SOCIAL EXPERIENCE AND US MUSICAL THEATRE ON SÃO PAULO’S STAGES

Abstract

Since the turn of the millennium, shows originating on Broadway, New York, have begun to be produced in many different cities around the world. During the 1980s and 1990s, American entrepreneurs developed strategies for selling theatrical works in cities of various nations (Machado, 2018). These producers elaborated a procedure for selling the rights to Broadway shows to other countries: they started to offer the rights to musicals for purchase by foreign companies via a rights licensing agency, Music Theatre International (MTI) (Gamerman, 2010). Brazil was one of the countries that invested in these productions. Particularly in the São Paulo theatre scene at the start of the new century, a series of indicators demonstrates the vigour of this enterprise: the number of shows, the size of audiences, the financial sums generated, and the construction of new buildings. For example, there were three versions of Broadway shows between 1950 and 1969, four between 1970 and 1979, rising to seven between 1980 and 1989, and the same number between 1990 and 1999. In the decade from 2000 to 2009, the conditions for producing musicals changed and the shows rose to 20 and, finally, between 2010 and 2016, jumped to 48 (Cardoso, Fernandes & Cardoso Filho, 2016). The data from the last few years reveals how the public embraced these musicals with particular enthusiasm. In 2001, Les misérables attracted 350,000 theatregoers over the 11 months it was running. More recently, between 2013