The musical She Loves Me will be streamed live online on June 30. It will be the first time ever that a Broadway show is streamed for home viewing.
This news comes on the heels of this this Sunday’s Tony Awards telecast which, lifted by POTUS-and-FLOTUS-approved juggernaut Hamilton, hit its highest ratings in 15 years. The over-three-hour ceremony averaged 8.73 million viewers, an increase of 35 percent from 2015’s proceedings.
According to the New York Times, the performance will be filmed by at least 10 cameras; the livestream will cost $9.99 and continue to be available through BroadwayHD’s on-demand library. (For everyone playing along at home, that’s 1.1 percent of the cost of the best ticket to Hamilton.)
The livestream is the product of a partnership between BroadwayHD, which launched last fall with a catalog of over 100 Broadway shows, and the Roundabout Theater Company, the nonprofit producing the show, and BroadwayHD.
She Loves Me is a savvy fit for the still-young streaming platform, which made its entry into the livestream space last December with Off-Broadway musical Daddy Long Legs. (BroadwayHD made that stream available for free; in March, when the service streamed an Ed Harris-starring Off-Broadway production of Sam Shepard’s Buried Child, viewers had to pay $9.99 to watch.) The show was nominated for eight Tony Awards and closes on July 10.
The move could give broader brand recognition to Roundabout and to BroadwayHD. And with the show closing in less than a month, there’s no concern that the stream would cannibalize ticket sales. She Loves Me’s stars include Laura Benanti, a Tony winner mainstream audiences may recognize from NBC’s much-watched (if also much-mocked) The Sound of Music Live! in 2013, and Zachary Levi and Jane Krakowski, who non-theatergoers know from their roles on television (Chuck for him, 30 Rock and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt for her).
Tonys Show The Oscars How It’s Done: Actors Of Color Win All 4 Musical Acting AwardsSomething was missing from Hamilton at last night’s Tony Awards, where the show which was nominated for a record…thinkprogress.orgBroadwayHD is the creation of Tony award-winning producers Stewart F. Lane and Bonnie Comley. When they spoke with ThinkProgress last fall about the site, they said the plan was to “focus on limited-run, celebrity-driven shows,” at least initially, to calm fears that the availability of streaming will deter fans from buying tickets.
“We’re really trying to promote and preserve live theater,” Comley said. “So we are saying: This is not the same thing. It’s like a sporting event. When your team is playing at home, you can go to that. But you can’t go to every game. And we believe our website, and watching these shows in this way, will only increase your appetite for the live event.”