THE HIGH PRICE OF A DREAM
After a musical-theater festival goes bust, young writers find themselves out thousands of dollars they can’t recoup
THE New York Musical Festival was created to give new writers a start. So isn’t it “ironic,” says Josh Canfield, whose “Alive! The Zombie Musical” played NYMF last year, that it “stabbed us in the back.”
The festival’s board declared bankruptcy early this month, citing a nationwide “arts funding crisis.” Canfield and several other writers are furious. They say NYMF owes them thousands and, in some cases, tens of thousands of dollars that they raised to put on their shows with the promise of recouping some of it from ticket sales. They say they weren’t told the festival was in deep financial trouble, but in 2017, according to the festival’s tax filings, it had $270,000 in liabilities.
The writers say they’re now left holding the bag.
“Their conduct is sneaky,” says Jenny Waxman, whose show “Leaving Eden” won the festival’s top award in 2019. “They took our money, but when we asked for updates on ticket sales and what we were owed, our e-mails went unanswered.”
Waxman, who’s studying law at Georgetown University, is leading a group of writers as they look into ways to sue the festival and its board of directors. Although it’s an uphill climb — NYMF is bankrupt and has no assets — she says, “I know businesses go under, but I find it insulting that after I raised $10,000, they never told us they were in danger . . . And then to blame an endemic ‘arts crisis’ is just a slap in the face.”
A spokesman for NYMF tells The Post: “As the New York Musical Festival has filed for bankruptcy, all parties must go through the court-appointed bankruptcy trustee to be paid what they are owed.” NYMF refused to make any comment beyond that.
In its 15-year run, the festival produced more than 400 readings, concerts and shows, two of which made it to Broadway: “Next to Normal,” which won the Pulitzer Prize, and “[title of show],” which flopped.
Those shows enticed young writers to enter the festival’s competition. I’d heard over the years that once writers were admitted — with much fanfare and the potential for Broadway glory — they had to pony up money to seal the deal.
Canfield and Waxman confirm this.
“Upfront, they told me I had to put down a payment of $3,000 to hold my slot,” Canfield says.
Other demands came next. NYMF would find and rent a theater for a show, but the writer had to pay for nearly everything else: sets, costumes, salaries.
Canfield says NYMF would hold seminars for its writers, urging them to “go to your hometowns, get your family members involved, take out loans or use your credit cards. It was all about how great it was that you were in NYMF.”
The deal was that the festival would split the ticket sales, 60 percent for the writers, 40 percent for NYMF.
Waxman says she had access online to box-office statements while “Leaving Eden” was running, but when she tried later to find out how much money she was owed, her access was cut off.
She and Canfield say you’d never know NYMF was in trouble from the lavish parties it threw at the beginning and end of its season.
“I think they were spending our money to make money for the next season,” Waxman says. “Maybe it was a Ponzi scheme, and it caught up with them.”
A veteran producer I spoke to says NYMF started out as a good idea, but got carried away with its own success. As the festival expanded, it needed more money, the producer says, “and that’s when they took advantage of people.”