“Don’t do a workshop.”

Someone said that to me recently.

I stopped.

“Don’t do workshops?” I said.

They nodded. And what came next stopped me cold.

This person (someone who has spent decades in this industry and knows it as well as anyone) told me that workshops, as a development tool, have actually had a negative impact on Broadway since A Chorus Line made them famous. Michael Bennett’s process in 1974 changed how musicals got made. But somewhere along the way, the tool became the problem.

I pushed back. Hard.

“But workshops are how you develop a show. How else do you figure out what works?”

Here’s what they said.

It’s not the development that’s the issue. Development is essential. Always will be. It’s how the work gets presented.

The argument: when you do a traditional workshop, big room, invited industry audience, Equity actors, the works, you’re not really testing the show. You’re performing the show for an audience that isn’t the audience. You’re getting feedback from people whose job it is to have opinions, not from people who bought a ticket and sat down because they wanted to be moved.

And that’s where it landed for me, folks: real audiences tell you the truth. Industry audiences tell you what they know.

So here’s the alternative.

Put your show in front of real people. Not in some giant fashion with full sets and a full orchestra. Strip it down. Make your musical, even if it’s a big, giant one, work in a black box. Fifty people. A piano. That’s it.

If you can make it work there . . . it’ll work anywhere.

I’ve been chewing on this ever since.

Because here’s what I know to be true: the best shows work in any room. A great song doesn’t need a lighting rig. A great scene doesn’t need a turntable. And if your story is compelling with 50 people and a piano, you’ve actually proved something that no fancy workshop can prove for you.

I’ll be honest . . . I haven’t fully made up my mind. Workshops have value. I’ve seen them work. But this argument rattled something loose, and I can’t stop thinking about it.

The black box theory. Fifty seats. One piano. If it works there, it works anywhere.

What do you think? Have you been in a workshop that changed a show for the better – or one that hurt it? Tell me in the comments.

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