PARNES ACCUSED OF COMING UP SHORT ON DANCIN' & ENHANCING
A gentleman's guide to litigation.
EXCLUSIVE: Veteran producer and general manager Joey Parnes and his production company are defendants in three lawsuits seeking a combined $730,000 in fees that allegedly went unpaid during the 2022-23 season.
In the largest case, Parnes fell $458,000 short of the subsidy — or enhancement — he agreed to provide Hartford Stage Co. for its June 2022 tryout of the musical Kiss My Aztec!, according to a complaint the nonprofit theater company filed in federal court last month. The producer hasn’t filed a response.
Separately, Parnes acknowledged in a settlement agreement that Joey Parnes Productions owes $50,000 in pay and pension contributions to the orchestrator and associate orchestrator of the 2023 Broadway revival of Bob Fosse’s Dancin’. On Dec. 18, 2025, Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians sued Joey Parnes Productions to recover the money.
Broadway Journal previously reported that Parnes signed a stipulation conceding that six Dancin' designers had been underpaid. U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer ordered Parnes, Joey Parnes Productions and another entity he controls to pay the designers’ union $223,000, which includes pension and healthcare contributions and interest and attorneys’ fees. Plaintiffs in the other cases are also seeking interest and attorneys’ fees.
The producer didn’t respond to emails seeking comment. The litigation marks a reversal of fortune for Parnes, whose more than 60 Broadway credits include lead producing Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, the Christopher Durang comedy that won the 2013 Tony Award for Best Play; and A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder, which was voted Best Musical the following season. (Like Kiss My Aztec!, Gentleman’s Guide had a developmental run at Hartford Stage.)
A high-profile figure on the business side of Broadway, the impresario has described himself as a “mud producer,” his self-deprecating term for getting into the weeds on shows. “There are hands-on producers who like to get into the mud of it all and then there are producers who raise money and make big decisions and delegate to others,” Parnes told Jamie Dumont and Robert Russo on the Broadway Podcast Network in 2023. “For me, producing is working with all the people that you see on the title page of a program and all the people that you see in the credit section of the program and enabling everybody to do their best work.”
In 2019, Parnes lost a lucrative gig as Scott Rudin’s general manager and executive producer after six years in the role. Two years later, he sued former associates Sue Wagner and John Johnson, accusing them of conspiring to destroy his relationship with Rudin and usurp it for themselves. Johnson — who began as an intern in Parnes’ office — and Wagner countersued, and the case was later discontinued.
Parnes bet big on the 2022-23 season, as Broadway was still recovering from the pandemic. His ambitious slate faltered. He was a lead producer of KPOP (which shuttered after 17 regular performances), Dancin’ (65 performances) and a co-producer of Almost Famous, the musical adaptation of Cameron Crowe’s roman à clef, which closed after 77 performances.
Kiss My Aztec! has a book by John Leguizamo (Latin History for Morons) and Tony Taccone, with music by Benjamin Velez (Real Women Have Curves) and lyrics by Velez, Leguizamo and David Kamp. Per the enhancement agreement, Hartford Stage and Parnes were to “mutually agree on creative decisions” as well as on hiring the creative team and cast. Hartford Stage was entitled to financial participation in future productions, via royalties and/or net profits, as were La Jolla Playhouse and Berkeley Repertory Theatre, which presented earlier tryouts. Parnes had the right to use the Hartford physical production in a future commercial production, at no additional charge.
The musical in Connecticut was originally budgeted for $2 million, with Parnes’ contribution set at $1.58 million. Citing “ongoing circumstances with COVID that are hampering [Parnes’] ability to raise investment funds as planned,” an amendment to the enhancement deal required Hartford Stage to increase its own contribution and extended the producer’s payment deadline.
In exchange, Parnes personally guaranteed his debt and granted Hartford Stage a lien on his property as collateral. To date, no commercial production of the musical has materialized, despite encouraging reviews from the developmental runs.
Parnes has paid Hartford Stage $900,000. In its Dec. 1, 2025, complaint, the theater company said he still owes $458,000. Taccone — who directed all three tryouts of Kiss My Aztec! and is the former artistic director of Berkeley Rep — said it’s the creative team’s understanding that Parnes’ rights to the show have lapsed.
“Joey’s a good guy,” Taccone told Broadway Journal. “He championed the play from Berkeley Rep to La Jolla to Hartford. Obviously, he’s fallen on hard times, but we have to move forward.”
Taccone said he believes fundraising for new musicals has become more difficult as the failure rate increased and investors have become more risk averse. “A bunch of people have come up short raising money,” he said. “I suspect that the old wells that they used to go to have run dry.”
Litigation aside, Parnes is proceeding with new projects. Auditions are scheduled for Wednesday, Jan. 7, at Pearl Studios in New York for About Time, a revue of songs by David Shire and Richard Maltby Jr. (Big) that the nonprofit Goodspeed Musicals presented over the summer. Previews are set to begin Feb. 19 at the 145-seat Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater on the Upper West Side.