Broadway Blog - ****** is CLOSING!

This is a question that I get sent *all* the time, so I'm going to take the opportunity to answer it here today... Why does BroadwayWorld.com delete certain posts on the message board about the closing of a particular show?

When a show is not 'doing well', people with even the most basic of math skills can usually tell by looking at the pretty red bars in BroadwayWorld.com's Grosses section and the influx of threads on our message boards immediately begin to pop up as the digital buzzards start to speculate how long a show has left. This is usually followed by many debates over what show might replace it in the theatre and of course ardent defenses by the show's fans who take any attack on its health as if it were a member of their own family being assaulted. 

I think those are all emotions that any of us who have been ardent fans of particular shows and performers can easily identify with. 

Where things get tricky however is when threads and messages start popping up from insiders and 'insiders' (my best friend's cousin's brother knows someone who sells merchandise and they say that...) telling folks that a show is definitely closing and has put up notice. 

To shine a small light behind the scenes, when these messages go up, one of our moderators usually checks in with the show's press rep, and whether the news is true or not (and often it can't be confirmed either way at that particular time), it's generally removed from the board until an official announcement is made. 

The reason for this is simple, cast members in a show traditionally were alerted to their production posting a closing notice backstage either before or after a performance. In today's digital age and gossipy Theatre World, word tends to start leaking out in one way or another hours before that as there's enough chefs involved in the preparation of the news that it often gets out (or is Tweeted out). 

However, just because some people know, or because it's usually 'expected' doesn't mean that everyone in the cast has been informed early. Knowing the blood, sweat and tears that goes into working on hits, flops and everything in between, it's simple courtesy that we feel performers should find out the negative news not from online gossip, but rather when they get to the theatre. 

We may just be "tilting at windmills" but it's a policy that just feels right...