Introduction
For this final investigation I will be analyzing the Broadway Grosses and Capacity for five of the most popular shows that closed on Broadway during the 2022 season and seeing if there are any trends before and after the show announces that they are closing. The five shows that we will be analyzing during this investigation are Ain’t Too Proud, Company, Tina Turner, Come From Away, and Dear Evan Hansen. I am specifically looking to see if there is a certain amount of time from the show’s lowest gross week to when they announce that they are closing and if the average capacity of the show will increase after they announce that they are closing.
To begin this investigation I manually collected the data from the Playbill website that publishes the Gross information, which can be found below. The data for each show spans from when they reopened from the Broadway shutdown to when they closed. Then I loaded that Excel file into Tableau where I created the visualizations, published them to Tableau Public, and embedded them into R Markdown. Each visualization is a line chart that has a dotted line to represent when the show announces that they were closing.
https://playbill.com/grosses

Ain’t Too Proud
The show Ain’t Too Proud is the story about the musical group The Temptations.

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The graph above shows the amount of money that the show grossed each week. We can see that it was doing fairly well once performances began after the pandemic. There was a really low week about one week before the show announced that it was closing. It is possible that the show announced they were closing because of that lower week, but that is not a lot of time for the show to prepare the announcement. So I believe that the show already knew that it was going to close before the low week and chose to announce it then.

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The second visualization above shows the capacity for the show each week. The show appeared to be fluctuating between 70% to 80% capacity during their run after COVID. Interestingly there is a dip after the show announced that they were closing. I expected there to be an increase in interest to see the show after it announced that it would be closing because patrons don’t want to “miss out” on seeing the show before it’s too late. It is possible that it takes a little longer for people to plan and be able to see a show. Their last week only had an 80% capacity, which I expected to be a little higher given that the show was closing, however, the show had been open since March of 2019 and there is currently a tour production going around the U.S. so it was not the only possible time to see the show.

Company
Company is a musical by Stephen Sondheim about a single protagonist asking their married couple friends for relationship advice. This production of Company became popular because it was genderbent; the protagonist, who is normally portrayed by a male identifying actor, was portrayed by a female identifying actress. Additionally, the infamous Patti Lupone was involved in the production contributing to its popularity.

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The graph above shows the weekly gross for the production Company. Overall it was a successful show grossing above $600K a week, except for one dip in March when Patti Lupone was out of the show. The show announced that it was closing in June, three months after their lowest week. After they announced that the show as closing there was a significant increase in the weekly gross. I think that one reason this show increased so much was because of the gender bending twist and popularity of other members of the cast. This was different than any previous production of Company which made more people interested in seeing the show before it closed and they would not have the opportunity to anymore.

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The graph for capacity at Company is very similar to the weekly gross graph. We can identify the same dip in the week of March and an increase after the show announced that they were closing. It is always interesting to see a show reach over 100% capacity because they can sell standing room only tickets that are usually offered when demand for the show is so high. I think that it is safe to say that announcing that the show was closing increased the gross and capacity for the show.

Tina Turner
The musical Tina Turner is about the life of singer and actress Tina Turner who is often referred to as the “Queen of Rock.”

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The weekly gross for the Tina Turner musical fluctuated a bit over the course of its last year. There was a significant decrease in December and January that can be attributed to having to close the show multiple times because of COVID outbreaks. I don’t think that their lowest dip during that time had anything to do with when they announced that they were closing because that was about six months apart. We can also see their highest grossing week was in March. After the show announced that they were closing there was about the same level of interest until the last month of the show when there was significant increase.

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The capacity for the musical appears to be a little more coherent than the grosses, but we can still see similar trends. The same decrease in December and increase for their most popular week in March. After the show announced that they were closing there was significant increase in capacity towards the final month of their run. The show did go on tour in the U.S. after it closed, but that was not announced until the very end of its Broadway run so I do not think it had an impact on the capacity. I think that there is a trend of increased capacity and grosses for shows after they announce their closing, but it depends on how long there is between the announcement and the actual closing date.

Come From Away
The musical Come From Away is about a plane that got diverted to a small town in Canada on 9/11. The show had been on Broadway since 2017 and was nominated for many Tony Awards.

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The weekly gross from Come From Away follow a steady trend, except for a dip in December/January. These dates are similar to the dip we saw from Tina, when there was a COVID outbreak in the Broadway community that forced many shows to close for a week. This was also about six months before the show announced that they were closing. Other than that the show increased pretty significantly after it announced that it was closing, especially during its last month.

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For the capacity of the show it also follows similar trends to the gross, which makes sense because there is a strong positive correlation between the amount of tickets that are sold and the amount of money the show makes each week. We can see the same dip in December/January for COVID and a steady increase after the show announces that its closing in June. Another reason that there was such a significant increase was because a couple members of the original Broadway cast returned to the show for its final month. I think that with the cast members returning. The show did reach its highest capacity during its final month of the run.

Dear Evan Hansen
The musical Dear Evan Hansen is about a teenager who lies to a family who lost their son from suicide in order to date the girl he likes. It began its run on Broadway in 2015.

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From the weekly gross for Dear Evan Hansen we can see that it typically grossed between $600K to $800K. When it announced that it was closing in June, it was in the middle of a pretty low decrease. I think that this might have had an impact on their decision to announce that they were closing the show, but similar to Ain’t Too Proud, it was a very quick turnaround so I’m not sure how much of an impact this had. After they announced the closing it increased significantly to the end of its run.

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Despite the fact that Dear Evan Hansen had one of the lower grosses we’ve investigated, their capacity remained fairly high. On average it was around 80% and never dipped below 60%. We can see the most obvious increase in June to over 100% capacity after the show announced that it was closing. Another reason that this increased so much was because the actor Gaten Matarazzo took over a role for the show’s final month of performances. I think that this had more of an impact on their success than the closing announcement because there was a movie made based on the musical that performed very poorly and changed a lot of the public’s perception of the musical. There was an increase in capacity after the announcement was made, but not nearly as impactful as when Matarazzo took over his role. So even though this show would be closing for good, people still wanted to attend it because of a certain actor rather than the fact that it was closing.

Conclusion I believe that this was a partially successful investigation. I originally wanted to see if there was a correlation between the lowest grossing weeks for a show and when they announced their closing date and if there was an increases in capacity after they announced that they were closing. The first part of that investigation was unsuccessful because there was no correlation between when the show announced that they were closing and their lowest grossing weeks. A couple shows had similar low weeks in December, but that was due to COVID outbreaks. Additionally multiple shows announced that they were closing in June, but that is usually a popular time for closing announcements to make room for the next show to move into the theater at the beginning of the new year.
I believe that the second part of that investigation was true because on each of these shows that closed this year we could see the increase in their final month of performances. One of the reasons for this increase is because they show is closing and people want to see it before they do not have the opportunity to anymore, but there was also an even higher increase for shows who had popular actors and actresses in their shows. For example, Patti Lupone played a significant role in Company’s success which can be seen from the one week that was gone was also their lowest grossing week. And we can see this when members of the original cast of Come From Away returned and Gaten Matarazzo joined the cast of Dear Evan Hansen for their last month of performances.

Limitations The main limitation of this investigation was the gaps in the data because shows had to close due to COVID outbreaks. Many shows would have to close for a week or two because there were not enough cast members to perform the show or it went against COVID regulations.
I think that there could be a future investigation on this topic focusing on the impact of stunt casting, when famous actors are chosen for roles because of the popularity that they will bring to the role even if they are not the best choice. The main example from this investigation would be Gaten Matarrazzo in Dear Evan Hansen. It is not as bad because Matarrazzo performed on Broadway as a child actor before he gained popularity from the series Stranger Things, however it is still important to look in to. It is upsetting for aspiring actors and actresses to see roles that could have been theirs go to someone else with more name recognition. This causes significant debates in the Broadway community, but it is more upsetting because it works because as we saw from Dear Evan Hansen, Matarrazo brought their highest capacity and grosses to the show. I would be really interested to see a project that investigated the impact of stunt casting.