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Freakonomics Radio

593. You Can Make a Killing, but Not a Living

Freakonomics Radio

Freakonomics Radio + Stitcher

Documentary, Society & Culture

4.632K Ratings

🗓️ 20 June 2024

⏱️ 50 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Broadway operates on a winner-take-most business model. A runaway hit like "Stereophonic" — which just won five Tony Awards — will create a few big winners. But even the stars of the show will have to go elsewhere to make real money. (Part two of a two-part series.)

Transcript

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0:00.0

Last week on the show we told you about an unusual new play on Broadway called

0:09.6

stereophonic it is a long intimate, funny, and totally gripping show about a co-ed rock band in the 1970s

0:19.2

as they record an album that will turn out to be a huge hit.

0:23.2

Stereophonic itself has turned out to be a huge hit.

0:26.8

If you watch the Tony Awards the other night, you saw superstars like Alicia Keys and

0:30.8

Jay-Z, Daniel Radcliffe, even Hillary Clinton, who co-produced a Broadway musical

0:35.8

this season, but it was stereophonic, the play with a bunch of nobodies, as one cast member said during the Tony Awards, that stole the show, winning five awards.

0:47.0

Here is the playwright, David Agamy, accepting his award for Best Play.

0:52.2

This was a very hard journey to get this play up here.

0:57.0

Michael McNeil and Fran Offenhauser, who gave me a place to live for seven years so that I could write this play it's really hard to make a

1:04.5

career in the arts we need to fund the arts in America it is the hallmark of a

1:09.5

civilized society. When I interviewed Adjme a couple of weeks Society.

1:15.0

When I interviewed Agme a couple weeks ago, I asked him what it's like to be at the vortex of a huge hit.

1:19.0

He has been writing plays for a couple decades,

1:22.0

but this is his first show on Broadway.

1:25.2

Here's what he told us.

1:26.2

I feel like I've been in a car accident.

1:27.8

We all feel that way.

1:28.6

We're just totally dislocated.

1:30.2

It doesn't feel good.

1:31.2

It feels weirdly bad.

1:33.0

I have a little bit of a hard time believing that.

...

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