Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Today we take a look at what spring has in store for Rick Miramontez, a top Broadway agent.
Rick Miramontez is both a night owl and an early bird.
It must be. As president of DKC/O&M, the theatrical PR agency he founded in 2006, he is always on call. His agency represents eight shows currently running on Broadway, including “Hadestown” and “MJ.”
And the nine day stretch from April 17 to 25 — when 12 plays and musicals will open by the deadline to be eligible for Tony Award nominations — is the theatrical equivalent of the Super Bowl.
“It’s absolutely seven days a week right now,” Miramontez said in a recent phone conversation from his office, which is in a West 39th Street penthouse above the Drama Book Shop.
April is always a busy time for Broadway openings. Like the Oscar nominee crush that opens in late December, productions want to open as close to the Tonys deadline as possible to be fresh in the minds of nominees and voters. The Tony nominations will be announced on April 30 and the televised awards show will take place on June 16.
But this spring looks especially tight, even though Broadway attendance still hasn’t returned to pre-pandemic levels and revenues are down 14% in early March compared to the same period in 2020. 36 shows run on Broadway — and producers and investors worry about whether there are enough ticket buyers to support them all.
“If we’ve lost some of the traditional audience — and I think that’s true — then what we have right now is a challenge to figure out where to build it and find a new audience,” said Miramontez, whose agency represents five of the new shows this season. They include a revival of the musical “Cabaret” led by Eddie Redmayne. ‘The Wiz’, a gospel, soul and R&B take on Dorothy’s adventures in Oz. and Off Broadway’s “Stereophonic,” a behind-the-score play about a controversial band recording a studio album.
A typical day for Miramontez starts at 4 a.m., he said. He maps out a schedule for the day and checks in on his four email accounts — he has two assistants to help keep track of the boss, who, on a recent weekday, had received 425 messages — before taking a 20-minute taxi ride from his home in Lower Manhattan in the office.
He starts the day there with a meeting with a few members of his group of 19, most in their 20s and 30s. Although they work for the same agency, the reporters represent competing shows, so they keep their Tony campaign strategies close to their vests.
“Ideally each rep handles a few shows — and no more than a couple — because they’re really in charge of the day-to-day details,” Miramontez said.
Broadcasting is becoming the journalists’ babies. They devise strategies to help find an audience, such as writing news releases, pitching stories to journalists and coordinating press nights.
“It’s my job to keep their plate full, but not to overdo it,” said Miramontez, who is in his 60s and began his career as press director of the Center Theater Group/Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles in 1982. Later ran one of the most famous press campaigns in Broadway history from 2011 to 2014 while representing the accident-plagued musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.
After all his shows open and the nominations are announced, it’s a six-week race to the finish. Famous audience members will flirt. There will be a lot of photo work. Billboards in Times Square are likely to light up with the faces of actors such as Redmayne and Daniel Radcliffe, star of one of this season’s hottest tickets, a revival of the Stephen Sondheim musical “Merrily We Roll Along.”
Sleep, needless to say, will be scarce.
But a Tony would be worth the effort, Miramontez said, if one of his shows took home the coveted award for best musical, which still carries a lot of weight. An award means increased ticket sales and improved marketing for road trips.
“I think the prestige of a Tony Award over the life of a show is priceless, honestly,” he said.
Weather
The day will be mostly cloudy with temperatures in the 50s. At night, temperatures drop into the 50s.
ALTERNATIVE PARKING
Valid until April 23 (Easter).
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Instinctive
Dear Diary:
I took the Q to Brighton beach in June 2022. I was going to a cafe I used to go to as a kid.
There was one problem: I didn’t know the name or the exact address, only that it was somewhere in that neighborhood and had a blue awning.
I had been introduced to the coffee shop by the woman who was taking care of my grandmother after Alzheimer’s disease left her incapacitated.
Both women were gone from my life by then, but as I walked west that day in search of the blue awning, I was accompanied by a new woman. Although I didn’t know it then, she would become the apple of my eye.
After getting off the train and down to street level, we started wandering along Brighton Beach Boulevard.
In the distance, I saw a spot of bright blue 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. Submit submissions here and Read more Metropolitan Diary here.
I’m glad we could get together here. Alyson Krueger will be here tomorrow. SB
PS Here’s today’s Mini crossword and Spelling bee. You can find all our puzzles here.