In Praise Of Going Dark

Linda Winer

March 9, 2003

Many people are disappointed, some are even furious, about this weekend's strike against 18 Broadway musicals. But I am really proud.

Naturally, anyone with feelings is concerned about the risk for shows and artists, and sorry for theatergoers whose plans were ruined by Friday's abrupt shuttering of all musicals but one, "Cabaret," which operates on a different contract. Yes, the cost of the tickets is being refunded. But it's impossible to put a price on the emotional investment, not to mention the related expenses, squandered on experiences denied.

Where others see yet-another New York catastrophe, however, I see a great big heart for every dark light on Broadway today. Actors Equity, the actors' union, and Local 1 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, the stagehands union, did exactly what they should have done when Local 802, the pit musicians, struck and producers decided to replace them with computer-generated, so-called virtual orchestras.

The actors and stagehands joined with the musicians to say "enough," to draw a line in the cheesing-up, dumbing-down of commercial theater sensibilities before people forget entirely why anyone ever loved Broadway in the first place. The musical, lauded as one of the few great American art forms and a nearly $4.5-billion industry for New York, is also one of the major collaborative preoccupations - a combination of story, music, dance and spectacle that barely exists until human beings join together to make it live.

How right it feels for performers and stagehands to refuse to let the League of American Theatres and Producers degrade - more accurately, continue to degrade - the deeply pleasurable profundity of live sound. On the surface, the issue is employment. But, really, the subject is quality. The union insists on maintaining a minimum number of players per musical house - admittedly, a demand that led in the past to examples of featherbedding. These days, however, the minimums range from three to 26 musicians, a number that, since the "special situations provisions" in the 1993 contract, is adjustable on a show-by-show basis.

The League began contract negotiations by demanding the abolition of all minimums, which top executives are describing as "archaic," "arcane," even "un-American." By Friday, the number had offered up to a maximum of 14. The message was delivered with indignation. How dare musicians tell producers and the creative team how big an orchestra they should use?

If more producers had earned our trust in recent years, I could go along with the logic of the League on this one. Unfortunately, though tickets keep getting more expensive, the orchestras get skimpier - and I can't believe that's the choice of the "creative team." Amplification, much of it tinny, has replaced the thrill of natural sound and, despite resistance from the maligned musicians' union, there already are synthesizers in many pits to amplify minimums that producers already think are too big.

We are being weaned off the sound in preparation for high-tech karaoke. Orchestras are less and less visible, often buried in stagecraft and, I'm told, sometimes even stuck on another floor of the theater building altogether. This season's program for the League's annual "Kids' Night on Broadway" included a playful diagram about "How Broadway Puts on a Show." Everyone from director to theater owner to box-office staff and public relations people was included - everyone, significantly, except the musicians.

This is hardly the first time that musicians were threatened with machines around contract time. As old-time producers are replaced by a new generation of bottom-line entertainment corporations, however, we are in danger of losing the very handmade quality that made Broadway an international destination. New producers may find the requirements of such quality "archaic," but that push-cart mentality informed a creative community. And it's heart is walking the Broadway streets today.

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