Last week I blogged about Gov. Patterson’s new bucket of taxes and wondered whether or not he was coming after Broadway.

Lo and behold, the League finally got through the mountains of paper in the proposal and guess what was there, hidden among the iPod tax and the massage tax:  a 4% tax on theater tickets.

(Cue horror music music here)

But let’s not count our heroine out just yet.  Even in Friday the 13th, there’s always one young lady who survives after sending Jason to his death.

And in the movie version of our life, our young heroine is the Executive Director of the League, Charlotte St. Martin, who in her short reign has already faced more challenges than most (first a stagehands strike and now this).

Here’s a statement from Charlotte that went to League members yesterday meant to ease your (and my) mind . . . at least for the moment.

The Broadway League learned of the potential new
tax on theatre tickets late last week and we have been working with our
lobbyists in Albany to learn more about the “who/what/where and when” of how we
can respond.  

So fear not, young campers.  We’re fighting back against the tax monster and we’ve got a few more months to sharpen our pitchforks.  They’ve got a great committee put together, including League Chair, Nina Lannan (I’d put her up against any creature even if she only had a plastic fork).

I’m standing firm with my belief that we’ll get out of this one alive.

But even if we do escape this time, the real problem is . . . Jason always comes back for a sequel.