Productions & Casts

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Inclusion

This list is comprehensive of professional productions meeting one or more of these conditions:

• Located in New York or London

• Produced by a theatre company that has received a Tony Award for Regional Theatre

• Produced by a theatre company that is a member of the League of Resident Theatres (LORT) or the National Alliance for Musical Theatre (NAMT)

• Produced by an opera company with a level 1 or 2 budget group designation by Opera America

• Theatre companies or festivals with a history of significant productions

Determining which theatre companies to include outside the United States is more challenging, and thus other countries' entries may be less comprehensive. For the list of theatre companies included, click here.

Films are included when they are created without an accompanying stage production. Filmed versions of live shows are not included as separate entries.

Major studio recordings not associated with a live production are included for the purpose of searchability but are not otherwise counted.

Shows

For the purposes of making it easier to compare data, Wise Guys, Bounce, and Road Show are all aggregated under the project's final title of Road Show.

Only major revues are separated out as unique shows rather than local special events. Revues are considered major when they have met two of the three following criteria:

• Production on Broadway or the West End

• Having a cast album

• More than three major professional productions
  
  

Casts

For casts, there is often variation in the crediting of minor roles or in the characters utilized for the production. When there is no actor listed for a part, it is marked one of three ways:

• Not credited: a primary source lists what appears to be a complete cast and the part is not listed

• n/a: the part is frequently uncredited and the lack of an actor's name is not necessarily an omission

• Unknown: the part is usually credited and there is not enough information to know if this production intentionally did not credit this part or if the actor's name is just missing

If the information is coming from a primary source, the actor's name is typically listed as provided. If the information is from a secondary source or an aggregate database, the actor's name is listed how they are most typically known.

Roles are often credited differently between productions. The given list of roles is an attempt to standardize the role names for the purposes of comparing actors playing the same part.

Unique Productions

The "Unique Productions" column is a marker to distinguish separate efforts to mount a production. For the purposes of this database:

• Separate productions have at least one of the following:

  • Different markets (e.g. moving from Off-Broadway to Broadway)

  • Significant temporal distance between productions at the same level

  • Different creative teams and/or casts

• Continued productions:

  • Stay within the same market (e.g. Broadway to Broadway or Europe to Europe) or are only in a different market as an immediately pre-Broadway tryout

  • Relatively quick succession of one location to another

  • Same creative team and at least mostly the same cast
    
    

Types

Productions are classified as original only in regards to New York and London productions unless the first professional production in that country was at a regional theater.

Concerts are not differentiated by the degree of staging due to the inherent difficulty both in determining this retroactively and in creating useful and objective criteria by which to separate them. As a result, nearly-fully staged concerts are still classified as concerts and not as revivals.

Productions by opera companies are separated out to show the degree of spread from musical theatre to opera. Light opera companies are placed by whether their primary repertoire is based in musical theatre or opera.

The distinction between workshops and readings is an attempt to separate basic table reads from workshops that are developing the show.

Revues are special events where a company created their own revue and it was presented as a show with a typical run, not as a limited concert.

Tryouts are defined as productions that are staged by a creative team and cast with the intention of working on a show before taking it to New York or London, generally nearly immediately before it premieres on the larger stage. A production that is independently staged and then later transfers to New York or London is not considered a tryout.

Markets

The designations of "Broadway" vs "Off-Broadway" vs "Off-Off-Broadway" follow the conventions outlined for eligibility for awards. As such, productions in theatres that would normally not be considered Broadway stages are classified as "Broadway" if they were deemed eligible for the Tony Awards.

"West End" productions are those in established theaters in London's West End, "Off-West End" refers to any other professional productions in London, including those in the West End neighborhood that are not in established theaters.

The designations of "New York" and "London" represent productions in those cities that do not fit in the above categories, such as concerts or workshops.

"Africa", "Asia", "Europe", "North America", "Oceania", and "South America" include both regular productions and tours that stay within the continent. "International" productions are tours which cross multiple continents.

Sources

When gathering information, there are often conflicting reports from different sources. In these situations, information is favored from sources that are likely to be more reliable.

1. Most reliable: primary sources such as a production's web page or program

2. Next most reliable:  contemporaneous reports such as reviews or promotional articles

3. Least reliable: aggregate databases that do not provide sources