good morning It’s Wednesday. Today we take a look at what spring has in store for leading Broadway press agent Rick Miramontez.
Rick Miramontez is a night owl and an early bird.
He should be. As chairman of DKC/O&M, the theatrical public relations firm he founded in 2006, he is always on call. His agency currently represents eight shows on Broadway, including “Hadestown” and “MJ.”
And by an extension of nine days From April 17 to 25 — when 12 plays and musicals open by the cutoff date to qualify for Tony Award nominations — is the theatrical equivalent of the Super Bowl.
“It’s totally seven days a week now,” Miramontez said in a recent phone conversation from his office, which is in a penthouse on West 39th Street above a drama bookstore.
April is always a busy time for Broadway openings. Like a crush of Oscar hopefuls opening in late December, productions want to open as close to the Tonys deadline as possible to stay fresh in the minds of nominees and voters. Tony nominations will be announced on April 30, and the televised awards show will take place on June 16.
This spring seems especially crowded, even though Broadway attendance is still up Not back to prepandemic levelsAnd compared to the same period in 2020, the total is down 14 percent as of early March. 36 shows are running on Broadway – and producers and investors are concerned about whether there are enough ticket buyers to support them all.
“If we’ve lost some traditional audiences — and I believe that’s true — then it’s a challenge for us to do that now and find new audiences,” said Miramontez, whose agency represents Five. New shows this season. They include a musical revival led by Eddie Redmayne.Cabaret”; “The Wiz,” a gospel, soul and R&B take on Dorothy’s adventures in Oz; and the off-Broadway smash “StereophonicA musical drama about a controversial band recording a studio album.
A typical day for Miramontez starts at 4 a.m., he said. He maps out the day’s schedule and checks his four email accounts — he has two assistants to monitor the important ones, which received 425 messages on a recent weekday — before taking a 20-minute taxi ride from his home in Lower Manhattan to the office.
He starts the day with a meeting with some of his 19 team members, most of whom are in their 20s and 30s. Although they work for the same agency, the publicists represent competing shows, so they keep their Tony promotion tactics close to the West.
“Ideally each rep will handle a couple of shows — and not a couple more — because they’re really in charge of the day-to-day details,” Miramontez said.
Shows become promoters’ babies. They devise strategies to help find an audience, including writing news releases, pitching stories to journalists and organizing press nights.
“My responsibility is to keep their plates full but not overextend them,” said Miramontez, who is in his 60s and began his career in 1982 as press director of the Center Theater Group/Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles. He later conducted one. The most famous press campaigns in Broadway history from 2011 to 2014 while representing the accident-prone musical “Spider-Man: Turn Off Dark.”
After all their shows open and nominations are announced, it’s a six-week run to the finish. Celebrity audience members are flattered. Photo ops abound. Billboards in Times Square are likely to light up with the faces of actors including Redmayne and Daniel Radcliffe in one of the season’s hottest tickets, a revival of the Stephen Sondheim musical “Merrily We Roll Along.”
Sleep, needless to say, is scarce.
But the Tonys will be worth all the effort, Miramontez said, if one of his shows takes home the coveted prize for best musical, which carries even more weight. The award means a boost in ticket sales and improved marketing for road trips.
“I think the prestige of a Tony Award for a lifetime of performance is invaluable, quite frankly,” he said.
the weather
It will be a mostly cloudy day with a high in the 50s. At night, temperatures drop into the low 50s.
Alternate side parking
Valid until April 23 (Passover).
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Love Diary:
I took Q to Brighton Beach in June 2022. I used to go to a cafe where I used to go as a child.
There was one problem: I didn’t know the name or exact address, it was somewhere in that neighborhood and had a blue awning.
I was introduced to the cafe by a woman who cared for my grandmother after Alzheimer’s disease left her incapacitated.
Both women had already left my life, but that day as I walked west in search of the blue canopy, a new woman accompanied me. Even though I don’t know it then, she becomes hard in my eyes.
After getting off the train and down to street level, we began to wander along Brighton Beach Avenue.
In the distance, I saw a bright blue dot, and we walked towards it. Soon, we were standing in front of a cafe and I knew it was the place.
– Jake Stevenson
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here And Read more Metropolitan Diary here.
We are glad to be here together. Alison Kruger will be here tomorrow. S.B
PS Here is today’s Mini crossword And Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.