Following multiple controversies, the industry group the Broadway League has backed away from announcing a reduction in the lighting of memorial marquees on Broadway.
Instead, an outside spokesperson for the separate committee of Broadway theater owners began sharing details about when the tributes will take place.
The news follows an online protest last October after the committee announced it would do partial dimming — where some, but not all, Broadway theaters would dim their lights for a minute — for Gavin Creel, the Tony Award-winning artist who died of cancer at age 48. in September.
Critics of the choice said it suggested Creel was not as big a star as others who received full grading. Previous partial dimming plans for actors Marin Mazzie and Hinton Battle also angered fans and were later replaced with full dimmings.
A Change.org petition calling for total Creel mitigation has gathered more than 23,000 supporters.
“We understand that full dimming is supposed to be a rare thing,” said one October Petition started with Time Out New York, reads theater critic Adam Feldman. “But special circumstances must be taken into account.”
For years, the tradition of turning off the lights on Broadway, created in 1950 in honor of English artist Gertrude Lawrence, has been a way of showing respect for the passing of a great artist.
“Artists who contribute to the social fabric of New York City are often overlooked in many ways,” said Randi Berry, executive director of the independent theater-making organization. Independent space. “A special opportunity we have in New York…is the dimming of the lights and marquees of Broadway when one of us walks by.”
The Broadway Theater Owners Committee determines who will receive a downgrade, although the Broadway League has traditionally announced them.
Deadline first reported that the League – a nearly century-old, 700-member consortium of North American Broadway industry professionals, including theater owners, operators and general managers – had ceased to be the harbinger of custom.
Without any official passing of the torch, the committee quietly released the final two dimming announcements, for Maggie Smith and Creel, through the Polk PR company.
