The Bitch of Living!

I figured I should go back and give you a brief history lesson about my first year. What worked, what didn't. I WILL NOT go into all the drama of having a new person come in to a preexisting organization.  I have talked about it a little in previous posts.  Don't want to dwell in the past.  We have all moved on since then, although my dance card/party invites have become a little thinner.  Maybe one day after a glass of wine, or carafe I will spill, but this is not the place.  Maybe I can talk about it in generalities, like in "Gossip Girl"...  __ called me a ____ on Facebook and my Mother saw it on my newsfeed and said, "WHERE IN THE HELL ARE YOU WORKING???"  I think it is good for other Director's to hear how hard it is to take on a job like this.  BUT, nothing but positive energy!  Namaste!

In 2008 my Dad was very ill so I needed to come closer to home and be with him.  I took a job at an area Fine Arts Academy.  Over the several years there I grew more and more discontent.  A student of mine told me about a show coming up at a place Downtown called The Henegar Center. The show was "Follies" and I had always wanted to do it.  Little did I know that the Director was an old friend of mine, Joan Taddie.  I called and picked her brain about it and decided to audition.  That show opened many doors one of which lead me to my job as Artistic Director of The Henegar.  It is also the show where I met my love, Christine who played my wife Sally in the show.

There we are in rehearsal.  Amazing times.

From there I met Wendy Brandon who had literally helped bring the Henegar out of the muck and financial straights.  We hit it off instantly. She asked me my ideas about how the Henegar could change.  I told her straight away that she needed a leader, an Artistic Director.  Not imagining in one million years that it would ultimately be me.  She was just asking my advice.  She advertised, I applied and the rest is history.

That was in January, so I was still headlong into teaching, so I came in the afternoons and just watched and listened.  I also went back and researched all the past shows, how much they made, how much they spent, etc.  It wasn't until May that I started full time and before that they were asking me to pick a season for the 2013-2014 year.  WHAT?!?  Here are the little details I knew.  The Henegar is a 475 seat house in a 100 year old building.  It is one of 5 community theatres in a 50 miles radius.  And ticket sales were averaging 60% capacity overall for the entire season previous to me.

So this is what I decided to do.  Being downtown I was wondering where all those younger FIT people were doing before they went out to the bars on the weekend.  Why couldn't they come to the Henegar first?  It is a well known fact that many Theatres are struggling as your traditional theatre audiences are dying out.  My brilliant idea was this:  Let me throw as many different things on the wall and see what stuck!

This was the season:  Spring Awakening (AH!), Forever Plaid, The Sound of Music, Ain't Misbehavin', Monty Python's Spamalot and 9 to 5.  Okay, so I was trying to hit every single demo in the world and see which one's caught fire.  Here is the breakdown:

Spring Awakening:  First of all, what a risk to open a season with. But I knew in August I would still have the college age kids to cast.  Talk about a show that can completely divide an audience, but I knew that it would get word of mouth out there about us if we were willing to be all risky and risque and stuff.  :)  I could go on all day about this show.  It was the perfect cast.  The perfect time.  It was amazing.  And it sold out for the entire run. We even had to add performances. So, BOOM, new demographic.

"Spring Awakening" cast/crew/musicians on final performance and a promo shot.

Forever Plaid:  A great show, lousy time slot.  Lesson learned.  Plaid is becoming like Little Shop of Horrors.  They are amazing shows, but no one comes to them anymore.  I should have put the show upstairs in the black box.  For point of reference, it was the lowest selling show of my first season. So talk about going from one extreme to the other.  The show itself was super, but no one came.

The Sound of Music:  I don't think I need to explain why I put it on the season and why it was around the Christmas slot.  For better or worse, for a time reference, we opened the day after the Carrie Underwood version.  The show sold amazingly as it always does.  So I was back to not losing weight via stress.

Ain't Misbehavin':  Literally the crown jewel of the season.  AND WHO KNEW!  It had been done in the county about 20 years ago, but no one had touched it since.  I knew that the African American audiences in the area were in desperate need to showcase their talent and come out for a show that celebrated the music of Fats Waller.  And let me tell you, it blew the roof off the place.  Audiences came in DROVES to see it.  (It sold the best that year by far!)  New demographic. Boom.

My beautiful cast for "Ain't Misbehavin'"

Monty Python's Spamalot:  I saw the show on Broadway and LOVED it.  So silly.  Maybe I could get those FIT engineers and a younger demo in the theatre for this one.  And what I wasn't expecting was the numbers were huge, but the biggest ticket buyer for the show is the demographic that NEVER buys tickets.  Men, aged 21-35.  And the fans of that movie.  I was not expecting that.  It also had the most return ticket buyers of any show, they just kept coming back.  I had the most fun directing that show.  I still miss that cast to this day.

The Knights of the Round Table!

Then we closed with 9 to 5:  A show that I find very funny and very irreverent.  Like Addams Family, the version licensed is the tour version, which is tighter and more streamlined.  It is never going to win the Pulitzer, but I thought that Dolly would bring people in.  It sold okay.  Not what I was hoping.

"9 to 5" Office Shenanigans!

So after the first year I figured out what people really wanted to see and what people wouldn't come out for.  Overall it was a successful season, if I do say so myself and I learned a lot of lessons.  But the main thing it showed me is after I threw it all on the wall, I saw what stuck.  History lesson over, although I will probably spend more time talking about the specific shows that year.  More to come...