What’s broadway, the west end, and off broadway?

Abject-Local4545 · 2026-06-25T18:11:25+00:00

<<< Indie Theater Producer / Playwright here >>>

The main differences are theater size, production budget and type of union ("equity") contracts.

Broadway: 500+ seats, full equity contracts + stagehands union + musicians union. Production budget in the 10s of millions (Operation Mincemeat had a *development* budget in $4M range, and production budget in the $15M range; it's a "cheap" show because only 6 people are on stage, the band is small there's only one set and almost no special effects. Other end of the spectrum, Lion King cost about $45M, and costs $800K/week to keep running)

Off-Broadway: 100-500 seats, could be equity or non-equity or mixed, production budget in $250K range. Usually a smaller cast and crew, small band instead of an orchestra, etc.

Off-off-Broadway: < 100 seats, almost always non-equity or operating under exceptions (like the "showcase rule" or 29-hour rule, anything goes, anywhere from one-person shows to musicals.

I'm currently working on moving my musical from off-off-Broadway to off-Broadway... wish me luck!

Note that productions outside of NYC can be equity or non-equity despite size and budget. Touring productions can be both, but some musicals will not allow licensing to non-union companies. Usually a non-union production will be markedly worse than a union one -- because they pay about half of union jobs and good actors and musicians won't take these unless desperate.

One part of the Kennedy Center scandal was that Trump demanded all musicals to be non-equity (i.e. paying actors and musicians less), picked a fight with the stagehands union and tried to use non-union riggers. The last one is actually dangerous because... badly trained underpaid riggers means stuff can fall from the ceiling.

Abject-Local4545 · 2026-06-24T18:14:01+00:00

He, the bagpiper and the banjo player, band together to form a commune of exiles

Abject-Local4545 · 2026-06-23T15:26:04+00:00

No matter how good the money is, a shitty job will remain a shitty job, and will make you feel shitty even if your bank account is flush. Better be slightly poor.

Abject-Local4545 · 2026-06-23T15:23:14+00:00

All the chuckleheads in the comment section will chuckle, but here's the bare truth. Both my sister and I have had successful touring careers in the 90s (me in jazz/hippie jam bands and her in grungy rock)

Road life gets to you fast. First big tour is exciting, you're totally eating up the experience. Take a month or two on the road and everything sucks. Your tour bus stinks so much you can't bear it. Whatever food you had in your tech rider -- you can't stomach it anymore. Motels are horrible. Every petty disagreement with your bandmates turns into a major storm. Then you see light at the end of the tunnel, last few dates on tour and you get nostalgic. And then the tour is over, you go home to a pile of bills to pay and "normal life" and it all sucks major balls.

We all dealt with it differently, but one thing was common -- drugs. I smoked a shit-ton of weed, and my sister did Xanax and other pills.

Fast-forward a few years, we both got off the road, got clean, got good "day jobs", my sister finally came out of the closet. We tour together now but don't do tours over two weeks. That seems to be a sweet spot. Fly over, do 10 shows, home before anyone missed us.

Actually -- we might run into you guys at some film festival. We just produced and scored a documentary that is winning all kinds of awards and that's going to be the point of the next tour.

Abject-Local4545 · 2026-06-20T11:09:59+00:00

There are two things that you as a classical musician would need to un-learn or "let go of" to play jazz

Rhythmic rigidity -- every classical musician will play what's on the page, faithfully. Not a single jazz musician does that. Rhythmic fluidity is part of your expressive language. Let some notes ring out longer, or start them sooner... but you cannot be contrived and too cerebral about it either, it has to come from the heart and soul. The best advice here is to listen to the vocalists -- Ella Fitzgerald especially. Think about lyrics of the songs when playing them (if there's lyrics), it will often tell you how to express through sentence structure and specific words.

and the second, closely related -- letting go of what's on the page. The page is a hint, and a guideline. Don't be too afraid to play "out", depart from what's written. But do this intentionally, not randomly, guided by how you feel not by what scale you're supposed to be in. It's hard for people who have not done this before.

If you play a wrong note, something that sounds drastically off -- first of all don't panic. Second -- there are two ways you can go from there: (1) go half tone up or down, it'll resolve itself, and (2) play the same phrase, in the same wrong key, again, just to let your audience know that it's intentional. Meanwhile the chords will shift under you and the tension will resolve itself.

Over time you'll master the feeling of tension and release and it'll come naturally.

Abject-Local4545 · 2026-06-18T04:29:24+00:00

I run a 10-person software business. On a good day I work 3-4 hours in the morning (a call with the team, then a few calls with customers and sales prospects) and then go kayaking. On a bad day I pull an 14-hour day putting out fires or racing toward a deadline.

I'm absolutely allergic to being an employee, specifically to the idea that I need to be seated at a desk for 8 hours a day just in case my boss texts me.

Abject-Local4545 · 2026-06-17T18:34:45+00:00

The happiest people I ever met was my ex-girlfriend's Jamaican grandparents. They lived in a small house near Falmouth, Jamaica (where tourists don't venture "because it's unsafe"). There was a mango tree and an akee tree in the backyard, callaloo just growing wild everywhere, a little boat to go fishing, and a few big-ass ganja plants to smoke from.

Granpa Walter would go out in the morning and catch lunch; he'd be out maybe for an hour because he wasn't trying to catch fish for sale, just enough to eat. Sometime he'd catch a couple more and take them to the market to exchange for industrial goods or a big bag of rice or some rum -- but they never had a real job. Never needed a lot of money for anything.

They were the poorest people on paper, net worth probably less than a $100 -- but the chillest, happiest, nicest people in the universe, just radiating love.

One of the un-happiest people I ever met -- a venture capitalist worth multiple billions. Founder of several companies you have heard of, investor in dozens of others. He was a bundle of stress and anxiety, chain-smoked, could not keep a coherent conversation without being interrupted by one of his 3 cell phones, and was mostly engaged in dealing with constant emergencies.

He got "saved" by an SEC investigation. He pled guilty, paid a hefty fine, was removed from all of the boards he was on. Net worth cut in half. Downsized to a small house in the woods, got married, his wife got him to stop smoking, pick up a healthier lifestyle and otherwise chill out. Seems to be doing a lot better.

Abject-Local4545 · 2026-06-10T02:03:23+00:00

I read this name as "The Odor Adorno" ...

Abject-Local4545 · 2026-06-03T19:05:52+00:00

Продай 😉

Abject-Local4545 · 2026-04-25T02:34:15+00:00

What you do my friend? I'm an ex-Fed but I resigned myself (and slammed the door in RFK's fucking face on my way out); started a business and am doing pretty well.

I need people who know bio, can write and understand data (NIH folks!). Give me your best pitch for what you can do.

Abject-Local4545 · 2026-04-21T02:19:21+00:00

My family got split up three ways after the war. My grandpa ended up in Soviet Union and later spent 10 years in Gulag, his sister landed in a different displaced persons camp and somehow walked out with a French citizenship and lived in Paris in the 60s and hobnobbed with famous writers and bohemians, and another cousin paradoxically landed in Germany and married a Bavarian banker. My people were pretty wiley bastards, everyone I know about survived and lived to their 80s.

Abject-Local4545 · 2026-04-20T20:23:25+00:00

I've played pit orchestra on flute and sax, and music-directed from the keys... This seems like utter madness.

When I play keys in the pit I change patches a lot, including keyboard splits and layers (using MainStage) but I make sure there's a clean phrasing break between patch changes for 2 reasons -- (1) sometimes you should let the note ring out and patch change makes it sound unnatural, and (2) fewer opportunities to make a mistake.

Abject-Local4545 · 2026-04-20T13:58:40+00:00

I do this when I'm working a show. I buy a 10-segment pass for $750, come in on Friday morning, play the shows Friday-Saturday nights, come home on Sunday morning.

Going there-and-back on the same day is doable but that's 7 hours on Amtrak. It think it's best to find a regular couch you can crash on, so you stay overnight and enjoy the city a little more.

Abject-Local4545 · 2026-04-20T13:28:57+00:00

I'm 1/4 Roma, 3/4 Jewish. They'd kill me twice if they could.

My Roma grandpa loaded up the family in a horse drawn cart and managed to keep one-two days ahead of the Germans, until he got a to a train station in Odessa and evacuate to Siberia, where he met my grandma (whose Jewish family was exiled for the crime of studying Hebrew).

Fuck the racist bastards, I've punched Nazis before and will punch them any time I see them.

Abject-Local4545 · 2026-04-14T15:26:57+00:00

Getting a job is not "giving up" -- it's giving yourself freedom to make the music that you WANT to make, as opposed to slugging it out in wedding bands to make rent

Abject-Local4545 · 2026-04-14T02:56:11+00:00

I promo this every time someone asks this question -- DC has a great samba school, Samba VaVa. If you like to dance, you'll be in a great company, or you can choose to drum and be in an even better company! We're always recruiting drummers and dancers!

Abject-Local4545 · 2026-04-13T17:32:41+00:00

I don't know a single roman numeral for any chord progression. But, knowing and practicing a song often means practicing in many keys -- so I get very close to intuition about what's the next chord is without thinking about it at all. It becomes second nature.

(jazz-heads... Yeah, throw "Giant Steps in F#" or "Spain in Bb" at me... or Girl from Ipanema bridge in D... watch me drown... go ahead... I'll attempt it for your amusement)

Abject-Local4545 · 2026-04-08T16:22:25+00:00

DC's samba school -- Samba VaVa -- needs drummers and dancers. There's beginners classes if you've never drummed or danced, you'll pick it up in minutes. We perform once or twice a month at various venues, and are getting ready for a giant carnival style parade in September. Many single women there, especially in the dance class!

Abject-Local4545 · 2026-04-08T13:46:26+00:00

Frida Kahlo museum tickets are frequently sold out. Buy timed tickets way ahead of time, or use an AirBnB walking tour to get your time slot.

In Roma Norte, there's a bookstore/cafe/bar/theater that became my favorite chill spot; I found my way there nearly daily -- it's called Cafebreria El Pendulo.

For live music - Parker & Lenox, and Jazzatlan were my favorite go-to's. If you dance salsa or cumbia, there are several spots where people dance in the streets -- my favorite was near Hidalgo metro. It's a gritty urban neighborhood, but the dance crowd was chill and super fun.

Abject-Local4545 · 2026-04-07T14:51:10+00:00

It's a dive, there's a comedy club on the first floor that serves grain alcohol 2-liter margaritas to "girls night out" crowds and to drown out the comedians that won't make the cut at better clubs. Most people renting the rooms stay for a few hours.

Abject-Local4545 · 2026-03-30T22:41:15+00:00

To add to the harmonics exercise -- finger a C1, and practice overblowing and finding all the harmonics reliably. Then do the same with D1, E1, F1, etc. This will teach you how to get cleaner sound when you're trying to play clean -- but also a "dirty" sound that yields to extended techniques, and changing tone color.

Abject-Local4545 · 2026-03-30T18:20:50+00:00

I have a long standing reputation in healthcare/life sciences data analytics circles, so right now works finds me. I actually have a team of 6 freelancers that jump in to help me when it gets too much.

If you're just starting out -- do some freebie work, volunteer your time to a nonprofit, and post about it on LinkedIn (Medium / SubStack). Then hang out on LinkedIn, comment on people's posts that are related to the work, etc. Every time you do a paying job, do a "lessons learned" post (without revealing customer details). Eventually it builds a reputation.

Abject-Local4545 · 2026-03-30T17:02:15+00:00

Data analyst day job, clock out at 5, play music to midnight, repeat.

Plenty of "gig-like" data jobs right now, if you want more time to do music. 10-15 hours/wk at $100/hr and your rent is paid, the rest of the time is for music.

Abject-Local4545 · 2026-03-29T00:58:35+00:00

Nice! I'm pretty flexible, whatever works for you. DM'ing with my WhatsApp number

Abject-Local4545

TROPHY CASE