NY Times article on Sarafina marketing

March 29, 1988

Four major shows - three of them new, one beginning the second year of its run - are drawing a segment of the audience to Broadway that has gone there in the past only occasionally in great numbers. With two dramas, ''Fences'' and ''Joe Turner's Come and Gone,'' and two musicals, ''Sarafina!'' and ''The Gospel at Colonus,'' Broadway has more offerings for black theatergoers than at any other time in memory.

That's not to suggest that these shows have only limited appeal; indeed, attendance figures indicate that a broad range of people have been seeing them. Nor is it to suggest that black audiences are interested only in shows involving black themes or performers. But while in the past as few as 1 in 10 Broadway theatergoers may have been black (according to the last survey taken, in 1980 by the League of American Theaters and Producers, the Broadway trade organization), these four shows are changing that ratio.

''Fences,'' ''Joe Turner'' and ''Colonus'' have been attracting more black theatergoers than usual; in the case of ''Sarafina!,'' which moved to the Cort Theater from Lincoln Center, black theatergoers can make up as much as 85 percent of the audience.

The four shows bring powerful themes to Broadway. August Wilson's ''Joe Turner's Come and Gone,'' set in a Pittsburgh boarding house in 1911, continues the cycle of plays about black American life in each decade of this century, a cycle the playwright began with ''Ma Rainey's Black Bottom'' and the Pulitzer Prize-winning ''Fences.'' ''Sarafina!,'' which had its American premiere at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater in Lincoln Center, combines mbaqanga, the driving music of the black South African townships, with the story of a children's crusade against apartheid. ''The Gospel at Colonus'' deploys some of the country's best-known gospel singers to retell, in a Pentecostal idiom, Sophocles' story of Oedipus after the fall.

But it isn't the themes alone that have made black theatergoers aware of these shows. In each case, the producers have taken extraordinary measures to attract audiences, from hiring marketing experts with experience in reaching black corporations, schools, churches and social clubs, to sharply reducing ticket prices, to suggesting sermon subjects to ministers in churches that have sponsored group visits to Broadway.

''For the first time, there's a choice of quality shows,'' said Sheila Phillips, the general manager of Broadway Tix Inc., which markets theater tickets to black groups. ''After 'Dreamgirls' and 'The Tap Dance Kid' closed'' a few years ago, she said in a recent interview, ''there were very few minority shows available. The people producing them went Off Off Broadway, even to churches in Brooklyn.''

Most Broadway shows today - musical and play alike - are developed outside the commercial mainstream by producers who know they have to find their audiences rather than wait for them to show up at the box office.

''Fences'' and ''Joe Turner'' originated at the Yale Repertory Theater. When an earlier experience proved to Elliot Martin, the commercial producer of ''Joe Turner,'' that good reviews do not necessarily guarantee an audience, he brought in Vy Higginson and Ken Wydro as co-producers because of the couple's expertise in the marketing of shows aimed at black audiences. Ms. Higginson and Mr. Wydro wrote, directed and produced ''Mama, I Want to Sing,'' which has been running on East 104th Street for more than five years. They have made wide use of direct mail marketing and of their contacts with black organizations to keep that show running.

''There are large groups of black people who are accustomed to going to Broadway,'' Ms. Higginson said. ''There are others who go and are disappointed. They're turned off. They don't like the images presented. They're the people we want to bring back.''

What theatergoers usually see on Broadway, she said, is a world in which blacks take little part except as negative stereotypes. ''Our research tells us that black people are willing to spend their discretionary income on the things they want,'' she continued. ''So the product had better be good.''

The Theater Development Fund has been pivotal in getting all four shows on their Broadway feet by offering discounted tickets to middle-income theatergoers and making group sales to unions, hospitals, schools and other institutions. Last spring, the fund sold more than 10,000 tickets during the first crucial weeks in the run of ''Fences,'' before the Pulitzer Prize and a satchel of good reviews brought it wide recognition. The show went on to gross $11 million in its first year, a record for a nonmusical.

''The advance sale was all T.D.F.,'' said Carole Shorenstein Hays, who produced ''Fences.'' She added that lower ticket prices, including $8 tickets at the Wednesday matinee, were a key factor in making the show accessible to people who might not otherwise be able to afford a Broadway ticket.

Michael David, the producer of ''The Gospel at Colonus'' described his strategy this way:

''Our feeling was, for a show so off-the-wall for this address, selling it as a Broadway show would have been suicide. We created an outreach office. We got help to bring in the 'other' audience to Broadway - not just blacks, but Pentecostals, Hispanics, Jews, students.''

''We call them our SWAT team,'' Mr. David said of the office. ''We've worked out a large network of group sales personnel, and we've been working the gospel shows in Harlem.''

According to Richard Bruno, who runs the ''Colonus'' outreach office, the producers told schools, churches and other institutions about their show. They used a computer to cross-reference passages from the script with passages from the Bible, sending the results to ministers in the hope of helping them prepare sermons.

Establishing networks through the church in black communities has been critical in bringing parishioners to Broadway. ''We went to the church community, not unlike the 'Gospel at Colonus' people,'' said Thomas Cott, director of marketing for Lincoln Center Theater, which moved ''Sarafina!'' to Broadway. ''We put ads in all the black weeklies.'' They also taped a commercial featuring a segment from the show in which the young cast sings an infectiously joyful version of the Lord's Prayer.

But once the audiences began coming, an older and more traditional phenomenon took hold. ''It was a clear demonstration of how word-of-mouth works,'' Mr. Cott said. ''This is a show you have to be told to go to. The word-of-mouth has been an incredibly powerful force.''

One of the side benefits of bringing new audiences to Broadway, said Ms. Phillips, of Broadway Tix, is that they tend to return. All the producers underscored the notion that their goal was to bring in as many people as possible.

''We don't relate to 'Gospel' as a 'black' show,'' Mr. David said. ''We relate to gospel as an American cultural treasure. This treasure works well when the audience is as diverse as possible.''

Broadway Is Offering Black Theatergoers More Reasons to Go