This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Brian Sedita: Hey everyone, welcome to Page to Stage.

[0:03] Mary Dina: A conversation with theater makers.

[0:04] Brian Sedita: We're your hosts.

[0:05] Mary Dina: That's Brian.

[0:06] Brian Sedita: And that's Mary.

[0:07] Mary Dina: Join us as we focus the spotlight back on the theater maker to uncover their process.

[0:12] Brian Sedita: We speak with folks in the industry that often aren't heard from, such as stage managers, producers, crew members, marketing professionals.

[0:19] Mary Dina: And everything in between.

[0:20] Brian Sedita: We hope you enjoy this episode.

[0:26] Daniel Kuney: Hi, my name is Daniel Kuney. I run KGM Theatrical. We're a Broadway and Off-Broadway and touring general management company.

[0:34] Daniel Kuney: And since the pandemic, we have also started tenglow.com, which is a video streaming platform for theater artists and those looking to hire theater artists.

[0:45] Mary Dina: I'd love to look at the role of a general manager. Could you walk us through the timeline of how a general manager is introduced to a project and how your role kind of moves throughout the life of the show?

[0:59] Daniel Kuney: Yeah, sure. So in general, your general manager is going to be one of the very first hires you make on a show. So if you're a commercial producer and you option the rights to a show, you probably have a lawyer at that point to help you go through the legal paperwork of optioning the show.

[1:14] Daniel Kuney: But then you actually need to figure out what's your business model. And that's where the general manager comes in. So we normally come on very early on in the process.

[1:22] Daniel Kuney: And we help the very first exercise we do is we do a budget for the show. How much is it going to cost to mount the show? Is it a Broadway show or an Off-Broadway show or a tour? Is it a musical? Is it a play? What are the specifics of that production?

[1:35] Daniel Kuney: You know, how big is the cast? Are there any stars in the cast? How big do you want the physical production to be? So we help the producers figure out how much the show is going to cost, how much they're going to need to raise from their investors.

[1:47] Daniel Kuney: Because we're commercial, I'm a commercial general manager. So we work, every one of our shows is essentially a startup. And we're helping the producers create this startup and craft it from the very beginning.

[1:59] Mary Dina: We have so many questions about all those little specific things that you just mentioned are a part of the process. I'm wondering how do you get hired as a general manager? How do you form those relationships with producers?

[2:10] Mary Dina: And what is that process like of sitting down with a producer and explaining how you are going to efficiently run their production for them?

[2:19] Daniel Kuney: Such a great question. You know, like everything else, I think it's largely networking, it's experience, it's your credits.

[2:35] Daniel Kuney: But you know, take the meetings, get in front of people. I've certainly, you know, I when I was building my business, you know, I was mostly taking people out on coffee dates or meeting them in their office and introducing myself.

[2:49] Daniel Kuney: Now, more or less, you know, it was pre-pandemic, you know, before we the shutdown, we had started to get to the point where we had a record at that point. We had success.

[2:59] Daniel Kuney: You know, we had managed Heathers and Rock of Ages and Slava's Snow Show. So people came to us because of our specific experience, Puffs being one of them.

[3:09] Daniel Kuney: You know, we've kept a lot of Off-Broadway shows running for a very long time. It's very hard to make an Off-Broadway show work.

[3:17] Daniel Kuney: So I think to some extent we were getting the reputation as the firm that knew how to do that. But you know, before there was a reputation, it was about the networking.

[3:28] Mary Dina: What did your team look like in the beginning when you first started your company? And how did you figure out when it was right to bring on more people to your team so that you could efficiently run the office and these productions?

[3:42] Daniel Kuney: Oh, I love these questions. Because what you're really driving at here is that building any business is it's a startup, right? And so we're balancing cash flow and money coming in, and you know, when you're gonna be ready to build up your office.

[3:58] Daniel Kuney: So I love these kinds of conversations because it's not just about theater, it's really about you could be creating an app and dealing with the same pain points.

[4:04] Daniel Kuney: I think what's interesting for where I was in the business, you know, my firm was a startup for a while until we weren't, and then my firm helps other startups start up.

[4:18] Mary Dina: So it was very meta. How are you looking to diversify your client roster?

[4:24] Daniel Kuney: What I always tell potential clients when they're choosing a general manager, and I think the same works in reverse when the general manager is deciding whether to take on a certain client, is you know, it doesn't matter what general manager you hire, if we're all pretty competent, we're all gonna come to pretty much the same budget, right?

[4:41] Daniel Kuney: The contracts are all gonna look pretty much the same. There's so much that's standard. We know we'd like to think every time we direct or do a new director contract, we're reinventing the wheel, and you know, that a couple royalty points here or there that you know one general manager is gonna do better than the other.

[4:57] Daniel Kuney: It's all gonna land in roughly the same place. It's really about who you want to work with at the end of the day.

[5:03] Daniel Kuney: And especially I think as we're all reevaluating our lives during the shutdown, I think we're all sort of thinking, you know, who is the person I want by my side? Who are the clients we want to take on?

[5:11] Daniel Kuney: And the same is true for the people who want to hire us, you know, like am I the person? Is my staff the people that you want to guide you? And it's just about fit at the end of the day.

[5:22] Mary Dina: Speaking of staff, so when did you how many? How many back to my question? How many people do you have working for you? And when did you feel it was right to build your team?

[5:32] Daniel Kuney: Yeah, you know, there's that expression that sort of circulates around startup culture, hire when it hurts. I think that's pretty apt.

[5:37] Daniel Kuney: I always hired right before I was fully comfortable hiring. You know, I could sort of see that we were all getting a little bogged down.

[5:47] Daniel Kuney: You know, look, the company started in my apartment on the Upper West Side, living room central. We slowly built out the team as we were getting more clients, as I could tell that, you know, somebody on the staff was getting overworked or needed a little bit more relief.

[6:03] Daniel Kuney: Or interestingly, if somebody had a skill set that I thought, oh, you know, that's something that this person should really focus on, and I'm making this up a little bit, you know, accounting.

[6:13] Daniel Kuney: This person can really walk our clients through the accounting side of the work. This person is really good at budgeting, this person is really good at contracting and negotiations.

[6:23] Daniel Kuney: But yeah, I mean, we had, I think, about 12 to 15 people, depending on how you're counting, right before the shutdown. Now we're, you know, we're a little bit all dispersed, sort of waiting for the world to come back on.

[6:34] Daniel Kuney: But yeah, went from my living room to a full staff in Times Square.

[6:38] Mary Dina: So then when you do get hired for a production, what are the next steps in building a budget?

[6:45] Daniel Kuney: So I always like to say that some people come to us with a budget number in mind, and some people come to us with the vision for the production first.

[6:55] Daniel Kuney: And so a budget can actually start in one of those two places, but it kind of has to start from one of those.

[7:02] Daniel Kuney: So, what do I mean by that? Let's say you want to produce Titanic the musical on Broadway, and you come to me and you're like, all right, Daniel, I want to do Titanic, it's got a star, Denzel Washington, Tom Cruise, Viola Davis, and I want the ship to sink in 500 gallons of water eight times a week.

[7:25] Daniel Kuney: That's the vision, right? That's a pretty clear vision. I'm like, all right, like A-list, Hollywood talent, you know, they're $50,000 a week plus a piece of the back end, 500 gallons of water on a Broadway stage, that's a very expensive trick plus a lot of insurance.

[7:42] Daniel Kuney: I can take a vision and put a number to it. Or someone can come to me and say Daniel, I'm so passionate about Titanic, I've got to tell this story on Broadway. I've got 10 million. What can I do for 10 million?

[7:55] Daniel Kuney: And I can also back into it like that. I'm like, all right, you know, you're probably not hiring Denzel. Probably not going to happen.

[8:04] Daniel Kuney: There's probably not a water effect, but maybe there's a projection of a ship sinking. And so I can help a producer take a cost and a passion for something and find the vision and the path forward for it.

[8:20] Daniel Kuney: The thing that tends to happen when we do a budget and I'm sure this is, you know, if you want to remodel your home or redo your kitchen, it's always more expensive than people want it to be.

[8:31] Daniel Kuney: You know they get the numbers and are like that is that's crazy. Props very contentious topic of conversation between designers, general managers and producers.

[8:40] Daniel Kuney: And I think there's this sense that props should be pretty cheap, right? Oh, it's just make it up, you know, a water bottle. Like I can send an intern down to you know some dollar store and buy the water bottle.

[8:57] Daniel Kuney: But chances are the water bottle actually has to function in a certain way eight times a week. It has to have some sort of stamina to it.

[9:05] Daniel Kuney: It may need actual water in it, it may need a certain amount of heft in it, maybe they're dancing with the water bottle.

[9:12] Daniel Kuney: Very quickly, you need an artisan to come in and if not craft a new water bottle, you know, make that water bottle perform the way it needs to perform in the show.

[9:24] Daniel Kuney: And that artisan is a real human being who has spent time crafting their art, the art of props making.

[9:33] Daniel Kuney: And, you know, maybe not only do you need the human artisan to make that prop, but that one prop isn't gonna last eight times a week.

[9:42] Daniel Kuney: You may think it's gonna last, but it may not last eight times a week. You know, something that we do hear a lot is you know, why can't we just get an intern for this?

[9:45] Daniel Kuney: Why can't we just hire someone at NYU to make this? And you can't at the end of the day, like it is a skill.

[9:58] Daniel Kuney: And you know, when you're working in commercial theater, you have to pay for that skill. The audience won't forgive you if you don't.

[10:06] Daniel Kuney: And especially first-time producers who I love to work with, are very shocked at the cost of budgets and how much it actually costs.

[10:13] Daniel Kuney: And one thing I always say to them, you know, you can do a show for $50,000. I don't know how to do that show. It is possible.

[10:21] Daniel Kuney: We know college students all across the country are doing it every single weekend pre-pandemic. That is a feasibility, but it's because they're willing to construct the costumes in their bathroom.

[10:35] Daniel Kuney: They are willing to raid their closets. Um, and that's fantastic. But if you option the right to do a show Off-Broadway, you're not gonna have that kind of buy-in.

[10:47] Daniel Kuney: You know, these are people you're hiring. They're your staff, they're your employees. You have to treat them with respect.

[10:52] Daniel Kuney: So, you know, people say, like, but like I know shows can cost 50. Yes, they can cost. You can do a show, rent a theater, rent a space, and do it for $50,000 next weekend.

[11:03] Daniel Kuney: It's not an Off-Broadway show, it's not a Broadway show.

[11:05] Mary Dina: Okay, so on the same topic of budget, so on KGM's website, you say that KGM helps clients create award-winning theatrical productions that are both financially profitable and artistically groundbreaking.

[11:18] Mary Dina: So I'm wondering if there are any secrets, I guess, to creating a budget so that the show is in the black and is and recoups.

[11:27] Daniel Kuney: Yeah, I think the secret is listening to the creative team. You know, what's great about our process is that you have a creative team who comes, they're passionate about executing something in a certain way, but at the same time, they want the show to run.

[11:46] Daniel Kuney: And so when you can really engage everybody in the process, you know, I think sometimes there's this misconception that it's management against the creative team.

[11:53] Daniel Kuney: Oh, it's the management, they're blocking us, they're not giving us the funds. But when we work together, we can actually solve some really interesting problems.

[12:01] Daniel Kuney: And then when you go to a creative team and you say, look, you know, we think we're gonna make, you know, $500,000 a week. The show's currently coming in at $600,000 a week.

[12:12] Daniel Kuney: Let's find the moments that are really important. We'll execute on those. And the moments that, you know, we would have been nice to have, maybe we can call those back. But when we all work together, we can create a financial product that is financially smart and well executed and artistically well executed.

[12:32] Daniel Kuney: I'm wondering if you can speak to the, you know, because everybody is always wondering when shows recoup. And sometimes shows go public with their recoupment rates and some don't. They do say that the typical rate of recoupment on Broadway for Broadway musicals is 20%. I'm wondering if you could say the same for off-Broadway with your experience. If I had to guess, it's probably less off-Broadway. You know, when I started in the business, there were very successful off-Broadway shows. In fact, like people would go see commercial off-Broadway, as I would sort of say a badge of pride. Like, oh, I, you know, it's sort of like you might hear somebody say, oh, you know, I don't watch HBO, I watch PBS, right?

I think like that was sort of something people said, you know, oh, I don't go see the big musicals. I see the latest X show off-Broadway. There were plays that were profitable off-Broadway once upon a time. Wit was a commercial production or transfer to a commercial production off-Broadway. How I Learned to Drive was a commercial production off-Broadway. You see that less and less these days. So I do think there are less shows that recoup off-Broadway. So of course, you know, once a show is closed, there are still other ways that the producers can still make money off of it. And of course, the writers. I'm wondering, are those conversations about, you know, if the statistics are as staggering as you suggest with not recouping their money off-Broadway?

Of course, a lot of times shows want to go to Broadway, go out for licensing to regional theaters, all that kind of stuff. Are those conversations a part of that initial production? Are you involved in those conversations in any way and to figure out a budget for that kind of thing as well? So like take all those things into consideration so that you know funds are still available for X, Y, and Z down the road.

[14:28] Daniel Kuney: So much to unpack there. The short answer is we don't budget for the future. You know, the money is so tight. When a producer goes out to raise funds, they're raising money for an LLC that has a very limited scope of what that LLC is telling their investors they're gonna take on. We are gonna raise money for an off-Broadway show in New York City. It tends not to be and gets a lot murkier. And I just have only seen it done in very unique circumstances. But it gets very hard to take someone's money and say, look, we're gonna raise $2 million, we're gonna spend 1.5 on the off-Broadway production, and then we're gonna have $500,000 left over for, you know, a Cincinnati production. It feels, I mean, to stick with your original quote of being a startup, it feels very much on brand with that.

Like when you would raise capital for, you know, a startup, or when you're raising or you're trying to, you know, get investors for an idea, you're really just sticking with the foundation. You're not thinking of like any kind of a future potential franchises.

[15:34] Daniel Kuney: Exactly. And for the most part, the way we structure the LLCs that run commercial theater is that each show is its own LLC. So if you are a big Broadway show and you're very successful and you go out on multiple tours, it's very likely that each tour is its own LLC. Or if they're gonna do it, you know, sometimes maybe the tour is roughly the same, so they capitalize that tour under one LLC. But almost every production is its own business that has to be separately funded and separately sustainable.

[16:07] Mary Dina: Well, that's so interesting. I mean, just to follow up question, I and I don't know if you've been involved in any capacity to this sense, but you talk about, you know, national tours like that. Are there is there one general manager for all those tours, or are they usually multiple general managers working for the umbrella company?

[16:28] Daniel Kuney: You would try to have the same general manager. I mean, you know, I've been working on Rock of Ages for close to 10 years now. And so we just have so much institutional knowledge of that show and what it needs to be successful. I would hope that the producers would only want to use us at this point.

[16:48] Mary Dina: Moving on to negotiations. So as a general manager, you're responsible for negotiating on behalf of the producers. So can you talk about the types of contracts that you're typically negotiating throughout the process of a show and who you're negotiating with?

[17:05] Daniel Kuney: Sure. So yes, you said it right. You know, I always like to tell people an actor has an agent that negotiates on behalf of them. We negotiate on behalf of the producer. I would say 90-95% of the negotiations that we enter into are with the actors or the creative's representative, an agent. But you know, everything is a deal, right? You know, we have to get lighting and sound into the theater. So we're negotiating with the vendors that supply that equipment on a deal. We have to secure a theater. So we're negotiating with the theater owner on the terms of that deal. There's a merch company, we're negotiating the terms of the merch. I mean, as you can imagine, with a startup, nothing is there until we start making every single deal.

[17:54] Mary Dina: How are you involved in or what are the differences in the way that you're involved versus the producer's lawyers? Or how are you working with them, I should say?

[18:02] Daniel Kuney: Oh, that's such a great question. So by and large, the way you would structure negotiations on a Broadway show is that the lawyer, the production counsel would do the initial contract for the author group. Because as we've sort of touched upon on this episode already, the author's contract is the thorniest. What's negotiated in that contract has repercussions for the investors, you know, potentially 40 years from now. And so it's a very lengthy, very complicated contract. And that's something normally production counsel does. General managers do, we would handle most of the creative team. So your designers, we hire all, we do the contracts for all of the performers, a lot of the staffing backstage.

It used to be general managers were the only ones that touch the director agreements, but as directors are starting to get involved earlier in the process and in the writing of the show and taking on an author role, I tend to do we tend to do a lot of director agreements in tandem. My office might take the lead on it, but production counsel is very much involved in a director agreement.

[19:20] Mary Dina: So in the instance where the producer and the writer are kind of working on something together from the, you know, from early stages, is it typical that they would bring a GM on at that point or would they bring a GM on first before anything really gets started because you're dealing with contracts and dealing with rights and that kind of thing?

[19:40] Daniel Kuney: Yeah, I mean, like I said, we are typically what the second hire on every show. If the production counsel's first, we're number two. And I always like to say the earlier the better. Because also we have relationships with regional theaters, we have relationships with road houses. We can really help craft a plan about how the show gets to New York. Which from the shows that we get involved with, that's the end goal. How do we get to New York? And so we also, because we're talking to the theater owners and we have a sense of what's on their schedule, what's on their roster, what they're trying to program for, we can help guide those conversations. Like, oh, you know, we think next season there's gonna be an opening or next season there's not gonna be an opening, but maybe we can try to go to Chicago first. So the earlier the better, we can really help make the most effective plan.

[20:30] Mary Dina: Yeah, we didn't even get into that, but that's such a good point of like, you know, there's only so many Broadway houses and there's only so many off-Broadway houses in New York. So if they're all filled up for this season and most of next season and the producer or the writer really want to get the show out in the next X amount of months, you probably have to get really creative with your options.

[20:51] Daniel Kuney: Because I'm even like the out-of-town try-out go to places, you know, there's only a handful that are really popular that people are gonna producers particularly we'll want to try to get to. I'm assuming.

[21:03] Daniel Kuney: Yeah. I mean, look, you've touched on, I think one of the biggest, I'm hesitating to say the word issues, but problems with commercial theater. There are 41 Broadway theaters and a lot of them are filled with shows that are not leaving anytime soon. Now depending on, you know, look, this is a commercial marketplace. So depending on where you fall in that equation, this is either the best thing in the world or a systemic problem that is forcing a lot of voices down and needs to be solved before there should be a future of commercial theater.

[21:44] Mary Dina: What are your thoughts on that? Like where do you stand on that spectrum?

[21:46] Daniel Kuney: I think there are voices that have stories to tell that are not getting the opportunity to tell those stories and it makes me sad for what gets on a Broadway stage.

[22:01] Mary Dina: Yeah. Yeah, I would agree with that. And a lot of the show, oh sorry, a lot of those theaters are also run by nonprofits too. So they're automatically taken out of the equation. So there's even less than 41 for a commercial production to actually come in and try and make way for themselves and of course the long running hits that are not going anywhere anytime soon. It's crazy to think that maybe there's only 20 or 22.

[22:23] Daniel Kuney: Yeah, I mean and look, you know, to be fair, you know, the long running hits are great for the industry, right? I mean people come to New York. They come to Broadway because of the long running shows. They're going to see another two on their trip.

[22:36] Mary Dina: Yeah. Yes, exactly.

[22:37] Daniel Kuney: So you know it's not totally binary. Oh, you know let's get rid of the long running shows. But I think it is pretty clear and you know, what's I think really wonderful right now about the reckoning that is happening all over the country, but in you know in our industry as well, is that we're really coming, we have to grapple with this fact that there are people out there with stories and they still can't get Broadway buildings. And that's a problem, and we really have to figure out how to address that.

[23:08] Mary Dina: I'm wondering what are some of the responsibilities you have as a general manager once the show has opened, and how does that, you know, alter things? And you know, as you keep going with the show, that's long running, especially like Rock of Ages has been out for quite a while.

[23:23] Daniel Kuney: Yeah, so I think to go back to our startup metaphor, it's you know, we are before production opens, we are trying to get a startup off the ground. Every single hire, every single contract, we have to staff up, we have to get ready, we have to build the sets, build the costumes, get it into the theater, open on a budget, advertise the show, market the show. And then once it's up and running, it becomes how do we maintain a business each week? And from a just a very simple way of looking at it, and I am oversimplifying, you know, how much money is coming in each week? Is that less or more than the amount that it costs to run the show? And you know, if more money is coming in than it costs to run the show, you're great. But if not, you have to take a step back and say, all right, if we're gonna make a go of this, what do we have to adjust here?

[24:11] Mary Dina: Sorry, would you say that you're spending less attention on the shows that have been running longer than particular shows that are you're just trying to get off the ground?

[24:22] Daniel Kuney: You know, think about Google, you know, the ultimate startup or Apple, right? Like they struggled for so long to figure out product market fit, they finally got there. Um, I don't think those people at the top are resting for one second. You know, I mean, at that point, you're an operation and you go into problems of having money. There's, I mean, I'd rather have that problem than not, but you suddenly there's money on the table. And so there's constantly things that you have to be asking, HR decisions, um, and something that I think we all need to do a better job of. You know, we're we all look so many of us. I came from a theater background. Uh, I think most people who get into the management side come from, you know, an arts training background.

We didn't really get trained to be HR um, you know, people, but we are. We're managing lives. And so um you suddenly become a corporation and responsible to human beings. And that is an awesome responsibility. Um awesome as in, you know, there's a gravity there, there's a heft there. And how do we make sure that the company's being taken care of week after week? And those questions get thornier the bigger and more successful you get.

[25:42] Daniel Kuney: See, when the pandemic first hit, I remember, or maybe it was maybe it was closer in the summer, where I was like, we probably doesn't really have an HR department. But I really I mean, then I started thinking, and you kind of just said it too, like I guess it really is the GM office, which also houses company managers. I mean, there are probably some things that a company manager wouldn't necessarily do that would be HR related, but I'm assuming maybe the GM off like you know, the GMs would would give it a lot of it. And I think there's a case to be made that maybe that's a mistake, a fundamental flaw in how we've decided to staff commercial productions. I think that's a good debate to have.

But yes, I mean, when New York State came out with the wage protection laws about five or seven years ago, that fell onto the GM offices to implement. Thankfully, you know, the world started being aware of sexual harassment in the entertainment industry and the Me Too movement. The sexual harassment policies and implementing that and getting people to sign off on that and going through, you know, when there is an issue, uh that also falls onto the GM office. And now that COVID is a thing, figuring out how to protect everyone backstage, protect the audience, that's falling on the GM office. A reasonable person might say, that's too much. You know, we need there needs to be an office out there that specializes in diversity and inclusion, and an office that you know handles more HR stuff.

Oh, so many of us, as I said, we're my training in college was singing and dancing and you know, the Meisner technique. We're all adapting and we're trying to do the very best that we can, but I think there's a case to be made that we're not doing a good enough job. And that maybe separating some of these things from the GM office would be a good thing as we try to create a more fair and equitable workplace.

[27:37] Mary Dina: Have you had any, I mean, pre-COVID, were you having or had you had any conversations around this idea with producers?

[27:45] Daniel Kuney: Yeah, I mean to some extent, yes. Um, but it's you know, it's so hard to change the business model um overnight. And so it's gonna be uh it's gonna have to be a big shift.

[27:58] Mary Dina: Yeah, well, the reason why I was asking was because I was I have a feeling that it probably will be more common in conversations with producers moving forward as we look to reopen, at least I hope so. Um maybe not with shows that are currently paused, but with any kind of future and new productions that are in coming up the pipeline.

[28:20] Daniel Kuney: One can only hope.

[28:23] Mary Dina: Um I wanted to talk a little bit about how to close a show, because I mean there are definitely standard questions or things that come to mind, at least on my end for a GM, but something that I never really thought to ask a GM is if there's any kind of protocol or as like you know, as a budget keeper, you know, um I imagine that a closing notice is not something that is a surprise to you, right? Because you're in the you're in the budget almost every day. You're understanding where what the grosses are, you know, if you're in the black or in the red and what that looks like. And so how far how far in advance are you aware that a show has the potential to close? And is there a long period of time where you have that information, or is it you know, three weeks?

[29:14] Daniel Kuney: Such a good question. Um, all right. So let's put aside the question of the limited run, right? Like you get a show with Julia Roberts, she's gonna be in the show for 16 weeks. Like there's a closing date from the time there was an opening date. Put that aside for a second. You're your commercial production, you want to be open-ended. When do you know? When do you start to get that spidey sense? I I would say for me at this point, it's pretty early on. The more difficult problem becomes, and this is where the role of a general manager can be a little bit like a therapist. I'm sort of the dispassionate third party here. I'm the hired gun. Um, I have another show coming down the pike. For a producer, this may have been the thing that they've been championing for a decade.

They have investors. A lot of money that is funding Broadway and off-Broadway shows is very personal money. It's not VC money. It's not like there's this venture capital firm that's funding all these shows. It's people's aunts and uncles and parents and college funds. Um getting producers to a place where they can see that the time has come is a very challenging, uh thorny process that requires, unfortunately, as someone who's dispassionate about it, uh, it requires a lot of patience.

[30:42] Daniel Kuney: And so I can see how that process. My goal is to try to get to the producer there as quickly as possible. Because again, we have humans on the line, right? If you post a closing notice with one week's notice, something went wrong. You probably saw that coming. And I'm not saying it there could be so many failures there. You know, was it that the general manager couldn't get the producer to that place? Was the general manager not engaging with those hard conversations? So much easier not to have hard conversations, not to tell someone that their baby is um not working the way they want it. Um but whenever I see a closing notice with one week's notice, there's a story there, and it's it's generally not a good one.

[31:28] Mary Dina: I love that answer. Just from my personal experience, I've seen a lot of company managers that then grow to become general managers, and then maybe not in that same trajectory, but parallel, even a lot of general managers go on to become producers. And so I'm curious if if A, if you've also seen that trend, and then B is it because that they're getting they're working very closely with that, with the with those people. So then that exposure and that education kind of it it makes sense to gradually move. Is there any is there any reason why that tends to be the case where company managers go to to be GMs and GMs go to be producers?

[32:11] Daniel Kuney: So many reasons. How much time do you have? Um let me try to answer as much as I can for you. Um if you want to be a commercial producer, I think there's no better job in the world for you than a company manager. You are literally cutting the checks. You're seeing where every penny is going. And you can really start to learn, oh, like this was a great, I'm so glad the producer decided to spend $10,000 a week on this. I can see that that's helping in the box office, or I can see that the physical therapy is um is keeping the cast happy backstage. I can see how the dollars and cents are having an impact on the show. Company manager, you've got a front row seat to that. It's the best seat in the house. Um, so that's why I I think uh uh many company managers can become producers, or if you want to be a producer, I think a company manager is a great position for you. I actually don't see a lot of company managers becoming general managers.

[33:06] Daniel Kuney: Um, most general managers are entrepreneurs, they're starting up their own shop. I I don't know if you guys ever watched um uh The Good Wife, but I actually would watch that show a lot. And it it was about a Chicago law firm, and the partners were always breaking up with one another and starting new law firms and stealing clients and then making up five years later and bringing all their clients back together and then breaking up again and I would watch it like that that's a little bit of sort of what happens with some of the offices backstage on you know in New York. You know, you've got to sort of have some hustle in you if you want to be a general manager. You've got to say all right I'm gonna be in charge of people's lives and their salaries and start my own business.

And not everyone has that in them. But another reason some people might graduate from like company manager to associate general manager which is more of a staff position than an equity position uh you know look the company manager lifestyle is hard uh especially on commercial theater you're reporting to an office four to five days a week you shouldn't be there 40 hours most are and you're going to the theater four to eight you know depending if you're have an assistant or not some people don't uh you could be at the theater at night uh eight times a week um that's a hard lifestyle and I think you see a lot of people in their 20s uh who can pull it off but they start to age out of that lifestyle pretty quickly.

[33:57] Mary Dina: Very interesting because I remember there really aren't like maybe I just wasn't looking at the like in the right places at the time but I just feel like there aren't even like college programs that are centered I mean I guess it would be arts management or arts admin would be that would be the closest um and then from there you'd get internships. But yeah I found that very fascinating that there wasn't like a man I guess yeah I guess it is management then I don't know. But I think that's a good idea. I mean I know Columbia has a program. But I don't know much about the um I don't know much about their producing program.

[35:07] Daniel Kuney: So to pivot to Tenglow, Tenglow, I'm sure has been a big pivot in your career since the pandemic, and so many people are uh using that word pivot lately because everybody's got one now. At what point, or can you actually just explain what Tenglow is?

[35:28] Daniel Kuney: Yeah, sure. So it's a total pandemic pivot. Had not thought about this a second before the shutdown, but started to think about it in April, just sort of sensing, oh, you know, there's probably a need here to do something that is streaming and and and theatrical. Um I m my wife gave birth to our son in May, so I was kind of taking some time off, but anyway around that time, and when I came back, you know, sort of surfaced, you know, in early summer, a lot of people seemed to be solving that problem, right? Like a lot of people also had that idea and were executing on it and and doing it quite well. But what I also observed was that a lot of the streaming platforms, if not all of the streaming platforms that were created for theater during that time, there was still a gatekeeping process.

Not just anybody could get their work on those platforms. And partly that was just a technological issue because I know the white label software that a lot of them were using because we looked at them, that that same software for Tenglow. And essentially they're great if you are trying to be a Netflix for so and so, if you're trying to be a Netflix for the theater, which I think a lot of them are, right?

[36:41] Daniel Kuney: They're subscription platforms, you pay them $7.99 a month. They're figuring out the content on there, they're curating the content on there, they're procuring the rights to get the content on there. Um they're Netflix for theater, which is great. I'm so glad that exists. Um, but what if you're an emerging artist? What if you're a composer that hasn't gotten past a gatekeeper yet, that hasn't had their chance? You're probably not gonna be on one of those platforms. So we wanted to do something from a technological level that was putting artists back in the driver's seat. So our big motto at Tenglo is that anyone anywhere in the world, any time of day, can create a profile and upload their work and share it with the world.

Um we're trying to solve the marketplace problem of theater, right? If you think of it as sort of buyers and sellers, uh I know that's a bit of a crude term, but go with me for a second here. You know, you have performers who are trying to get hired. You have composers who are trying to get their works optioned. Those are the sellers. They're trying to sell their talent or what they have. But then you have the buyers. You have producers, artistic directors, literary agents, casting directors who are trying to find those people. Can we aggregate all those people into one place? Can we have some curation over all of that? So our initial premise was really about bringing the buyers and sellers of the commercial marketplace together.

We've learned a lot in the last few months. I think we have some exciting new features coming. I think there's still a need for that marketplace, but I think there might be a need that's greater than that to help artists get paid for their work. And so that's sort of the next big problem that we're gonna try to solve.

[38:21] Mary Dina: Yeah, it really sounds like, and I do use like the Netflix model as an example, but it really sounds like what Tenglo is is more of like the YouTube channel for theater and for musical talent because the artist is really in control of what they're putting out there on this platform. And even to go further than that, it does seem that, you know, if you were to just go to YouTube to look up something, I mean, you're gonna get so many insane, you just can't find the right search criteria for most things. So it is nice to know that what you're gonna be looking at on Tenglo is um, while it's not curated, it is still put up there by people with aspirations to do something with their work or who are looking for collaboration in some sense, or it's definitely more like brand specific than just general search terms on YouTube.

[39:12] Daniel Kuney: Yes, and that was the initial problem we were trying to solve. You know, as someone who works with producers who are trying to find new work, it is very hard to go to YouTube and type in new musical, right? Like that's a term that makes so much sense in our world, but you feed that to YouTube and like you will get everything. And it's just you cannot find the work of composers that way. That was the initial problem that we were trying to solve. And I think we would to some extent we we solved that sort of well and we'll continue to work on that. But I think getting money into artists' hands is sort of the next interesting problem to us.

[39:48] Mary Dina: Yeah, I'm always so interested, uh, or I am I have been increasingly more interested in these COVID initiated projects of how you or how artists are going to take what they've done during the pandemic and either keep it going in in in the same fashion that they've been able to keep it going during the pandemic, or how they're going to transition or go back to their other jobs that they had before.

[40:34] Daniel Kuney: Yeah, I I'm a general manager first and foremost. I mean, I've spent my entire career building up to that. I love helping people produce their shows. I love trying to figure out the business challenge of how to make a commercial production successful. Uh I grew up loving live theater. Uh live theater for me is just so magical. And the fact that I just happen to stumble into some business skills that can help make live theater sustainable makes me really happy. It gives me a lot of purpose in life. So I'm never leaving that. I love what Tenglo does as well. You know, sometimes as a general manager, you know, I am the negotiator, right? Like I am the person negotiating the contract. And you know, it fills me with a certain sense of pride to get a good deal that works for everyone.

But there's something I'm finding very satisfying about the work of helping artists um get their work out there in the world with Tenglo. Um and so I we wrote a little bit about this on the site, but we we're our goal for Tenglo is to be a zebra company. You know, you talk about the unicorns, uh, the Ubers, the Googles that are really trying to sort of gobble up all of the money, all of the competition. Uh, but then there's these other companies, uh, and I didn't coin this term, um, but the zebra company, you know, they're just profitable enough. They provide a good service in the world, they make enough money to pay the people who are working on it, and that's good enough. And if Tenglo can be that, if we can be a valuable place for theater artists and we can keep the lights on, that would be great.

Uh, you know, still an open question, you know, hosting all these videos, uh, a lot of costs of bandwidth and servers. Um, we're hoping we can keep this going. Uh we hope we're providing a valuable service. But um we'll see. Stay tuned on that one.

[42:20] Mary Dina: I love that zebra term.

[42:23] Daniel Kuney: Yeah I've never heard of that before.

[42:24] Mary Dina: Please look it up.

[42:25] Daniel Kuney: I'm I want to um give the correct attribution for it but I'm just it it was these four women who wrote this article I think it was on Medium and I wish I knew their names offhand because they should get the credit for that. But Google um zebra company and it'll come up.

[42:42] Mary Dina: Do you want to jump into the lightning round?

[42:44] Daniel Kuney: Yeah let's do it.

[42:46] Mary Dina: Okay. Does this mean I need to think fast?

[42:48] Daniel Kuney: No no no you can think as we're just it's sorry. We just don't really respond. We probably should rephrase this little section. Essentially Brian and I it's not a conversation it's more of us asking questions and they're typically pretty direct questions. They're not like philosophical or anything like that.

[43:07] Brian Sedita: Please get as philosophical as you as you wish Mary kick us off.

[43:12] Mary Dina: Okay this is my favorite question. Uh what is one thing in the theater industry that confuses you I guess that's philosophical see the problem is you're asking a general manager. So my problem my my whole my my business is set up on helping people understand how the theater works from a commercial point of view. See I'm already failing at lightning round I'd get I'd flunk out of lightning school. There's so much we need to do that. I mean we talked a little bit about that before you know we we've got to find a better way to treat all of the humans on Broadway. And uh I know there's there's a lot of questions we're grappling with right now, but if we don't, um uh it's just something we have to do. It has to be our first priority as we all try to come back from COVID.

[44:04] Brian Sedita: What are three adjectives that describe your ideal working environment?

[44:09] Daniel Kuney: Quiet, focused, and calm.

[44:17] Mary Dina: Um is there something in your process that you find unique to you?

[44:21] Daniel Kuney: I think one thing that's been a little bit attributed to KGM is that we can be a little bit tech forward. Um I caution a little bit about that, because as I said before, it's all about the people at the end of the day. But we do tend to uh, and I guess it makes sense that I found at Tenglo, which is a tech website. Uh, but we do tend to be looking at um tools that Silicon Valley is using. Um I don't want to give us too much credit. I think we were using Slack before everyone else was using Slack. Um, and then we're the first office to get off of Slack, you know, two years ago when we were like, no, no, no, always on communication, not a good thing. Um, so we are always looking at the tools uh that we can be using to better run our business and run the business of Broadway shows. Um and I like to think like we're we're always a little, we're a step ahead of uh everyone else on that.

[45:14] Mary Dina: What is one job in the theater industry that you would trade jobs with for one week?

[45:19] Daniel Kuney: Only one week. Oh, I know the answer to this. I like desperately want to be a singer. I it's like a skill I do not have, I cannot hear pitch. Um my wife, every time I try to sing, she's like, Daniel, you gotta stop. Like, I cannot live with you like that. Um, I cannot sing, and I wish I had any musical ability.

[45:38] Mary Dina: That's amazing.

[45:39] Daniel Kuney: What is one hobby you have outside of theater?

[45:41] I like to run. And at one point in time I ran marathons very poorly. Uh, and I I'd like to get back into that.

[45:47] Mary Dina: Do you have any books or resources that you find helpful to you in your process?

[45:52] Daniel Kuney: So I read a lot about uh the tech world and startup culture. Um, you know, I tell everyone that comes to you know meet with us that the first website I read almost every morning is TechCrunch, but that's just my perspective, right? Like I love hearing how other startups operate. So that's why you hear me talk a lot about apps all the time. Um I find TechCrunch very helpful uh because I'm watching, I'm look I'm reading news about constantly how startups are failing and succeeding.

[46:22] Mary Dina: Amazing.

[46:23] Daniel Kuney: Um what is the first show you want to see when Broadway reopens?

[46:28] Daniel Kuney: I know what show I want to see, and it's gonna sound so self-serving, but you know what? You have a general manager on the program. Uh I I'm I've been working on a project for a couple years now called Burn for Born for This. It's the BB Wines musical. It had a couple of out-of-town productions. Um that deserves to be on Broadway. I want it to be on Broadway, and nothing would make me happier than that to be one of the very first shows that comes back after all of this. It's kind of a I yeah, I haven't really thought about this question in the sense of of course we don't know what's gonna be on the table when things reopen. Um, so I love when somebody uh brings up something that you know isn't confirmed for Broadway yet, um, but is hopeful of seeing it on Broadway when Broadway returns.

[47:15] Mary Dina: So thank you for that.

[47:16] Daniel Kuney: Of course.

[47:17] Mary Dina: Did I flunk lightning around?

[47:19] Daniel Kuney: You you know, yeah, you got like a C minus.

[47:22] Daniel Kuney: I think that's that's too generous.

[47:25] Mary Dina: So, where can our listeners find you?

[47:28] Daniel Kuney: On social websites, list it all.

[47:30] Daniel Kuney: Yeah, sure. So uh check us out, tenglo.com. Uh that's one zero gl o.com. By the way, can I just take a second? Like, if you're ever naming a company, uh make sure it's podcast friendly or radio friendly. Tenglo, like the worst name in the world. It'd be it makes sense when you see it, right? But like one zero glo.com. Uh just if you're for a f entrepreneurs out there, um podcasts are hot these days. So tenglo.com, kgmtheatrical.com, I'm on all the socials at Daniel Kuney.com and uh the occasional clubhouse.

[48:07] Mary Dina: Yeah.

[48:07] Daniel Kuney: How we first connected.

[48:09] Mary Dina: Thank you so much for uh joining us uh for this episode. We I really enjoyed it.

[48:13] Daniel Kuney: Guys, this was a real treat. Thanks so much for having me on.

[48:15] Mary Dina: Yay, awesome. Thank you.

[48:17] Brian Sedita: Thanks everyone for listening to this episode of Page To Stage. To keep up with us, you can find us on Instagram and Facebook at Page To Stage Podcast. And if you're enjoying these conversations, we would really appreciate it if you could take a couple minutes to rate and review us wherever you're listening to this podcast. Until next time. That's Brian.

[48:34] Mary Dina: That's Mary.

[48:35] Brian Sedita: We'll see you later.

[48:37] All: Bye.