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Priscilla Queen of the Desert’s Palace Theatre Broadway home. The show’s use of pre-recorded music alongside a live orchestra has drawn musicians union Local 802’s ire. (photo: Sara Morrison)

“The only real art is in the lip synch.”

So says Bernadette, one of three main characters in the sequin-encrusted, feather-coated Broadway musical Priscilla Queen of the Desert. The character is referring to the lavish drag shows the play is about, but her words are applicable to the musical itself – and the controversy surrounding it.

The three male leads alternate between using their own singing voices and lip synching to the female Diva characters along a disco-laden soundtrack featuring songs such as “Hot Stuff,” “I Love the Nightlife,” and even “Sempre Libera,” from the opera La Traviata. A jukebox-style musical, the show has no original compositions.

The accompanying instrumentation also, in a way, practices the art of lip synching: The nine musicians in the orchestra, located underneath the stage and barely visible to the audience except for the above-ground conductor/keyboardist, play along to pre-recorded, synthesized string tracks. None of the live musicians play string instruments. For this, the show has become the main villain of the Save Live Music on Broadway campaign.

“A Broadway musical should have live music,” says campaign spokesperson Laura Dolan. Launched two months after Priscilla’s March 20 opening, Save Live Music says its goal is to raise awareness of and target all threats to live music on Broadway and beyond, but Priscilla has always been its main focus.

But Save Live Music may be doing some of its own lip synching. Although a nonprofit organization called the Council for Living Music is credited as the author of the site and its blog posts, the words come from Local 802, the union that represents Broadway orchestra musicians.

The most recent IRS 990 tax records for the Council, from 2009, list its address as 322 W. 48th St. and provide the names of three officers: Trustees Jay Blumenthal and John O’Connor and Director Tino Gagliardi. Local 802’s offices are located at the same address, and its top three officers in 2009 were Jay Blumenthal, financial vice-president, John O’Connor, recording vice-president, and Tino Gagliardi, president.

Local 802’s offices are just a few blocks away from the Palace Theatre, but that may still be too far away for the union to get its message to theatergoers. (photo: Sara Morrison)

In fact, the Council for Living Music was organized by the union, and seems to lie dormant except when needed for Local 802’s live music campaigns. The union has not been shy about its affiliation with the Council in the past; an article about a similar campaign in the December 2001 issue of Allegro, the union’s trade paper, says: “One major focus of the Live Music campaign is to rebuild the Council for Living Music, a nonprofit entity Local 802 organized several years ago.”

You wouldn’t know that from the campaign’s website. The “about” section doesn’t mention Local 802 by name, even in the three paragraphs about the Council for Living Music. Gagliardi implied that the union and the nonprofit were separate entities in his “President’s Report” section of the June 2011 issue of Allegro, writing: “Local 802 recently joined forces with the Council for Living Music, which commissioned a survey of Broadway audiences.”

The poll may have been “commissioned” by the Council, but the financing came from the union. According to union minutes from last Dec. 21, “it was moved and seconded to contribute $49,500 from the public relations budget to the Council for Living Music to commission a poll of Broadway theatergoers as part of a live music initiative.” The motion passed unanimously.

That wouldn’t be the only time Local 802 transferred money to its nonprofit arm. According to union minutes, throughout the last year, Local 802 approved thousands of dollars of what it called “donations” and “contributions” to the Council, all earmarked for campaign initiatives, from the Save Live Music website’s creation and design ($2,275 on April 12 and an additional $4,340 on June 14) to $34,000 on May 3 for what was simply described as “costs.” At the same time, Save Live Music campaign supporters are encouraged to donate to the Council: “$5, $10, $25 – every dollar helps!”

Save Live Music’s spokesperson Laura Dolan works for the public relations firm Geto & de Milly, which has been associated with Local 802 since, at the latest, Oct. 12, 2010. Then, according to union minutes, firm partner Ethan Geto gave a presentation. In meeting minutes a few weeks later, Geto & de Milly was described as “Local 802’s retained public relations firm.”

Numerous calls to Local 802 were not returned, but Dolan says the Council for Living Music was started by musicians in the 1980s and seeks to use this campaign as a jumping-off point for educational initiatives and live music-related promotional activities independent of the union.

Beyond the over-the-top costumes, the confetti cannons, and the ping-pong balls that fly into the audience, Priscilla does have, however fleetingly, a message: acceptance of people’s differences. Save Live Music on Broadway also has something to say, even if it’s not always clear who is trying to say it: At the heart of the campaign is the fear that Priscilla will set a precedent for other Broadway producers who wish to save money by replacing live musicians with recordings.

Priscilla, based on the 1994 film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, premiered in Sydney, Australia, in 2006, then moved to Melbourne, Aukland, New Zealand, and London before its pre-Broadway trial run in Toronto last October. According to a statement from the show, the orchestra had nine members at all of those locations, and, when playing at the Princess of Wales Theatre in Toronto, the show was “also under the jurisdiction of the American Federation of Musicians” – the same union Local 802 is under– and “there were no complaints from the union.”

The move to Broadway changed that. Local 802’s contract with theatres sets minimums for show orchestras. Priscilla’s nine-person pit is just half of Palace Theatre’s minimum, so the show had to apply for “Special Situation” status, a clause in the contract that allows shows to seat fewer musicians in the orchestra if there is a compelling artistic reason. If the union sided with Priscilla, the status would be granted automatically. If not, the show would have to go before a panel consisting of representatives from Local 802, the Broadway League (the trade association for Broadway theatre professionals, representing producers’ interests), and a neutral mediator. Local 802 and the Broadway League’s interests would cancel each other out, leaving the ultimate decision to the mediator.

In an effort to win over Local 802 and eliminate the need for a hearing, the Broadway League put on a show for the union, playing Priscilla’s recorded string tracks against live string musicians to convince listeners that the pre-recorded, synthesized sound was unique and could not be matched by live strings. “Not surprisingly,” Gagliardi wrote in his column in March 2011’s issue of Allegro; “this only solidified our collective opinion that there was absolutely nothing special about this show’s ‘situation.’” Dolan agrees: “Everybody knows disco music uses live strings.”

Dolan claims that Local 802’s hard stance on Priscilla is unusual: “The union has been very amenable to considering and granting Special Situation proposals.” Recent shows such as American Idiot and Baby It’s You! can attest to that; both were easily approved by the union for Special Situation status and never had to go before the mediator. Like Priscilla, American Idiot and Baby It’s You! are jukebox musicals. The key difference is that they did not replace their missing musicians with recorded tracks. Priscilla’s performers and live musicians are forced to play to those recorded tracks, causing the show to lack, Dolan says, “that special thing you get with live music.”

Priscilla has maintained that the show’s disco tunes need the artificial-sounding strings on the recorded tracks, which give the sound an effect that live musicians cannot emulate. Dolan thinks the show is simply trying to cut costs. According to Local 802’s current Broadway wage scales, the base weekly wage for an orchestra musician is $1,546. Instrument maintenance fees, pension and health fund contributions, and vacation bonuses easily bump that to more than $2,000. By having nine musicians instead of 18, Priscilla is saving at least $18,000 a week.

With both sides refusing to budge, the issue had to be decided by the neutral mediator in March. According to a statement from Priscilla: “The decision of the neutral was that the production did not need any more musicians. We don’t know why the union has rejected ‘Special Situation’ status. The union is now taking the issue to final and binding arbitration.”

In the meantime, the mediator’s decision has allowed the production to go on with its reduced orchestra playing along to the pre-recorded strings. Local 802 cannot picket the show, but it has staged performances from string musicians in front of the theatre and is trying, through the campaign, to inform theatergoers that the strings they hear during the show do not come from a live musician. “If you’re going to do a show this way then you should tell ticket buyers what they are or aren’t seeing,” Dolan says.