ellis finally offered me to be his assistant during the New York season. For the next five or six years, I took notes for him, John Houseman, Eva Le Gallienne, Alan Schneider, and Stephen Porter—learning the styles, the insights, the attack of these virtual giants, as the only assistant the little company could afford. It changed my life.

Stage manager Danielle Ranno

I am mostly self-taught. I started out as an acting major at Alexander Dreyfoos School of the Arts [public high school in West Palm Beach, Florida]. We were working on a class project in my theatre history class, and our group needed someone to act as the stage manager, so I volunteered. I didn’t have much knowledge of what a stage manager did . . . I knew that they called cues for lighting, sound, etc. and wrote down blocking.

After that, I did not revisit stage management until I was in college. My sophomore year I went to USITT [United States Institute for Theatre Technology]. To help pay for the conference, I worked a few hours a day in the computer lab. On a break, I was walking through an exhibition floor and saw a booth that caught my eye for the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey. I interviewed for a summer internship and later found out I got in! I told myself that if I could survive the 12 weeks and still enjoyed it, then I knew that stage management was what I wanted to do. Since my college was a BA program and (at the time) did not offer any SM specific classes, I did a lot of faking it until I made it. I spent all my free time looking at different types of paperwork and recreating it. I attribute a lot of my early SM education to this summer program.

[USITT is a non-profit membership organization headquartered in Syracuse, New York, which aims to advance the skills and knowledge of theater, entertainment, and performing arts professionals involved in the areas of design, production, and technology, and to promote their interests. To this end, USITT mounts conferences and exhibitions, promulgates awards and publications, and supports research.]

Video and projection designer Finn Ross

Central School of Speech and Drama, London. My degree was in alternative theatre—24 years later, I am still not sure exactly what that means, but it did give me a lot of room to experiment and find my way into video.

Actor Jennifer Simard

I trained at The Boston Conservatory—honestly, watching and doing over and over again and gaining experience.

Costume designer Paul Tazewell

Undergraduate: Pratt Institute [Brooklyn, New York] and University of North Carolina School of the Arts [Winston-Salem]. Graduate: New York University Tisch School of the Arts.

Actor Kara Young

New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts [New York City], Labyrinth Theater Company [Off-Broadway theater company in New York City], all over New York, and still studying.

Costume Designer Paloma Young

BA in U.S. History from UC [University of California] Berkeley, MFA in Costume and Sound Design from UC San Diego.

Set and costume designer David Zinn

This is a long answer to a simple question, but I feel like I really began my study while I was in high school (in the Pacific Northwest) and my local community theatre, as well as some of the theatres in Seattle [Washington], gave me a place and community to start to study and learn what theatre design was all about. But, more formally, I came to NYU right after high school in 1987. At the time they had a (since-discontinued) program where you could be enrolled in the graduate design program as an undergraduate, and so I did that, not really knowing exactly what I was getting myself into. It was very hard, but I was surrounded by a ton of folks that continue to inspire me: Marsha Ginsberg, Paul Tazewell, Christine Jones, Constance Hoffman. Gregg Barnes and Kitty Leech were downstairs in the undergraduate costume shop, Moisés Kaufman directed at ETW [Experimental Theatre Wing]. It was a cool time to be there.

[NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts’ undergraduate drama program, known as Tisch Drama, has 10 professional training studios to which acting students are assigned. Each studio—which include the Stella Adler Studio of Acting, the Atlantic Acting School (affiliated with the Atlantic Theatre Company), The Meisner Studio, and the Playwrights Horizons Theater School (affiliated with the theater company, Playwrights Horizons), among others—has its own approach to theater. The Experimental Theatre Wing is Tisch’s own studio.]

[Andrew Gans has worked for Playbill since 1991; he’s been a senior news editor since 2006.  Gans writes two of Playbill’s most popular online features, “Diva Talk” and “Their Favorite Things.”

[In the interest of full disclosure, my undergraduate degree is a BA in French and German.  After graduating from college, I spent almost five years in the army, playing the part of an intelligence officer. Upon release from the service, I studied at the HB Studio in New York City, then did a semester at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, returned to HB, and then went to Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and earned an MFA in acting at what became the Mason Gross School of the Arts.  A little later, I studied with Lee Wallace at the Terry Schreiber Studio.] 

*  *  *  *
“IT’S A CLOWN’S LIFE: LESSONS FROM CLOWN SCHOOL”
by Lara Bevan-Shiraz

[Lara Bevan-Shiraz’s “It’s A Clown’s Life” was published in Roar on 18 September 2024.  Roar is King’s College London’s official student newspaper.  (King's College London is a public research university located in London, England.)]

Staff Writer Lara Bevan-Shiraz reflects on the life lessons she learnt whilst clowning around at École Philippe Gaulier this summer.

Behind the wings, no one wants to go first. Yet, the cheesy circus music has already begun. In a few short seconds, the teacher will bang his tambourine-sized drum and someone will need to step out into the blinding yellow lights. A couple more moments, some sneaky manoeuvring on the part of my peers and all eyes are fixed on me. I’m now closest to the curtain. At this point, there’s really nothing to do. Bang!

Over six weeks this summer, I threw myself headfirst into the world of clowning with no prior direct experience. Why? It sounded like a great deal of fun! École Philippe Gaulier (EPG) based in Étampes, France [a “satellite city” of Paris, 30 miles south-southwest of the capital], presented itself as a spin-off from the Lecoq method of physical theatre [Jacques Lecoq (1921-99) was a French stage actor and acting movement coach], specialising in humour. The notorious reputation of the school’s eponymous founder did nothing to dissuade me. [The title of a Guardian article by Brian Logan is “'Once you can handle the insults, you begin': inside Philippe Gaulier's clown school” (2 Aug. 2016; 'Once you can handle the insults, you begin': inside Philippe Gaulier's clown school | Stage | The Guardian)] While I didn’t meet Gaulier himself [b. 1943; theatre director, clown, circus artist, playwright, and theatre teacher], who is now over 80 and appears not to have been teaching for a couple of years, reading between the lines indicates that the new generation(s) of teachers have somewhat softened his style; even so, some peers were still driven to tears. EPG, like the Arts in general, seems to be at a turning point, replacing punishing dismissal with something closer to constructive criticism (though still incisive and curt, sometimes more than borderline – Gaulier’s wife, Michiko, sat in on a couple of lessons, adding a kind of punctuation through the loudspeakers with the sound effect of bottles being thrown at unsuccessful clowns). 

My six weeks of “fun”, whilst replete with comedy, thus turned out to be rather gruelling at times. Morning movement classes added further rigour as they sought to get the students into shape. Bootcamp in style, we did hundreds of squats, planks and push-ups, our international troupe counting each set of ten in a dozen different languages and dialects. Afternoons provided limited respite, starting with the foundations of play before we progressed to a riotous explosion of clowning.

Le Jeu (The Game)

“Play” here means an unrestrained engagement with yourself, your friend(s) and your audience, without competition or self-consciousness. In Le Jeu, we use “play” as a framework to facilitate the almost untranslatable and undefinable “complicité”. As I’ve come to understand it, complicité is a kind of direct, unfiltered connection with the audience, a sense of being in it together for the fun and mischief of it, as you would be with an imaginary friend. It’s also active, constantly under maintenance. Complicité requires a continual presence and openness. At the same time, “Light on your feet” was a constant cry from our teachers in the first week – a sign of fanaticism and a loss of good faith play. The Gaulier method, typically contrarian, demanding complicité whilst screaming that demand at us!

[Le jeu means ‘the game,’ but it also means ‘play’ in the sense of ‘child’s play.’  In medieval times, what we call a ‘play’ today, a dramatic text, was also un jeu—as in Le Jeu d’Adam (“The play of Adam”).

[Complicité can be translated as ‘collusion,’ ‘complicity,’ or ‘accompliceship.’ The sense is ‘being in cahoots’ with someone—as Bevan-Shiraz has it, an actor “being in it together” with the audience. It’s a bond between two people who are both in on a joke that others don’t see, and the two in complicity merely nod or smile slily to one another to acknowledge the humor that only they get.

[There is a company in the United Kingdom called Complicite, founded by Simon McBurney—it was originally named Théâtre de Complicité—whose work is founded on the theories of Lecoq and Gaulier.  They define complicité as ‘shared creativity’—shared among the players and by the players with the audience.]

Still, that sense of honest collaboration was integral to the activities we explored, from ball games, to tag, to dance competitions, to the downright awkward: massaging a partner’s earlobe. The latter was introduced as an attempt to provoke laughter, but those receiving this bizarre treatment were instructed to suppress any giggles. This, however, turned out not to be the true aim. The fun, both for the pairs and the audience, revealed itself when people didn’t take the rules too seriously but instead revelled in the connection and the mischief, losing happily and hopelessly. Mischief, not cut-throat rivalry. You can put your friend in a tight spot but not out of malice, rather in the spirit of play. Good complicité exists when, as in a game of tennis, the rhythm changes stroke by stroke in a rally, the audience stirred by the apparent overreach of both players striving beyond their limits. 

I began applying complicité outside clown school as well: in discussions with acquaintances whose politics were polar opposite to mine and with friends with whom that connection was spontaneous. It’s not that I hadn’t done this before, but now I was consciously persisting, refusing to stop sending complicité.

As a commuter student up against the capricious Parisian RER [Réseau Express Régional, or Regional Express Network, a commuter and rapid transit rail system] line C, I had to rein in my inner sloth, arriving into Étampes from Paris an hour early most days to give myself three train options. Each morning, I exchanged smiles with the same weary dog walkers being dragged along at an enthusiastic pace and sat alongside fellow passengers who played a daily roulette dodging their fares. I observed the way train drivers of the same company said “hi” to one another by tooting; I watched the transition of the fields from poppies, to sunflowers, to lavender. 

A minute from the school is a little public garden which catches the sun’s rays each morning. Like a terrapin, I warmed myself whilst reading a book there, greeted by the affable street sweeper as he did his daily round. I thus learnt and implemented new French colloquialisms: “Bon courage!” [‘Good luck!’] often replaced “Bonne journée!” [‘Have a nice day!’]; outbursts of “oh là là” and the hilarious raspberry type noise produced when one doesn’t know what to say peppered my conversations. 

Complicité most naturally resides in incidental interactions like these. Where it falls apart is when we learn our incompatibilities. We see them as fated impasses not puzzles to resolve. Clowns are loved for their innocence. Their fault is to be eternal optimists: they try, and they keep trying, until they find a way to break down these walls we have built. So perhaps, we all just need to be a little more clown-like.

Keeping up this level of complicité within and outside of class is exhausting and taxing, and in a certain sense, it should be. It’s an active participation and collaboration that requires you to listen, engage and respond, all at once; still, the connections it fosters largely make up for the hardships. However, it’s incredibly draining to exhibit complicité in our fractured societies where there’s currently no reward and politics are ever more irreconcilable. You engage with eye contact, but what returns is a glazed stare. They’re playing a game at you, maybe even for an audience, but not with you. Yet those with complicité are the foundations of society, just as they are the foundations of any theatre company. We need conversations which are dialogues and not opposing monologues in order to progress cohesively. Whilst there will be outliers, if you keep sending complicité, the worst reaction you’ll get is apathy and that’s better than hostility.

“The Flop is the Friend of the Clown”

The antidote to my inner editor. Clowning required a clear, unhesitant mind: any hyper-critical commentary was secured in a soundproof box. Peace! As a writer, this nearly never happens, but as a performer, it’s essential. That’s not to say that the clown is careless and unthinking. Clowns are prepared but not rehearsed. 

Clowning provides a new take on failure: “the flop is the friend of the clown” being an oft-repeated Gaulier maxim. Each time you flop and wriggle your way out of it, you make it that much easier the next time. This persistence allows you to work out what audiences do and don’t respond to and how they respond. You must be sensitive to each and every mood and focus change in your audience to realise not just when their attention drifts, but also when you have caught it. Many opportunities slip away when the clown gets afraid of losing the laugh and rapidly moves on to something else. In hoping to prolong that laugh, the clown shuts it down. 

The perspective of the audience is frequently at odds with that of the clown. Often, the clown will do an action and upon completion expect the audience to be pleased. When the clown doesn’t get that reaction, they are confused, at which point the audience laughs at the clown’s irrepressible earnestness. Life is the same: we are our own worst critics. Where we see failure, someone else will see a seed ready to take root. 

Interpretation is dependent upon the viewpoint of the interpreter. In one exercise, five of us were spaced out in a row, all strictly facing the audience, with glances amongst our ensemble forbidden. The person at the right-hand end of the row was instructed to come up with and perform an action (make a cup of tea, wash the dishes, etc). Then the person directly adjacent would try to copy what they had seen from their peripheral vision and so on and so forth until the person on the other side of the room did their impression of the action. The first and last actions ended up completely unrelated. Each individual put their own interpretation and imprint on the actions, often inadvertently, be that a balletic flair or a hesitation in their movement. Even in conversations, we don’t realise what we give away. We “um”, repeat our favourite words and use unique intonations. We also listen differently, retaining certain information according to our respective inclinations and predispositions. We just realise more when clowns do it. They, like all comics, push the limits, making us uncomfortable even in our laughter when we recognise ourselves in a parody.

The little notebook I took with me to France is crammed full of quotes and discoveries. It even has a hasty sketch of a car crash, doodled to express the pent up sentiments of a particularly hard day. Reflecting upon these experiences, I am acutely aware that the thoughts that captured my attention then no longer do. We give weight to our preoccupations according to the intensity of the moment when we should really consider the brevity of the present. The clown does not worry whether the audience will laugh tomorrow, but whether they are laughing now. 

In the end, what has emerged from those six weeks at clown school is not a sure career in clowning, but a sharpening of perspective. Things won’t go as planned, but that’s okay. I’ve got some tricks up my sleeve to save a flop and maybe even steal a laugh. 

[Lara Louise Bevan-Shiraz (British; b. ca. 2005) is a creative and innovative scientist who works to promote women and girls in science.  She has won a Dr. Jane Goodall Outstanding Roots and Shoots Award, the Aspen Brain Institute's Social Impact Action Prize, and a Distinguished Student Award from the New York Academy of Sciences.

[Just to complete my comments in regard to Complicite, the theater troupe, I’ll reference my blog report on the one performance of theirs on which I wrote.  I saw them twice in New York, but the first time, in The Street of Crocodiles, was at the Lincoln Center Festival in 1998, years before I was writing performance reports.  I saw them again in 2010, at another Lincoln Center Festival, with A Disappearing Number.  That report is on ROT on 8 August 2010.  (There’s also a brief discussion of Complicité’s (as they were calling themselves at that time) in “‘Hear, Hear: Spotlight on Sound Design,’ Article 7” on 6 April 2021.)

[The second installment in this series on theater education and training will be published on Sunday, 6 October.]

'Playbill': A History of "The National Theatre Magazine"

[When I caught WABC’s 22 October 2023 broadcast of Broadway Backstage Fall Preview, I was delighted to see the brief feature on the printing of Playbill, which happens in a plant in Woodside, Queens.  It gave me the idea of composing a short history of the program magazine for Rick On Theater, the result of which you see below. 

[The reporter on the segment, Charlie Williams, called Playbill “the quintessential magazine of theater and Broadway.”  That’s a little hyperbolic, I suppose, but it’s not wrong.  Danny DeVito, one of several actors in the broadcast introducing plays they’re in this season on Broadway—he was in I Need That, which ran 2 November-30 December 2023 at the American Airlines Theatre—said when asked about the first time he saw his name in a Playbill, “Playbill was always . . . that thing you saved.”

[Actor Michael Urie, who was in the revival of Spamalot at the St. James Theatre that opened on 16 November 2023 (Urie left the cast on 21 January 2024), the co-host of the show with Eyewitness News reporter Michelle Charlesworth, remarked, “This is one of the theater world’s most prized souvenirs.”

[Because of sentiments like those, I’m posting the history of Playbill on ROT.  I hope you enjoy the read.]

If you’ve ever been to a Broadway show, you were handed a Playbill as you took your seat.  Since 1884, the independently edited and printed Playbill’s been the program magazine for Broadway theater, and later Off-Broadway, New York City venues like the Metropolitan Opera House and other Lincoln Center venues, and Carnegie Hall, as well as major theaters in Boston; Philadelphia; Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles; Chicago; Houston; Miami, and a number of other cities.  But how did this come to be?

First, let’s step back about a hundred years before what we in the United States know as a Playbill was printed.  First, ‘playbill’ is a generic noun that’s a synonym for ‘program’ (or, if you’re in the United Kingdom or many of its former colonies, ‘programme’—a French word the Brits borrowed, meaning pretty much the same as the American and British words). 

Programs were used in Europe for many kinds of entertainment events as early as the 18th century, such as musical performances, fêtes, athletic events, and so on.  For this post, I’ll stick mostly to theatrical presentations for my examination.

The earliest programs, also called handbills, were short, handwritten, one-page leaflets which merely listed the performers.  They were handed out to patrons as they entered one of the many theaters that began popping up in almost every town across England at the time.

When inexpensive printing became available, theaters started distributing these handbills widely around the marketplace and drinking establishments to entice potential audiences.  One-sheet playbills flooded the streets, spotlighting the names of top performers who drew large crowds.

These playbills told audiences what to expect of the offered performance, such as, perhaps, alterations to a well-known play—say a new ending to Romeo and Juliet in which the lovers survive to say good-bye to one another. 

In the 18th-century predecessor to music hall, the British take on vaudeville, theater managers offered a mixed bill of entertainments.  The program would list the evening’s bill, say a dramatic play followed by lighter fare such as a tightrope walker, a strongman, or slapstick pantomime, and the order in which they’d be presented.

Across the sea in the U.S., a change was brewing as the 19th century began.  The programs were made into little pamphlets with several pages so that advertisements could be sold.  Not only did the ads pay for the programs themselves, but they brought in a little extra income to the theater. 

This development proved very popular all around.  First, of course, the theater benefitted from the additional revenue—theater is a financially precarious enterprise even at the best of times—and the patrons got more interesting tidbits on the show beside the names of the actors, the writer(s), and the creative staff: the director could put in a statement and so could a living dramatist.  Drawings, and later photographs, could be included.

Theater is arguably the most ephemeral of arts.  Once the performance is over, there’s nothing left but the memory.  This new, expanded program was a free souvenir of the event—to be taken home and consumed at leisure and even retained as a keepsake or a memory aid.

(I have hundreds filed away, going back to 1974—and a few from even earlier than that.  I’m not a theatrical packrat; they’re for reference.  I use them all the time as a source of information on plays I saw decades ago when something I’m writing, mostly for Rick On Theater, comes up.  I only wish I’d started keeping my programs long ago when I was seeing some of today’s Golden Oldies!  I wrote about that time in “A Broadway Baby,” posted on ROT, 22 September 2010.)

The program booklets before the advent of the New York Theatre Program Corporation, which eventually became Playbill—I’m coming to that—were paid for by the theater or, in the case of a touring show, the producing company.  Small theaters, music halls, and provincial or country playhouses where there were touring companies or variety acts continued to use the single-sheet handbills.

Incidentally, there was another phenomenon that developed at this juncture.  Patrons in Britain pay for programs—it’s up to £2.50 in London ($3.15) and as much as €5 in Dublin ($5.40)—whereas, in the U.S., we still get them gratis.

From the early 1880s to the beginning of the World War I (1914 in Europe), the larger theaters in London’s West End saw the commercial possibilities in the elaborate theater programs.  The theater managers produced expensive programs full of illustrations and photos of the major actors and scenes from the play to sell to the patrons as souvenirs.

In 1916, the British government instituted an entertainment tax on theater tickets.  The sale of theater programs not only produced income for the impresarios’ pockets, but covered the tax cost as well, so the theater managers didn’t have to raise ticket prices.  The U.S. theater industry never had this burden.

Back in the States, even the advertisers were happy with the new development: it was a way to make direct and virtually one-on-one contact with potential customers.  Mass-circulation newspapers were unknown in the mid- and late 19th century, and theater at the time was the only truly popular entertainment—sort of the TV of its day.  The theater program was one of the few types of printed matter that was widely—and freely—distributed.

The enterprise was a huge success.  Paid advertising, principally for local business, in theater programs underwent a quick and speedy surge and forever changed the theater program.  It also eventually led to the establishment of the company that became Playbill.

An enterprising young man who had arrived in New York City from Ohio as a teenager without money, prospects, or contacts saw that this development was a real business opportunity.  In 1884, Frank Vance Strauss (1863-1939), who later changed his last name to Storrs during World War I because Strauss was German, approached the managers and owners of the larger New York playhouses and offered them a magazine-style theater program at no cost.  Strauss made his money from the program from the advertisers. 

Though the name didn’t appear for decades, this was the beginning of Playbill.

Every theater that signed up for the magazine got pages with the cast list and brief information about the performance—such as setting and time of the action, act and scene breakdowns, and musical numbers—plus a cover in color.  The rest of the program booklet was the same for every theater with short articles on the New York theater scene, stage personalities, and other features—plus the ads.  

The program magazine didn’t have its own title at this point; the cover bore the name of the theater at the top.  In 1911, Strauss named his company the Strauss Magazine Theatre Program and in 1920, his company took the name New York Theatre Program Corporation.  In 1934, the magazine became The Playbill and then simply Playbill in 1957. 

The title font varied from issue to issue until it was standardized in ’57, and the current, distinct typeface appeared in about 1974, with the familiar yellow background having become standard the previous year.    Yellow was selected for the background to the logo because it was the cheapest color available.

Since 2000, variations occur to mark special occasions, such as a green banner replacing the yellow one in October 2008 for the fifth anniversary of Wicked (and again in 2018 for the 10th), or the rainbow banner in June for LGBTQ Pride Month, which debuted in 2014.

The contents of the original magazine changed weekly, which was also how often new plays commonly opened at each theater back then.  (The content of today’s Playbills, aside from the production details, changes monthly.)

When Playbill launched a subscription edition in 1982, the contents of the magazine delivered to subscribers’ homes was identical to the copies distributed at the theaters as far as the features and articles were concerned, but the production information was replaced with listings of Broadway and Off-Broadway shows and news from touring shows and the theater scene around the country and abroad.

Over the years, there have been various different regular features and columns in the magazine, such as “At This Theatre,” a column with historical information on the theater housing the production, “Ask Playbill,” which answers questions about theater from readers and playgoers, and a “Theatre Quiz.”

Most major New York theaters used Strauss’s program, but not all.  The Shubert Company (predecessor to the present-day Shubert Organization), the enterprise of the formidable “Shubert Brothers”—as Lee (1871-1953), Samuel S. (1878-1905), and Jacob J. Shubert (1879?-1963) were universally known collectively—for instance, insisted for many years on publishing its own programs.

In 1891, Strauss merged his company with his main competitor and, by 1905, had standardized the appearance of the program so that the layout, including the advertising space, was uniform.

After World War I ended in 1918, Strauss sold his company to his nephew, Richard M. Huber (ca. 1881-1965).  Strauss had made a great fortune from his enterprise, becoming a true entrepreneur and a leading member of New York City’s social elite.  

His New York Times obituary (as Frank V. Storrs, 9 March 1939) described him as “prominent in the field of theatrical advertising and active for many years in banking and at one time was the owner of a theatre chain.”  The Times added that “he had many financial interests outside the theatrical and advertising fields” and “also owned property in the midtown theatrical section of Manhattan.”

From 1918 onward, the company started printing playbills for all of Broadway and by 1924, Huber’s New York Theatre Program Corporation was printing 16,000,000 programs for over 60 theaters.  Thus began Playbill’s virtual monopoly on supplying theater program printing for New York City’s commercial theaters.

Although Frank Vance Strauss may have conceived the notion of the playbill magazine, Richard Huber gets the credit for starting the New York Theater Program Corporation.  The seeds of today’s Playbill were planted under Huber’s ownership.  The eventual iconic look and content of the magazine began to take shape under Huber. 

Under Huber’s leadership, the magazine gained the name The Playbill and short articles on fashion, automobiles, books, as well as interviews and even jokes were added to the program’s offerings.  The cover art was also standardized in the 1920s, featuring images representing the theater, which stayed the same from show to show.

Early in the 1930s, the artwork on the Playbill covers began to be show-specific, though the title of the production didn’t appear anywhere on the cover.  That first started to happen later in the decade.  By the mid-1940s, the show’s title began to appear above a production photo and the Playbill logo.

The artwork on the Playbill covers were black-and-white production photos until the late 1960s, when individualized cover art appeared, often drawings or graphic art—though they, too, were black and white.  Aside from the colored banner framing the Playbill logo, color wasn’t used for the cover art until after the turn of the 21st century.

In 1956, after 70 years as a Strauss family enterprise, Huber sold the magazine publisher to producer and real estate magnate Roger L. Stevens (1910-98), who in 1961 became the founding chairman (until 1988) of what became the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and then in 1965, the first chairman (through 1969) of what became the National Endowment for the Arts.  

Stevens changed the magazine’s name to just Playbill the year after he bought the company and no longer let a representation of the productions serve as the dominate image on the cover.  Instead, the cover design was nonspecific with the theater’s name and the play’s title inside the program.  The cover design for each theater didn’t change.

Protests from theatergoers caused Stevens to change his decision and Playbill’s colorful band across the top of the cover contained the show's information printed beneath the Playbill logo.  Eventually, the colored strip was standardized into the yellow band of today’s Playbill.

Gilman Kraft (1926-99), a publisher, bought the company in 1960 and hired Arthur T. Birsh (1933?-2021), a master printer, as the manager of the magazine’s printing plant; Kraft then sold it to the conglomerate Metromedia in 1968.  

Birsh worked his way up to president of the company under Kraft, but when Metromedia acquired Playbill, the media conglomerate liked the way Birsh handled the company’s business and kept him on as second-in-command at the corporate level.

When Metromedia and Playbill parted ways in 1973, Birsh left the media conglomerate and became Playbill’s sole owner.  Playbill’s current chief operations officer and vice president since 2016 is Alex Birsh (b. 1989), the third generation of his family to operate the program publisher; he’s the grandson of Arthur Birsh.  (Alex Birsh’s father, Phil Birsh, [b. 1958] is the current CEO and president, having succeeded his father in 1993.)

On the Eyewitness News broadcast on WABC on 22 October 2023, Playbill COO/V.P. Alex Birsh declared, "We truly are quite simply the brand of Broadway."  That’s arguably so in a certain sense, but there have been competitors and niche alternatives to Playbill.

Playbill almost exclusively concentrated on Broadway and Off-Broadway theaters, while Stagebill, founded in 1927, focused on concerts, opera, and dance.  By the late 1990s, Playbill was highly profitable while Stagebill wasn’t, so, to increase revenue, Stagebill entered Playbill’s territory.  The Public Theater and Disney contracted with Stagebill for their shows.  

Disney’s issue was control of advertising content.  Playbill relies on advertising revenue that’s entirely under its authority, but Disney’s policy prohibits the promotion of liquor and tobacco products on its property.  (Disney owns the New Amsterdam Theatre, where its Lion King was playing.)

In response, Playbill produced Showbill, a sister publication started around 1999 that conformed to Disney’s advertising restrictions.  With an alternative available, Disney switched from Stagebill to Showbill for The Lion King (1997-present).  Similar situations occurred at other Broadway theaters and productions.

Playbill also responded to Stagebill’s challenge by producing publications for classic arts houses, particularly venues that were once Stagebill clients, such as Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Opera, and the New York Philharmonic. 

For these venues, Playbill broke from its typical format and began publishing completely customized programs like Stagebill.  Because of this action and Stagebill’s continuing financial problems, it foundered and Playbill bought up the Stagebill trademark in 2002.  Thus ended the competition for Playbill’s hegemony.

In 1994, Playbill launched Playbill Online (https://playbill.com/) and has increased its digital offerings steadily, along with entries into other media, as the new century unfolded.  My interest here has been on the ink-and-paper publication, so I won’t detail this development.  Wikipedia has a run-down of Playbill’s expansion beyond hard-copy outlets, and I suggest interested ROTters check that out at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playbill#Other_media.

[Many people, including me, speak of Playbill as the concrete reminder of the evanescent theater experience once the curtain drops and the playgoer leaves the playhouse.  I admitted above that I have been keeping my programs, including those that aren’t Playbills, for the past 50 years, and that I wish that I’d kept them from earlier times.

[The fact is that I did keep my theater programs from my childhood playgoing—I just didn’t keep them permanently.  I brought them home, read them, looked at the pictures, and then sometimes used them for something.  Here’s a case in point:

[The first Broadway show I saw on Broadway (as opposed to pre-Broadway in Washington, D.C., or on the National Tour) was Fiorello!; the second one I saw was My Fair Lady.  That would make it 1959, ’60, or ’61—7th or 8th grade.

[In those years, my Washington middle school had a music class as a regular part of the curriculum and all the students kept a folder for our music sheets.  It was an ordinary manilla folder, and we were supposed to decorate it, presumably with something related to music.  

[The year I saw MFL, I cut up the Playbill and used the still photos from the show to decorate my music folder!  The Playbill’s cover photo, which was Liza (Julie Andrews, of course) sitting on the steps of Covent Garden, holding a bunch of flowers ("Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?"), was the center pic of my folder’s cover, with the other shots from the Playbill scattered around “randomly.”  I can still visualize it!  

[Now, here’s something I’d never put together before 2021: the chronology of this seminal experience:

[Since I would have made my folder at the start of the school year, and Fiorello! opened at the end of November 1959—early in my 7th-grade year—I probably saw it that Christmas vacation.  (I’d have turned 13 during that holiday.)  We must have gone back to New York City sometime later that school year, maybe spring break. (Both sets of my grandparents lived in NYC.)

[I suspect my family saw MFL then, since if we’d waited until Christmas of 8th grade, I would have used something else to make my music folder; I must have already had the Playbill when school started for 8th grade.  So I must have seen MFL whenever spring break was in 1960 and held onto the Playbill.

[That also means I saw Andrews in TV’s Cinderella before I saw her on stage.  I already knew who she was because of all the hype about her appearance in MFL (which had opened on 15 March 1956), but Cinderella was on TV in March 1957 (see “Cinderella: Impossible Things Are Happening (CBS-TV, 31 March 1957),” posted on ROT on 25 April 2013).]