Much hoopla was made when the two big new players on the Broadway scene, the Walt Disney Company and Toronto's Livent Inc., decided not to be members of the League of American Theatres & Producers, which serves as a kind of guild and support group for Broadway producers and theatre owners.

When Livent left the organization in 1995, mogul Garth Drabinsky explained that he wanted to do his own negotiations and collective bargaining with the Broadway unions.

The New York Times now reports (Mar. 20) that Livent has applied to rejoin the League to make use of its advertising and marketing programs, but will continue, like Disney, to negotiate union contracts on its own.

Drabinsky told the Times, "It was never the desire of this company not to be part of industry initiatives, whether with respect to marketing or to any other direction the industry wanted to take... As soon as the labor negotiations and the opening of the new theatre was behind us and the dust had cleared, we would do everything we could to show ourselves very much a part of the community down here and the industry at large."

-- By David Lefkowitz