This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Martín Acuña: Alright. So, today we have a new guest. A very special new guest. This is Dylan Kaplan.

[0:27] Dylan Kaplan: Hey, I am doing great. How are you?

[0:34] Martín Acuña: I am good. Everything has been good. How are you doing?

[0:41] Dylan Kaplan: I am like everybody else in the industry right now. Currently pretty jobless, but, you know, still sort of thriving, doing my own thing, working on trying to get Broadway back on its feet, working on protocols of how to reopen the theatre. So that's where I am right now.

[1:03] Martín Acuña: And can you tell us a little bit about your experience in New York? I know you're originally from Florida, but you're in New York not only working but also studying, right?

[1:15] Dylan Kaplan: Yeah, currently I am a master's student at NYU. I'm studying Performing Arts Administration in the Stein Hart School. Essentially what we learn is we get a broad overview of management of performing arts non-for-profit organizations. So we get to learn about the finance side, the development side, and we also get to learn about marketing and pretty much everything that goes into running a performing arts company. So it's a lot of fun. We also get to take classes at the business school. So we're learning very practical skills and we get to do two internships. My internship, my most recent internship over the summer was at Broadway on Demand. So during COVID, a company that I work at called Broadway on Demand formed.

We recently launched in June and since then it's been one heck of a roller coaster. I'm sort of pseudo still part of the company right now. I talk with the founder and I'm sort of helping him and helping with my original role, which was as the associate to the vice president of partnerships. And we were working on bringing in a lot of new material to the platform as it was just launching.

[2:54] Martín Acuña: That sounds so cool. So Broadway on Demand is this online platform, Netflix-like website where you find different shows, right? Not only pro shots, but also movies based on, and documentaries based on theatrical productions, right?

[3:11] Dylan Kaplan: Yeah. So Broadway on Demand, when it originally was formed, there was only one other Broadway company that had existed prior and it was called Broadway HD. Broadway HD had a lot of commercial theater and they liked taking prerecorded Broadway shows that had been done over the years. So they have productions of Gypsy, of Sweeney Todd, of Into the Woods. So they do all the prerecorded stuff. We were very much interested in every single other area that represents Broadway. So we're interested in the regional theaters, the community theaters, children's theater, pretty much anything that Broadway HD hadn't done, we wanted to have a platform to make it totally accessible to as many people as possible.

So it's come a long way. We have interviews, we have backstage tours. We recently just opened up this huge pro subscription where we are now including an educational element. So creating essentially a platform for drama school programs so that children all over the world who are learning theater and drama have an accessible tool to work with. It's a tool for teachers and for students to get the best professional training they possibly can. We thought that we could use real professionals in the field to teach these master classes. So that's where we are.

[5:10] Dylan Kaplan: That is something I've been thinking a lot about and how can we do the arts and specifically Broadway shows more accessible for people all over the world. I do think that Broadway On Demand and Broadway HD are revolutionizing the market, at least internationally. I've thought this also since Disney Plus launched Hamilton, the Hamilton pro shot. Because I remember a lot of friends of mine that weren't into musicals, that out of the blue started listening to Hamilton because it was going to be a pro shot, but never knew the background of the Broadway production. So I do think that gathering the educational stuff with children's stuff, with professional stuff in one site is a bet that is changing the market and is changing the industry right now.

[6:23] Martín Acuña: Do you know other projects that are coming up for Broadway On Demand?

[6:34] Dylan Kaplan: Currently I do not as I am sort of no longer an intern there so I don't really have an inside scoop as to what they're working on. But I do know what they were working on right before I left, which they've recently announced. Broadway On Demand has been trying so, so hard to promote the accessibility. So Broadway On Demand has a software called, I believe it's called ShowShare. It's either ShowShare or, yeah, it is ShowShare. ShowShare, which is a way for regional theaters all over the world to have a platform to put their show on. So let's say you're in Columbia, our production company could work together with you and you can record your own show in Columbia and we can put it on our platform so that other people in the world can see it.

So trying to make things as accessible as possible. There are already non-for-profit theaters that are trying to create through this same software, they want to create their own sort of Broadway On Demand. So what Broadway On Demand started as was a streaming platform to get non-for-profits on board and to get as much material on the platform. But what it seems to be becoming in recent weeks is companies like the ACT, the American Contemporary Theater in California, they're already asking Broadway On Demand to create a platform for that. So we're currently in the works now of building a platform for their non-for-profit, just for that, for their patrons. And so that they can have their own backstage stuff and innovative tools, which I don't think Broadway On Demand ever thought they would become when we just started off in June.

[8:42] Dylan Kaplan: Also, it's very phenomenal to really think how much innovation has come to the theater from this pandemic. I mean, you look at it, it's taken Broadway HD almost, I believe it's about seven or eight years to get to where it is. And Broadway On Demand has only been around for about four or five months now. So the growth that's happened over this pandemic is very wild. And it was a real amazing ride to be on while I was an intern there until September.

[9:22] Martín Acuña: Yeah, I do love the position that Broadway On Demand is having right now. And I didn't know about this new software they were using to gather a lot of shows, not only from regional theaters inside the United States, but people from anywhere in the world.

[9:47] Dylan Kaplan: Yeah, no, anyone in the world can use it. We recently got a show from Korea. Well, not recently, it was over the summer, but we broadcasted this show live that was in Korean, with different subtitles, like with English subtitles. And we had that on our platform, and it was entirely in Korean. It was Korean opera, I think. Yeah, so it's really open to anyone in the world. To go off of what you were saying, though, before about Hamilton, it really was a game changer, not just because it was Hamilton. I think if it had been any show, and it was being marketed with the amount of marketing that Disney had, it's just, and I can say this because I'm not part of Broadway On Demand anymore, the marketing of Disney is just incomparable.

There's no theater company that can market on the scale of Disney. Disney is a marketing giant. So the fact that they had purchased Hamilton, which was one of the, at least to this day and age, known as one of the greatest Broadway shows of the 21st century, that sort of was just icing on the cake for them. And now, Disney Plus actually is starting to have more Broadway content. They have the movie version of Singing in the Rain, I think, on there, as well as Music Man, and other movies that are musical movies. So Disney's coming a long way. It's only a matter of time until they put Lion King and their other musical productions on the platform. I think they're saving up for that, because they want to really get the full scale of their marketing when they really go musical on there.

[12:14] Dylan Kaplan: I wouldn't be surprised if Disney Plus eventually conquers Broadway and buys out Broadway HD or Broadway On Demand. I wouldn't be surprised either. I mean, it's something that we can see coming with the success that ProShots are having, or specifically Hamilton ProShot had when it was released. Well, it only makes sense, because Disney has to compete against Netflix. And a battle against Disney, Netflix has way more content. So Disney's going to need to go somewhere to get that content.

[12:29] Dylan Kaplan: And they will eventually see Broadway as a major asset in finding original new content that hasn't been shown on the screen or on TV prior. Well, my question is more or less, which I'm curious what you think, what do you believe is live entertainment? Because I worked for a streaming company, but almost no one in the company really thought that what they were doing was live entertainment. So we're sort of seeing this shift that Broadway, right now at least while it's streaming, is no longer really live anymore. I mean, they broadcast it as live streaming, but most of the time it's pre-recorded. For example, Hamilton was pre-recorded. They didn't perform that in a theater live one night and put that on the screen for the TV for everyone in the world to watch.

It was recorded years prior. So I'm just curious what you think where live entertainment is going right now. I actually ended my internship too in July. I was working also for a Colombian streaming company. And this is actually a really good question because I do still consider live entertainment or live performances, even if they are streamed, I do think that the live element is still important. Back in, I think it was early August or mid-August, I saw a live stream of a Mexican theater straight play and I bought the ticket and it was streamed from the theater in Mexico. They didn't have any audience besides the crew that was managing the cameras. That for me is live entertainment. But when it is a pro shot like Hamilton's that was recorded three or four years ago, that was recorded live, but it's not live entertainment right now.

Yeah. So the lines are getting very blurry. I think that theater critics in the future of an extremely hard time with this in performance studies and the academia world, I think they're going to look at this and not know really what's what because everything's, I think technology is blurring live entertainment now. I think that's interesting.

[15:37] Dylan Kaplan: Yeah. I also think about the live TV streaming, for example, for Grease or for Rent that happened a couple years ago. Yeah, NBC's live musicals. Yeah, those actually are live though because they happen in real time. They're put on TV and they literally move the actors from set to set in real time. It's kind of amazing. That is something that I think will or changed a lot of perspectives when they were released or when they were streamed. But they still have the live factor. They were streamed in a way that we knew that it was on real time. Something that doesn't happen with most of the pro shots because obviously in the pro shots we can listen to the audience clapping or laughing or whatever. But we know that that's a recording from years prior. I actually, when I saw this play live stream from Mexico, I actually enjoyed it a lot. I had a few problems with the internet connection that night, but it was fun for me knowing that the performers were strictly live.

[17:13] Martín Acuña: Yeah. So you asked me earlier, or I believe we discussed this, what my thoughts were for the reopening of Broadway.

[17:22] Dylan Kaplan: Yeah. Yeah. What's your point of view on Broadway reopening? I think that currently in New York, the mayor and the governor have declared that all theaters should not reopen at this time. But I don't understand why that is when everything else, even indoor dining is reopening. It actually, indoor dining reopened yesterday. You can go indoors now in New York and dine at 25% seating capacity if you're a restaurant, which for gigantic restaurants is a huge plus because they already are outdoors as well. So it's just more revenue for them. For theaters, I look at it the same way. I look at it as, yes, it's totally understandable that a thousand seat or 2000 seat venue could not house these people at this time because it would be unsafe for a mass amount of people.

I think though that theaters that have 100 to 200 people though, could reopen. And I'm seeing more and more that outdoor places like rooftops and parks, there are hundreds of people outside in these parks. And there are tons of people eating in outdoor restaurants that are not six feet apart from one another, but they're separated by glass. I think that the theater for the small theater companies, they need to figure out an extremely safe way to reopen or they're going to shut down because essentially Broadway right now is planning to reopen in January. But my inside scoop from professionals in the industry don't see Broadway opening until July. Like major, major Broadway theaters, like the Shubert's or the Nederlanders, the really big venues, they don't see themselves opening until July.

And a lot of the smaller theater venues don't see themselves opening until March or April. We recently heard on the news that the Met is completely canceling its entire opera series this year. And they're already planning for their 2021 season because they're just not even going to open this year. So companies like that, they have the money to stay afloat during the crisis. But these smaller theater companies, most of them don't have that financial cushion. So they're left in a very hard place because when the Broadway League is saying that theaters can't reopen and you have these small venues, it's very, very hard because eventually these theaters are going to come to a very hard spot where they're going to say, okay, I either need to listen to the unions or I need to go bankrupt and I need to close.

[20:43] Dylan Kaplan: So that's going to become a very hard time. I'm learning, I've created this on my spare time. I've worked together with Madison Square Garden to create sort of a blueprint on how to reopen the theaters because I've done extensive research on how Korea is doing it, how England is doing it. Madison Square Garden helped me form a blueprint on how smaller venues can do it. And I essentially took their model, which was a stadium, and I scaled it down to a hundred seat theater. And the principles still apply. I don't believe that concessions should exist in the theater until this COVID thing is over because I don't believe that people should have any reason to take their mask off when they're indoors.

I think that for indoor entertainment, you should do as little required actions that would require you to use your hands as possible. Essentially, you want to create a venue that's pretty contactless. So you want to make sure that your tickets are digital, that you don't have to touch anything anymore. You want to make sure that your programs are digital and you want to make sure that your bathrooms are paperless. So when you're cleaning your hands, you're not using paper, you're simply just using some air tool instead. And keeping ushers in the theaters to make sure that people don't take their mask off because there will always be a dime a dozen few who want to break the rules and ruin it for everyone else and put everyone else's safety at hand.

So you need ushers who are always on standby to make sure that those who don't comply with the rules are taken out of the venue. And obviously to enter the venue, people will need to sign things saying that they will keep their mask on. And also like fill up a medical form that they haven't had any symptoms or whatever. I do think that would be a way. That's not going to be a problem in New York because it turns out that Governor Cuomo today has just released this app that will alert you if someone in close proximity to you has been tested for COVID recently or if they're positive. So I know we're making some serious tech innovations over here in New York, but now you can pretty much know whether or not you're COVID positive or not because there's an app that says if the person sitting next to you is positive or not.

So it's good. I mean, we're innovating, we're improving. The problem is that once these theaters close though, the small ones, it's so hard to reopen a theater business once you're bankrupt and you're done.

[24:03] Dylan Kaplan: Because every single theater company, at least what I've learned from my masters, a theater company takes about a year to two years to form. You have to go through a lot of paperwork, you have to go through a mission statement, you have to have a 990 form, you have to prove that you're a tax deductible business. There's a lot that goes into forming a non-for-profit. And for theaters, it's especially hard because all your money is coming in through investors and nobody's really investing in the theater right now because most theater is not open. The difference though is I predict that movies are going to get a lot of investment right now. I mean, that all the theater investors are going to go straight to the movie industry because they're going to...

[24:59] Dylan Kaplan: I think we're living in a society where everyone's at home. So you should definitely invest in a Netflix movie because everyone is home watching them right now. That's only because the theaters are closed. If the theaters were open, I would say go to the theater. Because nothing, in my opinion, nothing beats live entertainment. It's a different experience. There's a different psychology to being in a space. And for me, theater is not, everyone in the industry always says this, theater is storytelling. But for me, you live your day-to-day life as a person, and you have your story, and that's your life. You go to the theater, you look at entertainment to experience someone else's story. And when it's in a live entertainment space, like a Broadway theater or just any live theater, it's totally different than any other medium.

It's different than reading a book. It's different than watching a movie. You can't compare it. It's just, it's an entirely different experience because essentially it takes you to another world physically while you're sitting in a chair. And it's amazing. And nothing beats it. That's the magic of theater. And I think the most resilient industry across human history has been theater. The theater has gone through a pandemic before and survived somehow. Right now, we don't see how it will survive. We know it will, not how. And I do think that that magic of live theater experience you just said, it's what keeps us alive. It's what keeps me, for example, hoping and having the dream of going back into a Broadway house or going back into an off-Broadway house, a regional theater, a small theater, and have that type of experience that changes my life differently than a book or a movie.

Because I can reread it. I can re-watch it. But live theater is unique. It's a one-time experience. And each time you re-watch or you go back to a show, you will have a different experience. Maybe because the cast is not the same. Or maybe because the lead characters are not the same performers. Or maybe because the context on your life has changed so much that you will have another experience and see things through another point of view. So that magic of live theater is what I think is keeping all of us performers, producers, directors, everyone in the industry afloat, hoping that the pandemic will be over soon so we can go back to that type of entertainment. And it's interesting because we've got people working in the complete opposite world.

I'm talking to people now who are trying to figure out what the next big innovation is. I'm talking to creative technologists who are dealing with virtual reality and augmented reality and trying to see where is the theater going? What is the future of theater? And with a lot of talks in the United States, we're definitely shifting diversity. We want to hear stories that are more diverse now than ever before. It's probably the best time in all of Broadway's history to be diverse and be a person of color because your voice is starting to be heard finally. Granted, Broadway's mainly existed in the 1900s. So I mean, the whole world has come a long way since then. But now, everyone's voices are being heard and it's very inspiring.

So diversity is playing a very key element. And I'm seeing through the grapevine that a lot of creative technologists working with new innovative technologies and really starting to take Broadway to the 21st century. And I just happen to be one of those people. And I'm working right now on some very interesting projects. I'm trying to make AI composers a reality and trying to create collaborators for creative teams of Broadway shows so that in the future, it's not just a human voice that's in the room. You also have collaborative tools. For example, if you want to do a show and you want it to sound like George Gershwin's music, then why isn't there an AI of George Gershwin who can assist in the creation with a human composer and a human lyricist?

So sparking conversations of AI, I think, is going to be super essential. I think that my counterparts are leaning towards the screen as the answer. I am a different school of thought. I think that the future of theater is not going to be in the screen. I think the screen is a very good short-term answer while we're living in the iPhone age. But I think in the very distant future, I think you have to keep things, you have to keep them live. And even after this pandemic, I want to work on things that deal with keeping the stage still the stage, but also bringing it to the 21st century. For example, like having a hologram on stage. They already have holograms in the business world, in the medical world, in the branding world, starting to get that on stage as a tool for storytelling to not just be something that looks cool, but something that is essential to a story.

For example, if you are going to have a ghost on stage, why does the ghost have to be real? And exploring what a show would look like with a ghost as a hologram on stage and starting to deal with more surrealist themes. So those are just some little things. And yeah, I mean, I like the idea of Sleep No More. I like the idea of theater going to a place where, as you said, it is still magical, but I see it as becoming more interactive rather than the streaming answer, which is it becoming less interactive. So that's where I am right now in my artistic journey. And I don't know which way is the right way, but I know that one way or the other, the theater is going to get there because that's how the world evolves.

And I do think that is going to be one path that we can all take inside the industry. I mean, it would be just amazing to start using AI. And I mean, when you're just saying that, I was just imagining how cool it would be to have new technology applied to the theater and how that would improve not only musicals, but a lot of plays and it would enhance the experience. And it would be more than magical. And I was thinking about the Disney Entertainment Park in which they use the holograms in every single attraction and they're moving forward from changing the robots into the holograms. And I do think that is something that will change. It's going to be a vanguard and it's going to be groundbreaking for creative people and the teams that are going to be behind it.

And I do know for sure that you are going to lead that transformation because before recording this, we've talked a lot about how technology has had an important role, not only right now and in our industry, but in overall and the technology updates that we've had in the past couple months have been bigger than in other years and in other decades. And to end on that note, because my phone's on 2% and I'm nervous it's going to die. I wanted to say that it's up to you. It's up to you, the listeners on this podcast. Because the people that are listening to this, I know that the people that are listening to this at home are also artists and times are hard right now. And when times get rough, it is the best time to create and is the best time to be unconventional because there's going to be a huge transition of power in the live entertainment world.

And it is being totally shown right now in the United States that older generations are starting to let go of their power. And it is up for the young generation. It's their responsibility to make the transition a powerful one. You can't just take a role if a king is getting off of his throne. You must own the throne. You have to take what's been given to you and not just take it and be the same as the other person, but take it and grow it. So I think that the theater world more than ever, and I hope this to be true for streaming, that we begin to learn lessons of globalization and that we start to learn other cultures and begin to learn what we should have known for hundreds of years, which are other cultures' stories through their performing arts.

And I hope that we can see that through streaming and through this pandemic. And I hope that there is a light at the end of this tunnel. And we will for sure see that light. Dylan, thank you. This has been a wonderful, wonderful recording session. And I think that I will probably invite you back sometime.

[37:01] Dylan Kaplan: Wonderful. I would love to come on again. It would be my pleasure. So thank you so much, Martín. And thank you all for listening. Thank you for being here. It's been really amazing. And for everyone listening, I will leave Dylan's LinkedIn profile link. Go check him out. He's doing really amazing stuff. So see you in the next episode.