Avenue Q Moves Up to 50th Street

Since the last time I posted, an amazing thing happened that I must comment on!

The producers of Avenue Q (Kevin McCollum, Robyn Goodman, Jeffrey Seller, The Vineyard Theatre and The New Group) announced that the Broadway production would transfer to Off-Broadway's New World Stages. If you haven't read about this yet, click here.

There are many reasons why I'm excited by this. First of all, Avenue Q is a wonderful musical that deserves to been seen by more audiences, even though it ran on Broadway for six years. I'm also so impressed that the producers didn't buy into the "Broadway or Bust" mindset. They made their money, but still think this production needs a further life and made it happen.

That being said, what I'm most impressed with is the producers courage to make this transfer happen for the right reasons. They still believed that they could sell this show, but filling a Broadway theater for another few years might be a tougher task. Now, once they transfer, they have a new target number: 499. Selling a house of 500 seats is very manageable when you transfer a Tony award winning musical.

As excited as I am about this transfer, I would be even more excited if this became a small trend. As everyone knows, it is so hard for a show on Broadway to recoup its initial investment. What if there was a business model where a new show could open ob Broadway later in the season, make most of its money back in a post Tony Award summer, and then transfer soon after to a smaller commercial Off-Broadway space? Now of course, there are many wrinkles in this scenario. It could take a long time to recoup certain shows and there are less and less commercial Off-Broadway spaces each year. I leave this suggestion in the hands of those who could figure out a fiscal way to do this.

Among other things, a model like this could help small musicals succeed on Broadway and be profitable. In the meantime, I will happily make my way to New World Stages to see Avenue Q return to Off-Broadway.