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[0:01] Lauren Van Hemert: Welcome to Beltline to Broadway’s!

[0:11] Lauren Van Hemert: Broadway, hooray!

[0:14] Lauren Van Hemert: Let's all tune in to Beltline to Broadway’s.

[0:19] Lauren Van Hemert: What do you say?

[0:22] Lauren Van Hemert: You could binge any day, listening to Beltline to Broadway’s.

[0:26] Lauren Van Hemert: So glad you're here!

[0:33] Lauren Van Hemert: Let's dive in!

[0:37] Lauren Van Hemert: This is the Beltline to Broadway’s podcast. I'm Lauren Van Hemert, your host, and on this episode, we are taking a field trip to New York City and the Museum of Broadway’s.

[0:50] Lauren Van Hemert: The museum was the brainchild of two good friends, Julie Boardman and Diane Nicoletti, who spent a year conceptualizing and whiteboarding what elements were integral to telling Broadway’s's story best. And that is where my conversation with Diane Nicoletti begins.

[1:15] Diane Nicoletti: What were the elements that were must-haves or must must include for you? Both from experiences of seeing other attractions as well as just the importance of education. We really wanted what eventually became the making of a Broadway’s show is showing all the behind the scenes roles, how you can have a career on Broadway’s, how a show gets made, and so that was really important for us to have as that component.

[1:44] Diane Nicoletti: David Rockwell, Faye Arm and Chancasso, and Nolan Doran worked on that exhibit. Um, and then the timeline of Broadway’s was very important, and how we went about the timeline of Broadway’s was in some ways it was easy, in some ways it was tricky. The thing that we ended up using the lens by which of helping people understand the timeline of Broadway’s was really the shows that changed the form, the shows that opened up our eyes to a new structure of the musicals, a new way of bringing in new audiences.

[2:24] Diane Nicoletti: And so that was an important piece. And so we worked really closely with our curators with Doug Reside over at the New York Public Library to help us identify what those shows are. And so Oklahoma, the first time that dance and music and the words are really sort of integrated together. Jerome Robins choreography and West Side Story, that obviously pushed boundaries. You've got Hair with all of like the social, cultural, political aspects of incorporating that into the show. So that was really important for us to do for the timeline.

[2:57] Diane Nicoletti: And then we both just really enjoyed the idea as our third component of the museum of the map room. And the reason why we like that was it's New York's history. So as real estate got cheaper, you know, the further north you went, that's how you know, sort of industries and you know, communities, etc. started being built, and you see that a lot just in any kind of urban development. Sometimes, like the cheaper real estate is where the art goes, right? Um, and so that's the history of New York is the everything started in the financial district, and then it migrated north to present day Times Square.

[3:35] Diane Nicoletti: So we do that with a four-minute video, and we've gotten a lot of great feedback on that because it gives you that great, like quick history lesson about New York and Broadway’s and how it came about.

[3:47] Lauren Van Hemert: I feel like the museum is very unique in that, and the only way I can say this is that it's Instagram working. I feel like that's you because you for people who don't know, you've planned events, everything from Game of Thrones to Frozen to Comic-Con. How did you take that expertise and really translate it to an immersive museum format, which is very unusual?

[4:22] Diane Nicoletti: Well, yeah, yes, my background is definitely fan experiences, experiential. Julie Boardman, the other co-founder also has experiential background as well. So she, whenever we would do these fan experiences, she would help staff them. Um, and so we just were we're very close that way, you know, like we were great partners already before we started working on the museum, and we always, whenever we would work events together, we observed what people actually interacted with, and that's why we have an interesting relationship even with technology is that there have been things that we've seen technology-wise that are in experiences, and no one does anything with them.

[5:02] Diane Nicoletti: They actually don't engage because it's not providing that joy or that extra value for them. And so we use technology in the museum, but we use it specifically for storytelling and making sure that it's a way that people are truly gonna interact with it and maybe learn something about the show or Broadway’s's history in general. So um, so yeah, it what it was that combination of over the years of observation of people love to take photos, people love to interact, they truly love to learn though, too.

[5:35] Diane Nicoletti: So I think if you can help educate people in a fun way, they get a lot more out of it because they're enjoying themselves as they're doing it. And so our big mission has always been you know, we want to educate, entertain, and inspire. And so we I think we've tried to like achieve that as much as possible with the museum and how we've structured it and how we go about um everything.

[5:59] Diane Nicoletti: I saw the sign out file, and it mentions the advocacy work. So talk to me about the advocacy work that the museum is doing to preserve and uh cook hold. It's a big task, and there's wonderful organizations out there that solely dedicate themselves to advocacy, so we're just doing one small part. But uh the arts advocacy in the front. We have this beautiful mural that was designed by Nika King, who's actually based in Atlanta, so Southern Girl, and we ask fans to just write to their Congress people, which we will then send on their behalf, um, as to why like the arts is important to them.

[6:39] Diane Nicoletti: Um, and you know, the arts is Broadway’s, the arts is theater, it can be more than that, obviously, but we're one aspect of that. But yeah, we're we're sitting in the studio space right now, and we do a lot of free programming that will bring in casts of different musicals. We'll we Reggie Gaines just came the other week from Bringing the Voice Bring of the Funk to talk to folks more about Broadway’s's history, specific topics. We did a lot around Women's History Month and Black History Month, and so it's just telling deeper stories that maybe we couldn't even tell, you know, upstairs in the museum because we're obviously limited on space.

[7:21] Diane Nicoletti: So we can dive in deeper to these topics, and that just furthers the education and the advocacy of the artists.

[7:28] Lauren Van Hemert: On your Instagram, I see that you are inspired most days by your husband, your children, art and New York. I'm a mom, and so it's it's a gentling act to balance the work family equilibrium. Where do you find that balance?

[7:48] Diane Nicoletti: It's it's my support system, it's my husband who is always like, I got you, like and but I'll get him like on the weekends when he's working his you know barbecue business. So it's it's a lot of like respect and give and take from that standpoint, and we have a lot of great friends that'll chip in, and you know, especially when we were in like the crunch mode of planning like the museum, and we were working 16 plus hour days. Like I wasn't seeing the kids, but once that was you know, once we launched, well I got to go back to a little bit of like a normal schedule. It of course we're still very busy, and there's a lot of demands, but I can be there for my kids for every play and activity that they have, which is great.

[8:34] Diane Nicoletti: Um, and that's really like that's really important to me. And so there are many times where I'll say no to something because they come first.

[8:43] Lauren Van Hemert: How old are they?

[8:44] Diane Nicoletti: So sure. Um, so they're eight, six, five, and two. Yeah, they're so I I had two children during the birthing of the Museum of Broadway’s. I have birthed two children of my own, too. I'm sure they've been here. Monty and Myra Jean, I've been they're my two oldest. They really love Broadway’s. And so they get enamored with the wickets and the Lion Kings, and I've taken them to Phantom, and so they really love theater.

[9:14] Diane Nicoletti: We have a small um the Count Basie Theater in uh in Redbank in New Jersey, and we have season tickets to like go see the show. We're seeing Guys and Dolls this weekend, like we go see the shows just to expose them to the arts, and so we do take them to a lot of museums too. So it's it's just that exposure, I think is really important for kids, and they get what they can get out of it at the time, right? So every single time I take them to a museum, it's interesting what they gravitate to, and like you said before, the photo ops are always you know, an important, an important thing, but the but the kids, especially in the museum really love going through, like in the company room, there's like a little almost like trapdoor that you can go through.

[10:01] Diane Nicoletti: So they love climbing through that, or the swing in Hair, or you know, posing with like the cabaret hats and and then seeing the cheetah and Lion King and getting to like push the buttons and like you know, play with the digital display on red. So there's just like a lot of little things that you know are great for young kids, and especially for middle school and high school kids that are theater kids, like you were talking about. It's we've had so many come back, you know, they want to keep coming back because they love it so much.

[10:33] Lauren Van Hemert: So what's been the biggest challenge of opening this palace of theater?

[10:41] Diane Nicoletti: There have been there have been challenges just along the way, and I think Julie and my partnership is really great because you know, if one of us needs to be uplifted, we lift that person up, you know, and so we've been able to support each other when we each have had different challenges in different ways because it was a true partnership. There were things that she was working on, there were things that I was working on, and then we would come together and brainstorm and you know collaborate on things that you know needed both of our approval, if you will, or both of our minds.

[11:12] Diane Nicoletti: Um, and so that's been like it's just been helpful for when those challenges arise. But I think that I think there were a bunch of challenges, but we were always able to like see them through and figure them out, and if we needed to pivot, we pivoted.

[11:29] Lauren Van Hemert: What's been the biggest surprise?

[11:33] Diane Nicoletti: Maybe not surpr well. Like the Broadway’s industry has really embraced us, and you know, anyone that has come through the Broadway’s industry has they given us you know accolades and and and um sort of really appreciated the structure of it for the casual fans that maybe only go see a Broadway’s show once a year, maybe not even once a year, maybe every couple years, they really also enjoy it. So you don't have to be that mega Broadway’s fan to to really enjoy the Museum of Broadway’s.

[12:20] Diane Nicoletti: So the fact that we just, everyone did enjoy themselves, we were able to, they really appreciated all the artifacts, like that we were able to meet sort of the expectation or the standard, I think wasn't surprised because then it sounds like at the same time it was, it was, it was really just, it was really nice. And it was very fulfilling and very um humbling that that was the reaction.

[12:50] Lauren Van Hemert: Do you have a favorite artifact?

[12:52] Diane Nicoletti: My favorite? Oh well, yes. My favorite artifact would be so in Ziegfeld Follies, um, we worked with at Disney Theatrical, and they loaned us two of their Ziegfeld Follies costumes from the early 1900s from the New Amsterdam Theater, and they're just, when you look at them, you don't believe that they're from the early 1900s. They're beautiful colors and in great condition, um, and they're just the beautiful works of art. I think a lot of people do just appreciate that craftsmanship, that mill work, the art that goes into the art of it.

[13:26] Lauren Van Hemert: When I was a little girl, I used to lock myself in my room and sing and dance and pretend I was in a Broadway’s show. And honestly, sitting down with Nicoletti and hearing her story, and then touring the museum gave me that same sense of childlike wonder. It truly reminded me why I love the theater so much and gave me such mad respect for the storytellers both on and off the stage.

[14:02] Lauren Van Hemert: The Museum of Broadway’s is now open. I'll put a link in the episode notes, and I highly recommend this experience to anyone wanting to learn more about the cultural history of New York City, whether you are a diehard theater fan or not. If you like what you've heard on this episode, please consider subscribing to this podcast. Follow us on social media, on Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok at Beltline to Broadway’s, or visit us online at www.beltlinetobroadway.org. Until next time, I'll see you at the theater.