Once upon a time, the reach of a play or musical was contained by the four walls within which it was playing, and the seating capacity that was offered within them.
Some shows, of course, may transfer between the West End and Broadway, or vice versa. For example, Broadway’s Memphis is about to cross the Atlantic to a West End opening at the Shaftesbury Theatre in October, and traveling in the other direction is the National’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, due at Broadway’s Barrymore Theatre from September 10. A lucky few shows may go on to an international life in replica productions around the world, like Cats, Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera, Mamma Mia! or War Horse. But those have been exceptions rather than rules.
And while the essence of theater will always be in its liveness, it is now proving possible for that essence to be preserved while potentially reaching hundreds of thousands of people at once.
Last November, for instance, Britain’s National Theatre celebrated its 50th anniversary with a one-off gala performance, staged at the Olivier Theatre, where an invited audience of just 1,160 people saw it. (You can double that number if you include the public dress rehearsal the day before.) But in fact many millions more saw the show for free, on U.K. terrestrial television and via live relay into cinemas elsewhere around the world via the NT Live initiative, for the price of a movie ticket. NT Live, which was introduced exactly five years ago, in June 2009, with the broadcast of the NT artistic director Nicholas Hytner’s production of Phèdre starring Helen Mirren in the title role, may just prove to be the most significant legacy of Hytner’s time at the helm with executive director Nick Starr.
When I said as much in another feature last year, Starr enthusiastically concurred: “You’re right — Nick and I do think it’s probably the most significant thing we’ve done,” he said to me. That’s because it has so comprehensively changed the game plan for how theater can reach more people simultaneously around the world than was ever thought possible.
Since its launch, the NT Live’s broadcasts have been experienced by more than 1.5 million people in 1,000 venues around the world, from North America to Australia, Bulgaria to the Bahamas, Peru to Poland, and Sweden to Switzerland.
And The National has also generously not kept its toys for itself; it has also offered the platform to other companies, including the Donmar Warehouse, which in January broadcast its new production of Coriolanus, starring Tom Hiddleston in the title role, via NT Live. It played in a theatre that seats just 250 people, so demand for it was always going to outstrip supply. Likewise, NT Live also broadcast the Manchester International Festival staging of Macbeth starring Kenneth Branagh in the title role; in that case, it ran for just a fortnight, though the production is currently being reprised at New York’s Park Avenue Armory through June 22. Helen Mirren has also returned to NT Live with a live screening of her last West End run, as the British monarch in The Audience earlier this year (due to be reprised in Encore screenings this month).
But neither has The National confined NT Live to its limited-run shows. Earlier this year it broadcast War Horse live from the West End’s New London Theatre; the show has already been seen globally by nearly 5 million spectators everywhere from Broadway to Berlin, and is even now on a new U.K. tour, but here it saw it grow its reach even more swiftly in one night. (And far from potentially cannibalizing the audience who might see it in the theatre, it may well encourage them to see it there again; certainly the release of the film version of Les Misérables gave the West End run a definite boost.)
The National’s recordings of its shows via NT Live is also creating a brilliant archive, and it’s also offering continuing encore screenings of Danny Boyle’s production of Frankenstein starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller, and Hamlet with Rory Kinnear in coming months.
There’s clearly a new hunger and appetite for seeing the best that the West End and National Theatre can offer far beyond their own geographical reach. But how did it all come about? David Sabel, the American-born head of digital for the National, who trained originally as an actor in Chicago and subsequently at Jacques Lecoq’s famous physical theater school in Paris, came to set it up by a mixture of what he calls “serendipity, good timing, and maybe fate.”
As well as acting, he’d also worked as a chef, and then earned a business degree at Cambridge University in the U.K. As part of his dissertation for the latter, he met Hytner. And on the same day they met, Hytner ran into his chief operating officer Lisa Berger and they talked about the screenings that New York’s Metropolitan Opera House were doing. Hytner told her he’d just met someone who might be the right person to look into it for them. “My combination of skills suited me well for doing a feasibility study on it — though I have to admit that I went into it skeptically, thinking it was the antithesis of what theater is about and wondering if what worked for the opera could work for the theater.”
After spending two months researching what the Met had done, and thinking of the implications for theater, Sabel wasn’t sure that it would even work — “but if it could be made to work, wouldn’t it be most incredible win for access, especially for theatergoers in the U.K.? We could extend access to National Theatre productions for people who would otherwise not get the opportunity, whether because something was sold out and they could not get a ticket, or they lived too far away.”
But the most important thing was, he says, “to be able to honor the artistic integrity of the show and still make sure that audiences had a great experience.” Once Helen Mirren was confirmed for Phèdre, it enabled them to launch it with a splash. “But we knew it couldn’t be a one-off, that we needed a pilot season to test other shows. If Helen wasn’t in it, would it still be a success?”
Phèdre, it turns out, “went brilliantly — it was an artistic success and it caught the imagination of people.” Meanwhile, the National quickly set about building its cinema network: “We started with 270, with about 70 in the U.K. and 200 outside; it has now grown to more than 1,000, 530 of them in the U.K. When you think that a big film release like X-Men might go to 500 screens, it’s amazing that a National Theatre show goes to the same number. It was recently said in the trade magazine Sight and Sound that more people saw [the Donmar Warehouse production of] Coriolanus than the Ralph Fiennes film of it.”
NT Live now goes to some 35 countries around the world — always live in the U.K. and most European countries, and to North America and Canada on the same day but delayed for time zones. Elsewhere, the broadcasts are sometimes shown during a staggered time period of a few days.
Now Sabel’s job also encompasses building relationships with other broadcasters, working with the BBC, for instance, on their Arena documentaries on the history of the National last year, and also coproducing a feature film version of the hit National Theatre musical London Road, whose U.K. distribution he will head up. “Our film partners looked at the reach NT Live has, and it was a natural fit.”
It is, concludes Sabel, “an incredibly rewarding program to work on. Although it is never a replacement to going to the theatre, if you can’t get there, it’s a really great way to see it. And it’s a great thing for the brand and the organization to be able to share what we do so widely.”
Privacy Policy
Last updated and effective as of January 14, 2019
Introduction and Your Acceptance of These Terms
Broadway Direct ("Us", "We", "Our") knows that your personal information is very important to you, and We respect your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains how your personal information is collected, used, and protected and the choices available to you with respect to Our handling of your data. This Policy applies to all visitors to Broadway Direct.com, Our mobile services, services available via telephone, and those transactions that take place in person, by postal or electronic mail. (Collectively, the "Site"), including ticket sales, comments on articles, and any information provided to Us.. By visiting this website, you consent and agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy and to the collection, use and storage of your information by Us. From time to time, We may change this Privacy Policy. When We do, the “Last Updated” line above will be revised. You are responsible for regularly reviewing this Privacy Policy. Your continued use of this Site following the posting of a changed Privacy Policy indicates your acceptance of the changes. Unless We provide you with specific notice, no changes to Our Privacy Policy will apply retroactively. Please also refer to our Terms of Use and Lottery Terms & Conditions. If you require any more information or have any questions about Our privacy policy, please feel free to contact Us by email at [email protected].
Information We Collect
Information we collect directly from you: Your provision of your personal information to Us is completely voluntary; it is not a statutory or contractual requirement. Personally Identifiable Information (“PII”) is information that is uniquely identifiable to you, such as your name, address, email address, phone number, credit card number and other personal information that is not otherwise publicly available. Certain features of Our website may require that you provide Us with your personal information, including:
Contests/Sweepstakes
Surveys
Newsletter Sign-Up
Mobile Alert Sign-Up (SMS)
Contact Us (email)
Public forums (e.g. message boards)
E-commerce (ticket purchases)
To use these features, We may require you to provide your email address, mobile number, name and/or address and certain demographic information. When you give Us PII to use the features above, you expressly consent to Our collection, storage, use and disclosure of this information as described in this Privacy Policy. We may use your personal information to communicate with you about:
Your use of any of the features above;
New content on Our website;
New contests;
Prize information;
News that We think may interest you about Us;
Responses to your questions/comments to us; and
Information relating to a ticket purchase.
We may use your demographic information for in house statistics, advertising and marketing target information. Our processing of your personal information is necessary for the performance and fulfillment of the contract between us and to provide you with Our services. We will also process, transfer, disclose and preserve personal information when We have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary, to resolve disputes, enforce our agreements and otherwise required by law. You can always opt-out of receiving future promotional communications from Us; see the Choice/Opt-out section below.Information We Collect Automatically: Even if you don’t use any of the features above, when you visit Our website, We may collect certain information about you.
From your Browser. For example, Our servers keep an activity log that tracks all visitors to the website. The information in the activity log does not identify you individually. The information collected may include among other data: your IP address, your registered domain or home server, time of access, date of access, web page(s) visited, number of clicks, software crash reports, type of browser used, session identification number, search terms, search results, access times and referring website’s address. We use your IP address to help diagnose problems with Our server and to administer Our website. Your IP address is also used to gather broad demographic information, such as country of origin and geographic location. We use such data in the aggregate to run internal analyses to improve upon your experience on Our website.
Cookies. “Cookies” are small text files that are stored on your computer and record your preferences when you visit certain online pages. Our website uses cookies to track your use of the site and its features and links. If you provide Us with personal information, cookies may be linked to that information. We may use cookies to control the display of ads, to track usage patterns on the sites, to deliver editorial content, to record requests for subscriptions and to personalize information. Our cookies may contain PII and such cookies may be shared with others to the same extent indicated in below in the section regarding “Information Collected By/Shared With Third Parties”. We (or third party service providers on Our behalf) may also use cookies to collect aggregate information about web site users on an anonymous basis (“Anonymous Information”). We may share aggregate demographic and usage information with Our prospective and actual business partners, advertisers and other third parties for any business purpose.
You may occasionally get cookies from third parties with links on Our website. We do not control these cookies, and these cookies are not subject to Our Privacy Policy. You have the ability to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but, if you prefer, you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies. Please note, if you chose to remove or reject cookies, this could affect the availability and functionality of Our Site. If you need help with this, contact Us at [email protected]. For more information on cookies and how to disable them, you can consult the information provided by the Interactive Advertising Bureau at www.allaboutcookies.org.
Tracking Tags (also known as “web beacons,” “action tags” or “single-pixel gifs”). Our website may also use tracking tags. Tracking tags are invisible graphics embedded in the pages of Our website that are programmed to collect non-personal information about your use of Our website. Like cookies, tracking tags provide overall usage patterns for Our website that We use for analysis and to provide personalized services and advertising content.
We comply with the Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising set forth by the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA). You can opt-out of targeted advertising from certain providers at www.aboutads.info/consumers.
How We Use Your Personal Information
The personal information We collect allows Us to keep you posted on updates to Broadway Direct. It also helps Us to improve Our services, content, and advertising. If you don’t want to be on Our email list, you can opt out anytime by clicking the “unsubscribe” button or sending an unsubscribe email to [email protected]. From time to time, We may use your personal information to send transactional emails, such as communications about purchases and changes to Our terms, conditions, and policies. Because this information is important to your interaction with Broadway Direct, you may not opt out of receiving these communications. We may also use personal information for internal purposes such as auditing, data analysis, and research to improve Broadway Direct’s services, and customer communications. If you enter into a sweepstakes, contest, or similar promotion We may use the information you provide to administer those programs.
Information Collected By/Shared With Third Parties
Other than as provided in this Privacy Policy, we do not share your personal information with third parties.
Advertising. We partner with advertising companies who may use information from cookies and the tracking tags they place on our website to provide you with targeted advertisements about goods and services that may be of interest to you based on your use of our website and to track the effectiveness of ads served to you. These advertising company partners may anonymously track your Internet usage across other websites in their networks beyond our website. Any information that these advertising companies collect via cookies and tracking tags is generally not personally identifiable (unless, for example, you provide personal information to them through an ad or email message). You are welcome to browse the site in private/incognito mode, which means cookies will not be activated and previous cookies will not be tracked. If you need help with this, contact us at [email protected]. If you would like more information about the use of cookies and tracking tags and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, see the Network Advertising Initiatives consumer Web site at http://www.networkadvertising.org/consumer/.
Ticketing Partners. Your information may be shared with our ticketing partners (i.e. Telecharge and Ticketmaster) in order to fulfill your transaction and send you updates, special offers, and other information via electronic messages. For more information on our ticketing partner’s data collection and use practices, please review the Ticketmaster privacy policy and/or the Telecharge privacy policy. You can withdraw your consent for any promotional or marketing messages at any time by clicking “unsubscribe” on any promotional or marketing e-mails you receive or by contacting us directly at [email protected] and requesting to be unsubscribed from Telecharge or Ticketmaster.
Third Parties Doing Work for Us. Third parties have no rights to use any data We have collected on your behalf. However, We may employ other companies or individuals to perform functions on Our behalf, such as sending postal mail, email, and text messages, conducting sweepstakes/contests, prize fulfillment and promotional activities, analyzing data, providing marketing assistance, processing credit card payments and providing customer service. These outside suppliers, agents and vendors have access to your personal information only as needed to perform their functions.
Third Parties with Links from Our Website. From our website, you may be able to click on links to third party sites to buy tickets and merchandise and for other purposes. These third party sites may collect information, including personal information. We are not responsible for, nor do we have access to the information they collect. The collection of this information is governed by the privacy policies on the applicable third party sites.
Social Networking Services. Our website may integrate with social networking services. We do not control such services and are not liable for the manner in which they operate. While we may provide you with the ability to use such services in connection with our website, we are doing so merely as an accommodation and, like you, are relying upon those third party services to operate properly and fairly.
When necessary. We may also release personal information when we believe, in good faith, that such release is reasonably necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of Ourselves, Our clients, Our users, or others. We may disclose personal information about you to law enforcement, other government officials, or other third parties, as We, in our sole discretion, believe necessary or appropriate, in connection with an investigation of fraud, intellectual property infringement, or other activity that is illegal or may expose Us to legal liability.
Public Forums
Please be aware that when you disclose PII through the comment feature or message board on the Site, the information may become public and accessible to all or a part of the Site community, so it is important for you to exercise discretion and appropriate caution when deciding to reveal PII in these areas. In addition, when you choose to make a posting, certain PII may be available for other users to view. We urge you to exercise discretion and caution when deciding to disclose your PII, or any other information, on the Site. WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE USE OF ANY PII YOU VOLUNTARILY DISCLOSE THROUGH THE SITE VIA THESE FORUMS AND OTHER INTERACTIVE FEATURES. Please note that We reserve the right, but have no obligation, to republish content posted (including any PII contained therein) as further set forth in Our Terms of Use.
Co-Branded Pages
We may enter into relationships with “powered by” partners, business partners, sponsors, and co-branded sites (referred to here as “co-branded pages”). These might include, for example, pages that share our name and that of another entity. There may be a specific privacy policy on any such co-branded page. Any personal information that you provide when signing up at any co-branded page may be collected by, or shared with, our third party partner. We have no control over, and are not responsible for, our third party partners’ use of your personal information. If you want to learn more about other entities’ privacy practices, please review the websites of those third parties.
Transactions With Third Party E-commerce Partners, Vendors and Advertisers
When you provide personal information to one of Our Site’s third party e-commerce partners, vendors or advertisers (i.e. Ticketmaster.com, Telecharge.com), this transaction will occur in connection with the site of the e-commerce partner, vendor or advertiser, not on the Site, and, as such, the personal information you provide is collected pursuant to and controlled by the privacy policy of such e-commerce partner, vendor or advertiser. Broadway Direct is not responsible for such parties’ privacy policies and We encourage you to familiarize yourself with the applicable privacy policy of the e-commerce site with which you transact business or to contact the operator of such site for more information.
Delivery of Advertising and Other Content
In addition to ads and content that We may serve you directly, We use third-party advertising companies and marketing services companies to serve ads and other content when you visit Broadway Direct and elsewhere on the internet and in other media. Both We and these companies may use information about your visits to Broadway Direct and elsewhere to serve ads and other content to you. In the course of doing so, a unique third-party cookie may be placed or recognized on your browser by such companies. In addition, We and these companies may use Web beacons to help manage Our online advertising and content. These Web beacons enable Us and the third-party companies to recognize a browser’s cookie when a browser visits this Site and to learn which banner ads bring users to our website and to serve you ads that you may find of interest elsewhere on the internet and in other media. Both Broadway Direct and these companies may use information obtained from your visits to Broadway Direct or other websites, and information received from you offline in order to provide advertisements about goods and services and other content of interest to you across the internet and in other media. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used in this manner by Our third party advertising companies, please visit http://www.networkadvertising.org/optout_nonppii.asp and/or www.aboutads.info/choices. European users may opt out of receiving targeted advertising by visiting http://www.youronlinechoices.eu/. In addition, we may provide PII and Anonymous Information to marketing services companies. This may include information we received from you offline or online. These companies may combine information we provide (including PII and Anonymous Information) with personal and anonymous information they may have about you, using cookies they place or that We place on their behalf, as described in the section regarding “Cookies and Tracking Tags”. We require these companies to delete the PII we provide them. These companies may use the resulting non-personal information and such cookies for their own marketing purposes, and they may provide the same to their customers for their customer’s marketing purposes. Some of Our emails may contain tags that allow Us and Our advertisers and other partners to determine the types of content that may be of interest to you. Those tags may contain PII and may be shared with others to the same extent indicated in the section regarding “Cookies and Tracking Tags”. Those tags may not be deleted but you can opt out of receiving the emails.
Use of This Site by Children
The Site is not directed to individuals under the age of thirteen (13), and We request that such individuals do not provide personal information through the Site. If a parent or guardian becomes aware that his or her child has provided Us with PII without the parent or guardian’s consent by, for example, misrepresenting his or her age, that parent or guardian should contact us at [email protected]. If Broadway Direct determines that it has collected personal information of children under the age of 13, Broadway Direct will immediately delete such information and any accounts believed to be held by children under 13. In addition, we may not collect or process information from a citizen of an EU member state under the age of sixteen (16) without such person’s parental consent. If you are a citizen of an EU member state under the age of 16, please tell your parents that you are using the Site and have your parents email Us at [email protected] so that We may delete any information We may have collected about you.
California Visitors
California Civil Code § 1798.83 permits California residents to request information about whether we have disclosed personal information to any third parties for the third parties’ direct marketing purposes. California residents have the right to request in writing: (a) a list of the categories of Personal Information, such as name, email address and mailing address and the type of services provided to the customer that a business has disclosed to third parties (including affiliates that are separate legal entities) during the immediately preceding calendar year for the third parties’ direct marketing purposes and (b) the names and addresses of all such third parties. To make a request, please contact Us at the following email address: [email protected].
EU Visitors
If you are located within the European Union, you should be aware that your personal information will be transferred to the United States, the laws of which may be deemed by the European Union to have inadequate data protection. If you are located in a country outside the United States and voluntarily submit personal information to Us, you thereby consent to the general use of such information as provided in this privacy policy and to the transfer of that information to, and/or storage of that information in, the United States. We transfer Personal Information from the European Economic Area and Switzerland to the USA and other countries, some of which have not been determined by the European Commission to have an adequate level of data protection. Personal Information of EU residents will be transferred in compliance with the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”).
Rights of EU Data Subjects
If you are a resident of the European Union, under the GDPR, European Union residents, as data subjects, have the following rights:
Right to access – This right allows individuals to obtain confirmation as to whether or not personal information concerning him or her is being processed and provide access to such personal information. It also allows individuals to request details of the processing of his or her personal information, including, without limitation, categories of recipients to whom the personal information have been or will be disclosed and purposes of processing.
Right to rectify – This right allows individuals to rectify any inaccurate personal information about him or her.
Right to restrict processing – This right allows individuals to block or suppress processing of personal data under certain circumstances.
Right to be forgotten – This right is also known as the “right to erasure”. It is an individual’s right to have personal data erased or to prevent processing in specific circumstances.
Right of data portability – This right allows individuals to move, copy or transfer personal data from one place to another in a secure manner without interrupting the integrity and usability of the information.
Right to object to processing – This right allows individuals to object to certain types of processing, including direct marketing, profiling and providing for purposes of scientific or historical research and statistics.
An EU resident has the right to access his or her personal data that We hold and to ask that their personal data be corrected or erased and to port their data. An EU resident may also have the right to object to, or request that We restrict certain processing or to withdraw consent previously provided. If you would like to exercise your rights under the GDPR, please contact us at [email protected]. If you are an EU resident and have a concern about our processing of your personal data that we are not able to resolve, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Data Protection Authority where you reside. For contact details of your relevant local Data Protection Authority, please see http://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/article29/item-detail.cfm?item_id=612080
Security of Your Personal Information
Broadway Direct employs reasonable security measures consistent with standard industry practice, for personal information collected through this Site, including physical, electronic and operational measures to maintain security and prevent unauthorized access. While Broadway Direct takes all appropriate steps to safeguard personal information under Our control, unfortunately, no data transmission over the Internet or method of storing data can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As such, We cannot guarantee that personal information supplied by users will not be accessed on Our servers, or intercepted while being transmitted to Us over the Internet. We assume no liability for any damages you may suffer as a result of interception, alteration or misuse of information during such transfers.
Retention
We will retain your information for as long as your account or inquiry is active and for a reasonable time thereafter in accordance with Our standard procedures or as necessary to comply with Our legal obligations, to resolve disputes, and to enforce Our agreements. Even if We delete some or all of your Personal Information, We may continue to retain and use aggregate or anonymous data previously collected and/or anonymize or aggregate your Personal Information. Please note that We will not be liable for disclosures of your data due to errors or unauthorized acts of third parties.
Choice/Opt Out
This Site provides users the opportunity to opt-out of receiving communications from Us, at any time, by email at [email protected], or by clicking the unsubscribe link in any email communication. The Site gives users the following options for removing their information from our database, to not receive future communications or to no longer receive our service, at any time.
Users can send mail to the following postal address: Broadway Direct 1501 Broadway 14th floor New York, NY 10036
Users can call the following telephone number: (800) 223-6715.
Users can opt-out of receiving future newsletter emails from Us by selecting the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of our email. However, We are not responsible for removing your information from the lists of any third party who has previously been provided with your information or is collecting your information through their cookies. You have the right to withdraw your consent for Our processing for your personal information by contacting us at [email protected].
Correct/Update
This website gives users the following options for changing and modifying information previously provided, at any time.
Users can send mail to the following postal address: Broadway Direct 1501 Broadway 14th floor New York, NY 10036
Users can call the following telephone number: (800) 223-6715
Successors
In the event that We are, or any component of our operations is, merged with, or is acquired by, another entity, then any such successor or acquiring entity may become the successor to Our obligations with respect to the personal information that you have provided to Us, which would be necessary for the entity to effectively continue our business. By using this website, you consent to any transfer and use of such personal information by an entity assuming control of Our operations as a result of a merger, purchase of assets, or liquidation in bankruptcy or insolvency.
Contact Us
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, the practices of this website, or your dealings with this website, you can send an email to [email protected]. Our data protection officer can also be contacted at [email protected].