This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:03] Hal Luftig: Hi everyone, this is Hal Luftig with my Broadway Podcast Network show, Broadway Biz, where every episode I will chat with my friends, some of the top theater professionals in the business, about the business of Broadway.

[0:25] Hal Luftig: You'll be a Broadway wiz. You'll learn to raise cash to open your smash. You'll be all the rage from the patron stage. In no time you'll know the business of show, the greatest job there is. So join our squad as we unplug our big Broadway.

[0:49] Hal Luftig: Let's get busy with the Broadway Biz. Stephen Lindsay and Brett Sirota are co-founders and partners of The Road Company, which is a theatrical booking agency. Some of their current shows are Wicked, The Band's Visit, The Prom, and many others. Today they'll be explaining exactly how they plan the tours for Broadway musicals on this episode of Broadway Biz.

[1:21] Hal Luftig: Hi guys, how are you?

[1:23] Stephen Lindsay: Hey.

[1:24] Brett Sirota: Doing all right.

[1:25] Stephen Lindsay: Yeah, hanging in there.

[1:27] Hal Luftig: That's all we can expect. Well, thank you for joining us today. I'm sure our listeners, you will enlighten a lot of people about your specialty in the theater business. So let's start with what is a tour booker.

[1:40] Brett Sirota: Well, it's always one of the hardest things to describe what you do, right? Especially to family members. So I'm gonna let Brett take this one.

[1:48] Stephen Lindsay: Oh, okay, great. Um, well, a tour booker, we work for a producer, or in some ways you could say we work for the show. Uh we represent these shows, Broadway shows, and other attractions. And our basic job, we're salespeople, we are distributors. We take these tours, we figure out which cities they'll go to in North America, we contact those markets, we uh try to sell them the show, and we hopefully make a deal, and then we follow up with all the paperwork and the contracts and the details about ticket pricing and all that stuff. And then we sort of hand it off, and this is a very overly simplistic view, but we hand it off to the producer and the general managers, and then they run the actual tour. We are not the tour managers in the sense of running the logistics of a tour. We set it up and hand it off. It tends to be a little more complicated than that, but that is the basic explanation.

[2:47] Brett Sirota: To add to that, the simplistic way of looking at what a booking agent does, it's not dissimilar to a musician or professional athlete that has an agent that represents their interests and negotiates on their behalf. You know, the same is for Broadway shows as entities.

[3:05] Hal Luftig: Okay, well, that's great because you know, I now we I even I understand. So I wanna like let's get specific for a second. So uh I have Kinky Boots and we decide the producers, Daryl Roth and I decide, oh we're gonna take this on a US tour. So we come to you as our booker and explain. So you then go around to all the different presenters in every city that can viably take us in terms of theater size, capacity, things like that.

[3:35] Stephen Lindsay: Right. And you then come back to us and say, here's your routing. You're gonna start in Boston with just an example. Start in Boston, you're gonna then go to Chicago, you're then gonna go to the next city. That's a pretty basic way of looking at it, uh, determining how many weeks through the presenters and creating a route. But it's more to that. I think before any of that happens, it's determining the viability of the actual title on the road, right? So Kinky Boots, for example, you know, was a very different tour before it won Best Musical. We looked at Kinky Boots originally as okay, it's doing this level of box office, it's incredibly successful. People love the show. This is perfect for the road.

During that time, we're, you know, pre-Tony's, we're talking to the presenters about you know the viability of a tour, how many weeks. I think at that point, most of the presenters were feeling that it was a subscription only. You know, this market like Tempe or Gammage Auditorium was a one-week market. Or Los Angeles at the time was a two-week market at the Pantages. Um when Kinky then won the Tony Award for Best Musical, it changed the parameters of how we were going to distribute that show. For instance, like LA became a four-week run as opposed to a two-week run. The Best Musical Tony absolutely has an impact on a touring show. There's no question. It's probably the one of the only Tony's that make a difference in the impact of the box office.

And sometimes with shows that are struggling, uh not Kinky Boots, but uh other type of shows, if you win the Best Musical, it enables a tour to happen. When you know, previous to that, if the box office wasn't strong, most of the road markets are determined by how New York does. I think that's fair to say.

[5:29] Hal Luftig: Let me do a deep dive here for a second. So uh are you saying when you say that Tony matters on the road, is that because the local presenters feel like their audience uh is very influenced by when a show comes in and they can say Tony Best Musical? Who determines what the ingredients are, if you will, to go from a two-week to a four-week?

[5:56] Brett Sirota: Well, here, I'll jump in here. Uh I would say when you win a Tony Award for Best Musical, it obviously has an impact on New York, or at least it usually does. And then that filters down through the community and the road becomes aware of the increased box office. There's also a good pressure that it brings to the markets who feel that they have an obligation to bring in the Best Musical. And as Stephen mentioned, that tends to be the only Tony award that has that dramatic an impact. But as he said, you can have a show that presenters might not have been so hot on booking, but if it wins Best Musical, they feel they have to do it because that's what their subscribers expect. Their Broadway series represents excellence, right?

And you know, one of the sort of I would say overused statements is you know, Broadway is the longest road in America, right? Um because everybody has a Broadway series, and there are you know, about 65 to 75 markets that have Broadway legitimate Broadway series that bring in equity shows. And again, there are markets that don't necessarily book the Best Musical because it's the Best Musical, they book it because it will make money. Broadway road tours are about satisfying your subscribers so the load in, you know, the 10,000 subscribers you have in X market will be satisfied and happy with the show. Um and there's an expectation that that show will do single tickets. Um and in many cases with some of the higher-end shows, you know, VIP tickets now that the IP tickets that whole dynamic is gonna change post-quarantine when theater comes back. But I think people book shows that make money very simply. It's crass I hate to say it but it's the truth. Follow the money.

[7:11] Hal Luftig: It's perfectly fine because this whole podcast is about how the commercial side of Broadway meets the artistic side. Could you walk us through what is the first step or what are the steps in mapping out a tour?

[8:10] Stephen Lindsay: I think it's fair to say that you know listen every producer that has a show and has spent the years and the time and the money behind their show thinks their show is Hamilton, right? Or their baby is the most beautiful baby and so it's always treated with kid gloves because you know we have a tremendous respect for the producers we work for and work with. We always tend to be conservative as bookers. Some other booking agents are not, but we try to be conservative. You can always come back so if we decide, okay, Hal, you bring us a show. All right, you're opening in New York, let's see what the box office looks like. Let's see how you do. But let's talk to the field about the viability of the title.

And sometimes that title is a movie title or a branded show, something that people already know. Um, or maybe it's an entirely new musical with a new title that road markets are less familiar with. We basically go and whatever the case is for that show, we take it to the local markets, the road markets, we talk about the viability of it, what they think it means if it were on their subscription or if it were off their subscription, and we sort of gather that information, that data, come to a conclusion, okay. This show might be like this show that we worked on 12 years ago or five years ago, and then we put together what's called a ghost route, where we sort of lay out our utopian route, which is pure fiction, but it's sort of that, you know, um it's sort of like Pinterest, right?

Where you're taking snapshots and pictures and you're pasting it together, and that represents our show, and we determine how many weeks that is by talking to the local promoters. We understand where we fit economically. You know, if they have five or six shows on their subscription, where do we fit in that? Do we need to be the economical slot? Are we the mid-range slot? Are we a mega? Right? I think there's a lot of variables to determine how viable a tour is and how many weeks, but it really is from the first stages a lot of guesswork. And in some ways, it's an art to in doing this. Um, if we were to pat ourselves on the back, it's kind of this, and somebody has to do the work, right? I think when local presenters talk to the producers and they have, and our business is so small, everybody has a relationship with everyone.

I think the booking agent tends to be a neutral voice or ear. And so where a producer could talk to presenters directly, they're not necessarily gonna get a true statement of how that market feels about that show in their market. I think people do respect the creatives, they respect the field, but the agent basically gets to the guts of things, I think, in some ways. You know, we're the truth serum of the business.

[11:10] Brett Sirota: So the idea that we would create this ghost route, determine the viability of it on the road, how many numbers the numbers of weeks, what the cost of the show is going to be, we then bring that ghost route to you, Hal, the producer, as a discussion point with our general manager to say, can we fit the needs of the creative and your idea of what this show needs to look like under these parameters? And that's sort of the starting, the big starting point that is sort of the you know, the big bang of any show's life on the road.

[11:44] Stephen Lindsay: And I'd like to also add, uh, as Steven alluded to, there's a lot of data out there, uh, tremendous amounts of data available, and that can inform a lot of what you do. But it really is an art. There really is a huge element of your gut and understanding the road, because uh it's not just what your show is. Your show could be exactly the same kind of show, do the same box office as another show three seasons ago did, but the rest of the road, the landscape you're going into could be completely different, and that could completely change the tour. A tour that you can get out one year might not have gone out two years later. You can't just look at data. And our business, the data pool that we have access to is not super deep.

You know, like there, there's there's not so many, there's not hundreds and hundreds of shows per year. There's a dozen, you know. So you don't have data that can be super reliable. You have to understand what else is going on on the road and where you fit in, in addition to lots of other variables.

[12:53] Brett Sirota: And might I add also, just uh when you say there's 12 shows, ultimately in each market, that's where it lands, about 10 to 12 shows in each market. But, and this is an example, pre-closing, right? Before the quarantine, there were 40 shows being offered for the current 2021 season. So not only do you know you create a work of fiction when we put together these tours, but we're also calculating how does that fit, you know, amongst the 40 other shows that are being offered on the road, right? So it's a tremendously competitive marketplace. It must get uh at some level, right?

[13:31] Hal Luftig: It must get a little frustrating for you guys. You have a show and you do believe in it, and it's doing okay in New York. But then you go out to your people on the road, and they're like, well, not so much, because this season we're gonna take blah, blah, blah, you know, X, Y, and Z. That must be that there must be some level of frustration to that, no?

[13:54] Stephen Lindsay: Absolutely. I mean, we live in a time where there are more mega musicals than ever before that come back year after year. So you've got Lion King and Wicked and Hamilton. Since those return and they come back, you have fewer slots available. So there was a time, five to ten years ago when you'd be booking a tour, and there might be one mega musical taking up a slot in the season, and the rest of it was open. It is not uncommon now to have two or three mega musicals already holding a spot in a season because there are so many of them and they keep coming back. So it's gotten more competitive. We don't know what the post-COVID marketplace looks like at this point. I can tell you from this point, from this taping, you know, the markets right now are looking at the shows that are more reliable, the mega musicals, and I'm not gonna mention any shows, but we know what they are, and the most branded product they can get their hands on because they know, you know, presumably if we open in the spring or fall of 21, that will be a recovery season.

And that season will consist of a limited number of new titles, but all but generally branded product that audiences and new audiences know, and a lot of carryover, you know, eight to ten months of rescheduled shows during COVID moving into the 21-22 season. The reopening of the road, and let alone Broadway is going to be a new world, right? It's the new theater distribution. We don't know exactly what that looks like. You know, we're very pleased to have shows that have meaning on the road, and our presenters, you know, are interested in those shows, and we're literally holding dates into that 21, 22 and 22, 23, and in some cases through twenty three-24 at this point. So it's wild.

[15:57] Hal Luftig: Yeah, it sounds like one big major, if you think of it as a highway, one big major log jam. The interesting piece to that is there's this log jam of the shows that are moving and the shows that have just opened. But I think we all expect then there could be a dearth of product from Broadway that might trickle down to the road in a few seasons. And but again, that can that's gonna benefit some tours. Some shows that might not have gone out will get out because there may not be as many new musicals. And then on the flip side, you know, New York, where Hal, you talk about the logjam. You know, the road has had a logjam with 40 plus titles every season for the past five or six years. New York theaters were like, you know, hitting the jackpot, right?

[16:44] Stephen Lindsay: Yeah, I mean, take whatever theater you can get. There was a log jam in New York where you had fully financed shows that couldn't get in. And all of that I think will change once we reopen. I think we don't necessarily have the tourists automatically, so we're gonna rely on our local folks on Broadway when we reopen, you know, assuming the borders open, people will come back to New York, but theaters will become available again, you know, for in the short term, one would think.

[17:14] Brett Sirota: But I'm a road guy, so I shouldn't speak on behalf of Broadway.

[17:17] Stephen Lindsay: No, I would agree with you on that. Logic would just say that not every show that was currently running before COVID won't be able to reopen because of financial considerations. And some of the shows that were circling for a theater may now not be viable. They may not have raised all their money and those kinds of things. So I think logic, you're probably right, just tells me there's gonna be a loosening of everything for a while. How long, who knows?

[17:48] Hal Luftig: But I want to get back to some things that you mentioned before about when you book a tour. So from what I hear, just like Broadway to get a theater, the road to get accepted by presenters, there needs to be a financial viability to the show. You know, it can't cost that much, you know, to run in a city that can't handle that kind of expense structure. So, what are some of the considerations or things that you would tell a producer like myself before we have to do with the show before it can even attempt to go out on the road?

[18:31] Stephen Lindsay: Well, one of the first things that I usually discuss with any new producer, like Hal, we don't, you know, we've had this discussion, you know, once, I think, and then we've worked on several shows together. But I think it's important that every producer understands that we don't know what your show is yet on the road. You may have a show that's working and it could be a hit and it's running in New York, and it's, you know, and people are embracing it, and you got, or you got great reviews and ticket sales are picking up, but you don't have much of an advance. I mean, we don't know what you are going to be on the road yet. And I think that's an important thing, you know, to remember when you know we're building these tours.

Every tour fits into some box on the road. Right? It's a pretty set configuration, the whole subscription model and you know, oh and we should talk about what the subscription model is too because some people might not understand what that is.

[19:37] Brett Sirota: Yes, please.

[19:38] Stephen Lindsay: Yes, please. So every market, and this is a new phenomenon meaning in the last several decades, it used to be that the road would go out on tour, any tour would go out on the road and you know you'd have this route, it'd be confirmed and everybody would go up on sale and it was generally single tickets. And what would happen is if the front end of the tour didn't sell well, the tour would cancel and you know, and that happened with a number of shows that when Brett and I first opened, you know, there were several shows that closed because either the show wasn't aesthetically good enough, and that happened with one I won't mention which one, or the show doesn't sell any tickets, so therefore the markets at the back end of the tour fall out.

So it was hard when that existed, it was hard to establish any kind of credibility for Broadway touring shows. I was it the 90s I guess, Brett? It was the 90s, right? Where pretty much guarantees were established. What a guarantee is is that the producer determines how much it costs running cost for them to build a tour for the road. They determine what the running costs and the amortization will be and what fees are associated with that. And the local presenter basically today has what's called a subscription package, where they've spent decades creating the trust with their patrons that the shows they put together are the best shows from Broadway or elsewhere, sometimes the West End. And they've managed to create a base of patrons who are willing to advance them $1,000, $1,500 for six shows per seat, similar to getting season tickets at a sports game.

The subscription model has become really the crown jewel of our business because we know that you could put the dancing monkey on stage, and if it's on subscription, it's gonna be loading in this number of subscribers of tickets and this dollar amount. So it's a really valuable and for conservative people like us, a valuable asset for road touring, something that, you know, Kinky Boots relied on.

[22:11] Brett Sirota: The subscription load-in is part of the box office once they say yes to the show, and then we determine what the splits are based on the financials, and hopefully your show sells a ton of single tickets above and beyond the subscription.

[22:26] Hal Luftig: Right. I was gonna ask that question. When you figure in what each city's subscription, as you call it load-in is, is there a consideration on our guesstimate on how many single tickets that particular city might sell for this show?

[22:43] Stephen Lindsay: I would say this is coming from, again, our conservative viewpoint. You know, if I was producing a tour, I would say to my producer, you should make sure this works if we sell no single tickets. If it works just on the guarantee. That's the ideal world, is that you can make money just on the guarantee because you can never, you just can't rely on single tickets. That said, we just know historically there are certain markets that are very strong that have truly cultivated their communities and beyond the subscriptions, and if for a good show, they're gonna sell tickets. And there are markets that we know just aren't as strong. But it really is, it continues to surprise us year after year. You have a tour, a show that might have gotten accolades that people loved, and it goes out on the road, and the single tickets just don't work against all expectations.

And likewise, a show that, you know, we may not even, we may not personally particularly like, and we've had plenty of those, but the American public wants that show and they love it and they buy tickets like crazy. So it's really hard to bank on it over and over again. We often do part of the process of all this with almost every tour we do is we sit down with our GM and our producer and we guess, we make guesses. Oh, I think this week we'll do 800,000, I think this week we'll do a million. Because that's such a part of the budgeting process for producers, and as they are creating these tours and getting investment and getting people to put money in the tours, they need that data. They need to know how things look for them.

We lay out the financials also based historically on what the ticket scales were, where we think that fits in with your show, you know, what the local expenses are. We have the histories of what other shows have come in that are similarly sized, and we do breakdowns. You know, this is where you can be based on, you know, 65%, 70, 80%. So we do a lot of sort of numbers and guesswork for and with our GMs and our producers.

[24:50] Brett Sirota: This is a great example of where the business side of the business marries the artistic side because I, as a producer, when I have to go to the creators or Jerry, or I'm sorry, you know, any director, I'm using Jerry Mitchell because we're talking about Kinky Boots. But when I have to, you know, go back and say, okay, we need to not have, you know, the shoes come out from beneath the deck, or we can't have a particular piece flying in as we do on Broadway. This that helps, right? If I can reduce the cost of what it costs to run that show every week on the road, that helps us become a more viable product. Yes?

[25:33] Stephen Lindsay: Absolutely, absolutely. 100%. And I'd even add to that and say something that I've seen even more of a push on in recent years is the load in, which is the period of time that the show is unloading their trucks and putting it into the theater and getting ready. It used to be very common for first run Broadway shows to have a two-day load in. They would arrive Monday morning, they would load in Monday and Tuesday, and first performance is Tuesday night. There's been a real push, and a lot of this is, and it's not necessarily even cutting back, it's just being more efficient and being smart about how the show is built. But doing a one-day load-in, it makes a huge difference. It reduces the labor bills locally and brings down the costs, makes it easier to hit profit on the engagement.

So that's been a big thing that I think has accelerated in recent years, in part due to the pressure because of the competitiveness, the guarantees have not necessarily risen at the same rate as costs have. So you've had to find economies, and that's a big economy that you can realize on the road.

[26:39] Brett Sirota: I would like to add, and this, and this is not about us, but it's more about how, because you, Hal, listeners need to know that when we did Kinky Boots and we had positioned our route and we decided that, you know, we just won Best Musical, Brett and I said, you know what? Now we can be priced at this. It's terrific. We should go out with this. And Hal said, no, no, no, no.

[27:03] Brett Sirota: We have to keep the economies in mind. And because I've had such a tremendous history and I'm grateful to the local markets, I want them, you know, I want it to be priced at this, as not a gift, but as recognition of what they've done for me in the past. And I just want to say that, Hal, because you're one of the only producers who allowed something like that to happen. And because of it, I think they worked harder on the show, you made more money with your producers, and I think the local markets made more money. I think it was a tremendous moment in touring. Thank you.

[27:45] Hal Luftig: Thank you for saying that. You know, to my listeners, this wasn't a prepped question. I swear they said that spontaneously. But thank you. It is the HAL show. So how did you get started in the touring and booking business? What was your trajectory to where you are today?

[28:12] Brett Sirota: Oh, wow. I can give you the 30-second or I can give you the 30-minute. Which one do you want?

[28:18] Hal Luftig: I think the 30.

[28:18] Brett Sirota: Let's compromise, you know, and say, how about a minute? I was a musician through my whole life, still am, but it's more therapy than professional now. I studied music and a similar field, but I thought I was going to be a jazz musician and went to work for Columbia Artists as an assistant. And you know, within again it created a path for me shortly after I was thrown, someone put a smoking jacket on. We went to Chipriani's and said, hey, you know what? You and your personality, you'd be a great agent. And I said, sure, what's that? Right? Because no one knows what it is to be an agent. It's not something you learn in school, it's not something that there's a course for it. Yes, there's music industry courses, but they don't really talk about being agents.

I was hooked, really from that point. And shortly after that, I threw a friend, I think it was my girlfriend met through on a plane, someone who was opening a new company, and that was a company called the Booking Office, which is now the booking group. You know, I was lucky enough to get a position with them for about six years from that point forward. I left that company and soon after with Brett, and Brett's part of this story, we created a business plan for The Road Company. Brett, how do you pick up from there?

[29:50] Stephen Lindsay: My trajectory was a little different. I was in law school, studying to be a lawyer, and about halfway through law school, I knew I didn't want to be a lawyer, but I finished it. I took and passed the New York State Bar and immediately knew I wanted to go back into theater. So from my college days, I had a lot of friends who were working in theater. And one friend of mine said, oh, you should talk to my other friend, you've met him before. He's got a company there, a booking agent, and I also didn't know what a booking agent was. I interviewed with them, and that was the Booking Office. And I got a job there. I think I started about a year after Steven. And that's where we met. And we were sort of the low guys on the totem pole there and bonded over our working relationship.

And then around then when Steven left, I left about six months or a year later. And we were naive and young enough at that point to say, hey, we could do that, we could start up a company, right? We know what to do. We had no shows, which in retrospect was completely foolish. But we started the company.

[31:00] Brett Sirota: But we were passionate. We were passionate. We were passionate. We had a lot of people who believed in us. We were able to raise some money from friends, from work colleagues, and we threw this together and it was, you know, in the early days we did not start with Broadway shows, but you know, over time we got there. So one of the greatest look backs to how is reading the original business plan, which it just leaves you in stitches, like, oh my god, and how wrong everything was, and how did anybody invest any money into this business plan? But in hindsight, you know, it was about following a passion.

[31:47] Stephen Lindsay: This was actually a plan that you gave to potential investors that not only explained what you were going to do and how you're gonna do it, but the cost factor, like how they were gonna make a profit on their investment, correct?

[32:01] Brett Sirota: Correct. Not unlike a show, right? I mean, literally, we opened a show. We made it up. That's why we make great agents. We bought one of these books, you know, business plans for dummies, something like that.

[32:17] Stephen Lindsay: We did, yeah.

[32:20] Brett Sirota: It was helpful. It actually got us through the process, and then that became part of the offering. We made up the structure of like how the company would make money and how we would distribute profits or losses, and because in the early first year and a half, there's necessarily a loss for any booking agency because of the time you have to book ahead. You know, we're booking stuff for two years from now. So when you first start a company, you start with no revenue until your tour starts. So we knew we would lose money, but there's value and loss. So that business plan and the offering laid out all that stuff, and that's how we convinced people.

[32:58] Stephen Lindsay: But let's add also part of that business plan, and this is probably good advice to any listeners if you're thinking about and you never want to open a booking agency, but any company for that matter. Some of our investors are actual presenters on the road. So knowing that we were going to be a road touring company, we knew that we needed to have some strategic investors to invest in us in hope that we'll have a foot in the door when we finally represent certain types of product that they'll favor us a little more than others and support us in that way. And that strategy worked for us.

[33:37] Hal Luftig: Well, clearly it did, because you guys are hugely successful at what you do. But I just want to take a moment and pause for our listeners and tell anyone who may be thinking of investing in a Broadway show, this is not poor Broadway show capitalizes and gets investors. We don't make stuff up and then go, oh, you know, years later, well, I guess we said that, but we did this. It's very regimented and very strictly followed by the attorney general. You're saying that the telling loses a story, and I'm thinking to myself, oh my god, I had no idea. And I used to give these guys my shows. What was I thinking?

[34:16] Brett Sirota: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And listen, we've graduated to relying more on data and truth too, Hal. So, you know, whatever that means.

[34:28] Hal Luftig: Do you guys remember what the first show was that you actually booked?

[34:32] Brett Sirota: Oh, sure. Definitely. It was, and we're tremendously proud of it. Late Night Catechism. We booked a one-woman show, a nun show. And just for some context too, when we opened, we had several themes and hooks in terms of why it was a good time to be an agent and to open an independent agency. Because at that point, there was a tremendous consolidation happening in our industry. That was like the late, not like 96, 97, 98, where SFX was buying every rock promoter in the country. You know, companies even on Broadway were merging and consolidating into larger organizations. Booking agencies were then gobbled up by these large entities. So we were really the only independent booking agency. And that was part of our pitch with the investors and getting shows.

So our first target was independent producers who weren't getting their fair share or representation from these larger agencies who also wanted to be producers. Part of it, I think the success of our company was because of the climate and the timing of it as well.

[35:48] Stephen Lindsay: You know, very quickly, Late Night Catechism, very quickly we started picking up smaller Broadway shows that other agencies would normally have passed on.

[35:58] Brett Sirota: Yeah, let me add to that, because one thing I'm very proud of in the early days when we were pitching this stuff, one thing that we I feel really pioneered with a lot of the PACs that we still work with was we brought them, we really we didn't have access to Broadway at that point. We weren't established. So we had these off-Broadway shows like Late Night Catechism. And the pitch that Steven would make to these presenters is hey, you have these Broadway series, you have your big space, I have this little show. Why don't you put this little show in your little space? Because a lot of these PACs have multiple theaters. And the pitch was put this little show in your little space and take your subscription.

And instead of doing one week in your big space, do three weeks in the small space. And that worked. And that's how we had our start. And Late Night Catechism was so successful. At one point, we had six simultaneous productions running. So one that one little show, and when we started, I think it cost 15,000 a week.

[37:00] Hal Luftig: Wow. That does sound really forethinking to tell a presenter, set a one week in your big theater where a small show like that would probably just get swallowed by the size of the auditorium to take three weeks and put it into a smaller space. That must have that was forethinking. Did you get any pushback on that?

[37:20] Brett Sirota: I'd say about half of the Broadway markets booked Late Night Catechism, and it was tremendously successful because again, it starts with the quality of the show, right? I mean, the show resonated, it worked, it had been running in Chicago for years. I mean, the creator Mary Pat Donovan was running it, and it was represented at the time by a producer that we had worked with in our previous live at our last the last company that we had worked with. And if you have 10,000 or 12,000 subscribers, the particular presenter has a 500 seater, you know you're sold out for three weeks if you put it on subscription. So we for the first time, I think for the first time, for many of these presenters, they were, you know, these unused spaces were finally being used not for two nights or three nights or rentals, but for three to five week runs.

And so shortly after that, we started pushing off-Broadway subscriptions in some of these markets, and that worked. And to this day, they still continue to do that. We started getting, we do less of those now, but because we have the bigger shows, it was incredibly viable because there were a limited number of shows touring, and when they needed a slot, we were always there to put another show into an alternate venue.

[38:42] Stephen Lindsay: That it's brilliant. I had no idea the genesis of that, but it's actually a brilliant idea. Not only has it survived, but it actually some of the New York theater companies now use that. They have, you know, some of them have several spaces, and they'll take a show that may not fit into their big house, and they'll do it, you know, at their smaller black box space. And it works. It works. It's a formula that works not only obviously on the road, but in New York City and I'm sure other cities where there are major resident theaters, regional theaters. And I think at the time for many of these presenters that traditionally only did Broadway, even to today, they continue to do small runs, smaller show runs in their smaller spaces. It provides a much more unique, intimate experience for their subscribers.

[39:35] Hal Luftig: Do you guys remember each of you what your first touring show that you saw was?

[39:42] Brett Sirota: I can't say with certainty, growing up in Baltimore, Maryland. Back then it was the Mechanic Theater, which was not a great theater, but I think it was probably a touring production of Fiddler, to be frank.

[39:54] Stephen Lindsay: Do you remember who was in it, Brett?

[39:56] Brett Sirota: Oh god, it's hard to rem I don't know. I'm not sure.

[39:59] Stephen Lindsay: What was yours, Steven?

[40:02] Stephen Lindsay: How could I ever forget like sitting on the aisle and that friggin' cat coming next to me at the Forest Theater in Philadelphia and blinking its eyes at me and scaring the bejesus out of me? It was Cats at the Forest Theater in Philadelphia. I was not a fan after. But I'm sure I heard the movies much better. I heard the movies much better, so I'll have to check that out sometime. So what happens when a show cannot get to its next city on time, whether it be a snowstorm or a mechanical failure?

[40:39] Brett Sirota: That's a good old force majeure most of the time. But that has certainly happened plenty. But it comes down to an analysis to that point. Is it a force majeure? Is it impossible to do the performance? And sometimes there can be some wrangling about that. But for instance, if there is a massive snowstorm in a city and the government declares a snow emergency and they don't allow people to drive around or something. So you can't do the performance. That's a force majeure. And what happens in that situation, the producer has to return the pro-rata portion of the guarantee that they've been paid. Um and both sides sort of lose whatever they had. You know, it's a each side eats their own costs, and you just have to, you know, lick your wounds and move forward.

But yeah, and if it's a longer run, you do have the benefit of you can have the cancellation, the canceled performance. People who had tickets can sometimes be put into later in the run. So we've seen that on a tour like Wicked, um, where if for some reason there's an ice storm, you can put people into week three because you have the inventory at that time. When it's a more successful show, successful market that there may not be inventory in a shorter run, that can be more challenging. That's generally how you deal with that sort of situation. It's not pleasant to deal with that. What I've been amazed to see over the years is how they do they figure it out. They find a way to do it, and you may be missing some of the scenery, you may be missing some of the costumes, but assuming it's not missing, even if it's missing an integral thing, they just do it.

Um they make the best of it and figure it out. It's always amazing to me how those of us who are back in the offices in New York or wherever, we have one way of viewing it. But when you get down in the trenches on the road, these people they get it done. And it's always, you know, we are dealing with the people who are going by the book and by the contract, and they're saying, oh, we can't do this and we can't load this in. But when you get out there in the reality, these stage hands and these pros, they figure out a way to get it done. I can't recall, I don't know if you can, Stephen, a time where something like you know, where it's not a complete disaster, like when we have had times where like a truck crashes and the set gets destroyed. But we've had experiences where they do the show with no costumes. As long as the audiences are aware of what has happened, right?

[43:17] Stephen Lindsay: And I know it, I know what show you're referring to. I think I mean it does rarely happen on the sort of the first class side, but I think with the non-union shows, and again, I agree with Brett. I think that these companies that go out on these road tours, God bless them. You know, I mean, they are they are like they are pros, they're good at what they do. We rarely hear about the bad stuff because they always sort of put on the show. It's about putting on a show. But when you get to the non-union shows, even though we know most of the buildings, now there are I earlier I said there are 70 to 75 major Broadway presenters, there's also another 250 smaller markets, you know, secondary, split week, or tertiary markets out there.

And most of our non-union shows, which you know sometimes play six cities in a week. You know, where the actors bus and the stage hands bust, but they cross each other in the night. They never see each other. We usually have an A B C configuration because a lot of these, you know, can't technically load in the three or four trucks that were touring. But the touring production companies that specialize in those type of tours, they know how to do this. I mean, it feels impossible, but it works. And you know, they figured out a way on those tours to load in eight hours every morning to put the show up at night. They load it out in four hours and they travel 300 miles to the next city.

[44:56] Brett Sirota: Yeah, I agree. It always amazes me of that statement the show must go on. Well, except in this current situation with COVID. But it always amazes me how people pull together it, they make shift, they do whatever they have to do to get that show on. Well, gentlemen, like all good things, the show must come to an end. But I'm I am so thankful for you being here. And well, well, before I let you go, um, we have what I call my rapid fire section. And I'm gonna ask each of you the three questions I'm gonna ask each of you. You're gonna have to answer separately. I ask that you don't overthink it. Hear the question, first thing that pops into your mind, okay? Um, and one of you is gonna have the advantage while the other one's answering. So I'm gonna start with you, Steven. Um, what is your favorite musical?

[45:48] Stephen Lindsay: Wicked.

[45:54] Brett Sirota: I was like, fair enough. And Brett, what's your favorite musical?

[45:58] Brett Sirota: The show that I loved, and it was not so much, it was the experience. Uh Spring Awakening, when it first came in, Steven and I didn't know anything about it. On a whim, we were like, let's go check out the matinee on Wednesday. We went in, we knew nothing about it, and it just blew us away. And we got so excited. We never represented it. We didn't get the show, but the experience was, you know, we usually know so much about the shows when we see them. We knew nothing, and it blew me away, and it always has stuck with me ever since I saw that one. Um, and if I can add to my original answer, if I were to say aesthetically, and if I were to overthink, um I did personally aesthetically musically love Once. The musical Once was, you know, is dear to my heart. It touched me personally, from that point of view. But Wicked as an overall experience is my favorite musical professionally, you know, in terms of how we've represented that show.

[47:01] Hal Luftig: Those were very, very thoughtful answers. Okay, and now I'm gonna start with you, Brett. What is the wackiest moment you've ever experienced in the theater?

[47:08] Brett Sirota: Oh um, wackiest moment, wackiest moment. I know what it is, Brett, for you.

[47:13] Stephen Lindsay: Okay, okay.

[47:14] Brett Sirota: You know what? I I don't know if this counts, but it's been working in the theater. Years ago, somehow, Stephen and I started to become known for at the various conferences, getting into various costumes or getting up and in front of the entire 800 members of the league and introducing something. And one of them, you will remember this was Kinky Boots. You referenced it earlier. For me, so having to dress up in silly costumes, whether it's the Kinky Boots or Steven and I dressing up as Rocky and Apollo when we represented Rocky. Listen, the listeners have to realize this is so out of character for Brett. We are very uncomfortable with with Steven and I, I especially we I do not like speaking in front of large groups and put on the Kinky Boots and do that. I mean, that was insane and terrifying. And I would qu I think it qualifies as wacky.

[48:11] Stephen Lindsay: Yeah, that does qualify as wacky. And so the follow-up to that question was stay with you for a second, Brett. So uh the lesson you learn from that would be uh twofold. Uh not to take myself too seriously, you know, to be comfortable with that, and uh and uh to push my limits, to push to push the limits of what you're comfortable with. I hate speaking, and I've done that and I survived. So yeah.

[48:40] Hal Luftig: You know, I'm really like moved by that answer, Brett. It's it's I mean, seriously. Okay, Steven, your turn. What is the wackiest moment you've ever experienced in the theater?

[48:52] Stephen Lindsay: Uh you know what? I hate to to repeat what Brett said, but Kinky Boots getting up in front of those boots, you know, was and and then walking up the stairs to the stage and the heel broke. Yes, I remember that was like terrifying for me. Up until that point, I wasn't nervous. We were joking backstage. We walked up there. I'm wearing boots with my boxer underwear and a suit up top. And you know, and the lights are on us, and it was just it I froze. I mean, it was terrifying. But like Brett said, we got through it, and you know, and we reassured ourselves afterwards. Were you okay? Was I okay? Were you we did okay, didn't we? We got through this. It's done, right? And just our community afterwards coming up, and you know, a pat on the back, a hug, uh, you know, a rez.

You know, you guys did great. It was it was those moments where it was like, oh, it's meaningful, right? We did it for our show, we did it for ourselves, you know, ha ha. And but, you know, everyone heard about it. So we put ourselves out there when we never expected to be put out there. So that was the that that is the wackiest thing to happen to me in theater.

[50:12] Stephen Lindsay: The lesson you learned from that Kinky Boots experience was well, it you know what it was? Uh it was to represent more shows like Kinky Boots. I mean, you know, uh the truth is that that moment made me realize, you know, here we are representing this show um that soon won Best Musical, and we were able to, you know, position in a way that our entire company was, you know, happy with each other, right? I mean, the route, the routing work, the communication was on. Like, I wanted to represent that experience to me was you know, by putting ourselves out there and and and even though we're booking agents and we're behind a desk and we're not involved necessarily in the creative aspect of it you know we were still backstage with Hal Jerry and Cindy laughing and just saying you know can I take home the boots?

Can I take them home? And I think you know that sort of collaboration you you invited us into that experience. And you know I decided after that that I I need to be part of that experience. And that led to uh this is a long-winded answer for rapid fire but that led to you Hal saying you know what we should make and invite every presenter on the road to wear these boots and they did the audience uh which were made up of a lot of presenters went crazy and then yeah from that came you know we should make the local presenter at the first performance they usually come out and make a little curtain speech at the first performance to thank the audience and to talk about fundraising and things like that but uh we said if they would wear the boots I would fly out to that city and wear them with them and give a little why it's important to support this local theater kind of speech and it was a ton of fun.

[52:14] Brett Sirota: Oh it was great it was so successful and it was hilarious and I think every presenter out there had the same experience that Brett and I did you know it was enlightening it was great it was terrific it was absurd it was great you know it it just it it was one of those things that stick out in my head. It's been wonderful sharing this hour or so with you.

[52:35] Hal Luftig: And your insights into this side of the business isn't valuable, and I'm sure our listeners will just love it. I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking the time of doing this. You guys are great at what you do, and you're great friends. So thank you and stay healthy. Stay safe.

[52:56] Brett Sirota: Thank you, Hal.

[52:57] Stephen Lindsay: Same to you, Hal.

[52:59] Brett Sirota: And thanks for including us on this. This was a real treat.

[53:03] Hal Luftig: Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Broadway Biz. If you have any questions about today's episode or the business of Broadway in general, let me know on Instagram at Broadway Biz Podcast or via email at BroadwayBiz at Halluftig.com. Be sure to follow me at Broadway Biz Podcast for updates on everything Broadway Biz, the business of Broadway. Broadway Biz is part of the Broadway Podcast Network. Huge thanks to Dory Berenstein, Alan Seals, and Brittany Bigelow. This has been produced by Dylan Marie Parent and Kevin Connor and edited by Derek Gunther. Our fabulous theme music is by Nell Benjamin and Lawrence O'Keefe. To learn more about Broadway Biz, visit BPN.fm slash BroadwayBiz.