What This Season Got Right—and What Comes Next

Happy Friday 👋🏼 One of the very first pieces I wrote for The Fourth Wall was about how Swept Away went viral on TikTok. Back then, the idea that a single theater moment could ripple that far, that fast, still felt a little extraordinary.

Now? It’s the air we’re breathing.

And that’s exciting. Because when theater lives online—when it spreads, when it sparks—the whole ecosystem grows. New audiences discover it. The conversation widens. The art form moves.

But fast growth comes with friction.

This season, the internet wasn’t just a tool for theater marketing—it was the engine. And the impact was impossible to miss.

I’ve been watching it all with a mix of excitement, curiosity, and, if I’m honest…some fatigue. That’s what I wanted to unpack this week.

So—let’s take a look at what happened, what I felt, and where I think the opportunity is from here.

Ready? Ok.

The Breakthrough

This season, something shifted. For years, theater marketing has treated the internet—and social media especially—as a side channel. Helpful? Sure. Core to the business? Not quite. But this season, it became unavoidable.

For the first time, it felt like producers and decision-makers had to buy in—or at least stop resisting. Because the attention was there. And the results were impossible to ignore.

By the numbers:

• The 2025 Tony Awards drew the largest broadcast audience in six years → 4.85 million viewers, up 38% year-over-year.

• Streaming viewership on Paramount+ soared by 208%.

• The most significant gains came from younger demos: +147% in viewers aged 18-34.

• On social media, Tony-related content generated 5.2 billion impressions—up 55% from the previous year—and 161,900 mentions, up 75%.

And the ripple effects stretched far beyond the awards. Throughout the season, standout moments—a Nicole Scherzinger megaphone clip, bootlegged clips for almost every show, audio trends from Death Becomes Her—traveled widely online, shaping which shows drove buzz, which casts drew fandoms, and which moments built cultural currency.

As Eli Rallo put it: "It was the first time the Theater Wing wasn’t looking down at TikTok. They finally realized how important TikTok, the internet, and Gen Z can be for Broadway."

The internet wasn’t just helping theater this year—it was moving it.

The Double-Edge

A big part of why I launched this newsletter was to open up a conversation about how theater reaches audiences—especially online.

The very first piece I wrote was about Swept Away’s virality on TikTok. And while the focus of The Fourth Wall has expanded over the past six months, that question—how does this art form meet its audience in a digital world?—is still one of the questions that drives me most.

Which is why I’ve been thrilled to see how fully the industry embraced digital content this season. Not just the scrappy new shows. Not just the young fans. But the whole ecosystem—shows, producers, even the Tonys themselves—finally leaning into what the internet can do for theater.

When voter season hit, I expected the campaigns—and many of them delivered.
Maybe Happy Ending. Oh, Mary! John Proctor. Sunset Boulevard. These were thoughtful, creative campaigns that earned attention in the best way: by giving people something worth engaging with.

But what surprised me most this year wasn’t the shows. It was the outlets.

And here I should say: I’ve worked inside these places. I’ve created for BroadwayWorld, for Playbill, for Broadway.com. I know firsthand how these teams operate—and how hard they work to cover this industry with care. I’m not here to point fingers at all. If anything, I understand why the shift happened.

When a space floods with new attention—especially online—the incentives change. When you see what works on Instagram, on TikTok, the natural response is to lean in. To do more of it. To try and ride the wave.

But as a theater lover—as someone who used to devour Tony coverage from these very outlets—I found myself feeling something I didn’t expect: fatigue. The interviews I once looked forward to felt thinner. The soundbites started to blend together. The volume of content grew—but the depth seemed to flatten.

None of this is anyone’s fault. It’s a natural response to a fast-evolving digital space. But it left me wondering: if this is the new normal, what will make any of it memorable?

The Next Differentiator

One thing is clear: the more this space matures, the easier it is to default to what performs, rather than what resonates.

Right now, there’s a clear feedback loop at play: Certain formats perform well → those formats get repeated → other outlets and shows follow suit → sameness creeps in.

Again, it’s not malicious. It’s just the nature of digital spaces. Once you find what “works,” the instinct is to lean in—to optimize. And when an industry that’s only recently embraced this space sees results, that instinct is even stronger.

But optimization isn’t the same as innovation. And it certainly isn’t the same as resonance.

The next differentiator won’t be who can post the most, or who can go the most viral. It’ll be who can make work that people genuinely want to spend time with. Work that earns attention—not just demands it. Work that surprises, delights, deepens the connection between show and audience.

Because what I’ve been craving—especially in this season’s digital landscape—is taste.
Not in the sense of being fancy, or exclusive. Taste as in curation. Intentionality. Quality over volume. The kind of content that reminds you why you fell in love with this medium in the first place.

We’ve proven this space can go wide. Now the opportunity—and I think the challenge—is to go deep.

The Space That’s Waiting

None of this is a knock on the progress we’ve made. Quite the opposite—I think this season proved just how much potential there is for theater to thrive in digital spaces. The attention is here. The appetite is here. The creativity is here.

But what excites me now isn’t more of the same. It’s what hasn’t been tried yet.

There’s so much room for surprise. For specificity. For moments that feel human, not just optimized. For work that draws people in—not because it’s everywhere, but because it’s good.

I don’t have the playbook. And I’m not here to prescribe one. But I do think we’re at an inflection point.

We’ve mastered volume. Now the question is: what will we do with it? How will we use these platforms not just to campaign, but to connect? To build trust. To tell better stories. To make the experience of being a theater fan online feel as rich and alive as the experience of sitting in a theater itself.

That’s the space I hope we start reaching for next.

One Last Thing…

Tonight is opening night of BEAU.

It’s a show that’s been part of my life for seven years. Seven years of readings and rewrites. Of workshops and almosts. Of a $4 million movie no one’s seen. Of hoping—quietly—that maybe one day this might be the thing that shows people what I can really do as an actor.

When BEAU came into my life, I was in a very different place. I hadn’t totally given up on performing—but I had shifted toward where I felt momentum. I was hosting. I was producing. I was building a career on the other side of the camera. From the outside, it looked like I had moved on. And truthfully, I was trying to trust that path.

And BEAU was this secret thing I was doing in the cracks between it all: leading a new musical, carrying a show in a way I’d always dreamed of doing. But no one knew.

And in a season where so much of theater’s conversation has centered on visibility—on what trends, what performs, what’s seen—it’s been a quiet reminder to me that some of the most meaningful work happens offscreen. Away from the algorithm. In the long, unseen stretches of process and patience.

It was a strange tension to carry: knowing what I was building, while wondering if anyone else ever would.

There’s a lot more to this story. There always is. But the fact that this show is coming to life now—here, in this particular moment of my New York story—feels like divine timing.
I couldn’t have planned it better if I tried. (Though planning rarely seems to be how this works—see: my final COMPANY callback happening on the day of my wedding.)

And so tonight, as we begin this first real run, I’m sitting with all of it. The joy. The nerves. The gratitude. The complexity.

I don’t have anything lined up after this. That uncertainty is real. But for now, I’m trying to stay present. To honor all the people who have left their fingerprints on this piece over the years. To carry it with heart. To remember that the worth of the work has never depended on its visibility.

Because ultimately what really matters isn’t the external recognition. It’s the answers to the internal questions: How am I growing? What am I learning? Can I meet uncertainty with trust? And through it all—can I love myself more deeply?

See you next week ♥️