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[0:00] Ken Davenport: Hey everybody, if you haven't heard, we're having our first ever Producers Perspective Pro Super Conference. I'm super excited about it. It's Saturday, November 11th, and Sunday, November 12th of this coming year. Get all the information and register on the ProducersPerspective.com. I wanna be a producer with a hit show on Broadway. I wanna be a producer.

[0:26] Ken Davenport: Hello everybody. Welcome back to the Producer's Perspective podcast. Very special day today because we're debuting a brand new microphone. I know many of you out there are happy to literally hear that. I am Ken Davenport. I'll be your host today. Today we're gonna hear the perspective of a woman who has done it all in this business. General Managed, Produced, you name it. Please welcome to the podcast, Tony Award winner Nancy Gibbs. Welcome, Nancy.

[0:51] Nancy Gibbs: Thank you.

[0:51] Ken Davenport: So Nancy's one of the principals of 321 Management, the general managers of this season's War Paint, as well as a dozen plus other huge shows on Broadway, Next to Normal, Grease, Bring It On, Oh, Hello, and that little green show, Wicked. As a producer, she was behind the Tony Award-winning Fun Home, Peter and the Starcatcher, is on the Come From Away team, and many, many, many more. I've literally been doing this general managing and producing for like three decades now.

[1:20] Nancy Gibbs: The bio's out of date.

[1:22] Ken Davenport: And a ton of work off-Broadway, which I really want to get into. You're one of those few producers and managers who are really dedicated to that struggling patient, which I very much appreciate. You and I started on a similar path. I started as a company manager, general manager, producer. Tell me how you got into the biz. Where did it start?

[1:40] Nancy Gibbs: I actually went to, um, I taught graduate school for, I taught college for a year as a fill-in at the University of Northern Colorado, of all places. After I was done with that, I went to a non-union dinner theater in Greeley, Colorado, and met a group of people who were going to go to San Francisco to put on a show. So eight of us trekked to San Francisco and we did a show in a church off of Polk Street in 1976. After we did our show, which everybody did everything, and I acted and did the costumes and introduced it, basically. Once we finished our show, we all went to school at ACT for acting. That was the end of my acting career. That was way too intense for me.

[2:35] Nancy Gibbs: In order to make a living, I worked at a piano bar called the Curtain Call across from the Curran Theater in San Francisco. It's now the Starbucks. All the show people would go to that bar after the theater, and they would drink and drink until the bar closed. It was a very interesting time. The Civic Light Opera played the Curran Theater at that time. There's no way those musicals would ever fit in the Curran Theater now. In fact, I just was thinking of it recently because I just saw Pacific Overtures, and the first time I saw Pacific Overtures was at the Curran. A whole cast would come over to drink at the bar, close the bar down, and then we would all go to Chinatown to have Chinese food, and Mako, who was the original reciter because it was the original Broadway cast that played San Francisco, would order off the menu.

[3:31] Nancy Gibbs: My favorite story is a friend of mine was there one night and she said, "Show me how to use chopsticks," and Mako handed her a fork. So anyway, at the Curtain Call, I met my first theatrical manager, and he had me work box office at the Curran Theater. There was a sold-out show that Catherine Hepburn was starring in, and it was before credit cards for tickets, all orders were unpaid. So you took unpaid reservations for the entire house at the theater. I was a phone person and took orders and learned box office, and the treasurer was beginning to lose it a little bit. The manager there said, "Why don't you check for statement every night to make sure she's getting it right?" I met my first company manager, and I realized that you could be good in theater and good in math and be in the theater, and that was the way to go.

[4:23] Nancy Gibbs: The manager of that theater said, "Well, if you want to be a company manager, you need to go to New York." So I packed my trunk. In the meantime, I had met some folks playing at the Marines Memorial Theater in Vanities, in which Patricia Richardson was one of the understudies, and one of the stage managers said, "Well, you can stay with me. I live on West 73rd Street, so come on and stay with me when you get to New York." So I moved to New York with my trunk, and I worked at a bunch of jobs that I was just losing money on, including the Equity Library Theater and as a treasurer. I started talking to people and interviewing. I met with the management of the Wiz National Company. So my professional career started with the Wizard of Oz, and it's still important to my career. They basically said, "Can you be in Toronto next Thursday?"

[5:14] Nancy Gibbs: So I quit my day job and packed my suitcase, and sure enough, there was one of those giant storms where nothing moves in New York. I was stuck in New York for about five days before I was able to go to Toronto to be the assistant company manager for the Wiz National Company. I did that for eighteen months and then came back to New York, and I've been in New York ever since.

[5:30] Ken Davenport: It's so funny because I have a similar story getting one of those calls like, "Can you be in this city by tomorrow at three?" That kind of flexibility and the ability to say yes, I'll get there seems to start a lot of careers in this business because we don't know what we need to the last second.

[5:53] Nancy Gibbs: Right. In fact, most people when they interview for a job, I say when they say, "When do you want me to start?" You say, "Yesterday." And that's the way, and you have to be willing to just go with it and figure out whatever damage control you need to do in order to just move. Evidently, I was able to do that. I was out on that show for about eighteen months, came back, and I did a couple of short runs on Broadway, and then I got a job working for Albert Poland off-Broadway, first on Tom Foolery and then on Little Shop of Horrors.

[6:28] Nancy Gibbs: So that was the beginning of Little Shop was the beginning of working on long runs. I mean, we always say in our office that everybody opens and closes shows and does a great job at it, but we really understand how to keep a show running, which is not always easy, as you well know.

[6:47] Ken Davenport: So let's talk about that. What makes everyone think, "Oh, it's a long-running show, the art marks over, you can sit back and just coast it," right? Wicked, you can just ride it on into the Yellow Brick Road sunset. Now what's the...

[7:00] Nancy Gibbs: No, uh, basically because there's so many people involved with the show, there is a lot of maintenance that has to be done. You have constant, the union contracts change yearly, so everything changes that way. You just need to make sure that the show is not ignored and feels supported, both by an audience as well as backstage. I mean, it's fascinating to me, but actors, it's not enough to just have a paycheck. You need an audience and you need the producers or the managers to acknowledge you, and that's just part of what the business is about.

[7:40] Nancy Gibbs: So it's about, I mean, maintenance on Wicked right now. Not only does the physical production wear out when the show's been running for close to fifteen years, so you have to make major decisions about what to replace, when to replace it, how to replace it, but also we're very avid about keeping Wicked as one of the top grossing shows on Broadway. That takes a major marketing endeavor because so much of our industry these days makes Broadway a discount business. We work very hard to make sure that Wicked is not a discounted show, and that is not easy. There are only a few shows that are able to do that.

[8:20] Nancy Gibbs: More recently, but you know, we've kept it top of mind to keep people coming. So in order to keep people coming to the show, we have to increase the funnel. That's one of the things that we look at on Wicked is the marketing is very crucial.

[8:36] Ken Davenport: So if general managers have to do so many things, right? Some of what's described to me as part accountant, part lawyer, part babysitter, what is the thing you spend the most of your time on now?

[8:50] Nancy Gibbs: Well, in our management structure, we have three major people, and one of our partners is the upfront person who helps to get the jobs. We'll be in the interviews together, but seals the deal, does the major contracts, the theater, the author, the director. One partner is the day-to-day person, is the calendar and personnel casting. I basically say I back cleanup because I'm the financial manager. I'm basically the one that when I, you work with the budgets, but the real numbers, the way you keep running is do the what do the numbers say? I often say who controls the numbers controls the show. You can have everything else going for you, but if the numbers are out of control, you've got a problem.

[9:37] Ken Davenport: And has what you focus on from a daily basis most of focus on every day change from when you started? What's the big shift you've seen in how shows are managed from how we start to today?

[9:49] Nancy Gibbs: Well, when I started, the general managers off-Broadway, you literally did everything. There was no marketing director, there was no technical director. I started out at Little Shop where they were completely revamping the theater, and I would go at eleven o'clock in the morning where we would say hello to our seat people who were installing the seats, and at eleven o'clock at night I would be there when the theater people, because of course the theater people worked at night, you can't afford other vendors to work at night. We would basically do two shifts, two twelve-hour shifts. One was about the seats and one was about the set. We really had to be there at all times in order to figure out what was going on.

[10:34] Nancy Gibbs: The general managers did all of that, but I also worked on shows at that time that if it got a bad review, it closed before you made it through the week. I worked in one office, actually in this very building, and the producer had both an off-Broadway show and a Broadway show, and within a month they both closed in one night, and there was no closure, there was no notice, it was done because there wasn't a marketing person saying, "I can save this show, I can make it work."

[11:04] Ken Davenport: Oh, let just get me to the Tony's. So if only those marketing people write have the time.

[11:10] Nancy Gibbs: Yeah.

[11:10] Ken Davenport: Once in a while they are, but back then it was if you got panned, it was over. I mean, and there was no internet, so you did not have the word of the people. So you could say, oh yeah, the people love us. But if the critics didn't love you, that was it. And now we have a lot more people on shows, from marketing directors to technical supervisors, all these additional staffers. You sometimes think we've gotten too big.

[11:37] Nancy Gibbs: Yes, because I also find that people, they only feel like they only get their big break once, so they never say no to anybody. And so the budgets explode, and really any show that's really much over twelve million dollars, twelve to thirteen million dollars is gonna have a really difficult time paying back unless they're a mega hit. So it makes me very nervous when the numbers keep going up and up, which is partly a product of the personnel. And it's also just nobody says no. And I just think that a show sometimes, if we can simplify things and not throw everything technically at a show, it's better appreciated and will have a longer life. I don't know how to get Google to do that. But the shows that I love the most are the shows that I feel have a long tail that will reach people like me who grew up in Denver who will get there.

[12:43] Ken Davenport: So let's segue because you're obviously a very prolific producer as well, and as you hear, you already start to tell me what you look for. But interestingly enough, what I love about what you've produced is you just said you look for what has a long tail that will get to me in Denver, but you produce some pretty challenging stuff.

[13:02] Nancy Gibbs: Well, yes, I mean, in part it has, but you have to believe that it can have that long life. And actually, Fun Home, the licensing for Fun Home is doing very, very well. We're really thrilled, and we learned with both Peter and the Starcatcher and Fun Home that once you close your Broadway run and you go on the road, the subsidiary rights really begin to go because people know the show. I mean, we're very insular and isolated on Broadway, and we think everybody in the country knows what we're doing, and they really don't. And so I think it's really important that if a show can afford to go on the road, that will help their subsidiary life for a very long time. So there is a significant difference between a show that opens and closes here at subsidiary value, even if it has an okay run here, and a show that opens and closes with that.

[13:55] Nancy Gibbs: Absolutely, absolutely. So that Peter and the Starcatcher, we did ten months on Broadway, ten months off Broadway, and ten months on the road. And this year we have a hundred productions. No, sorry, a thousand productions nationwide, amateur, but both community theater, high schools, so it's really beginning to take off. And really add to the canon, which is one of my goals in the shows that I really love. And two of the shows that I'm very intrigued by this season are both Come From Away and The Play That Goes Wrong, both of which I think are going to have a very long tail.

[14:30] Ken Davenport: Yeah, I mean, we share that in common, as that's one of the big things that I pitch my investors and analyze very closely is will this show go on from here? Talk to me a little bit more about those, what you're attracted to as a producer, because the other thing I see is Fun Home, Come From Away, these are big spectacles that you would think. Do you like shows that are simple or cheaper?

[14:52] Nancy Gibbs: No, it's not about cheaper, it's about theatricality. I think we live in a world where we can't compete with the movies and TV. We cannot do what they do with green screen and all of the special effects that they can do, and I think we sometimes put too much physical production on the show, and you want the heart of the show to really come through. So I love incredibly theatrical productions. I mean, the first show I produced was Bat Boy, and that was a show that's had a long tail with high school students. It didn't really have a long tail because we opened in March of 2001, and about Labor Day 2001, we thought we were turning it around, and then we weren't. So we closed it on September 11th, we reopened three weeks later, and we ran two more months.

We limped through two more months. And subsidiary rights basically paid back the priority loan in the ten years, because off Broadway has a much shorter subsidiary life than Broadway. But it's still being done out there. One of my favorite shows.

[16:02] Ken Davenport: I was a real golden age of off Broadway at that point.

[16:05] Nancy Gibbs: No, it was indeed, it was indeed. That show was fantastic. Scotchworth directed, who's been on this podcast, and Chris Catelli, of course, really gave birth to his career.

[16:15] Ken Davenport: Right, right, right. It was a very, very great show. Well, let's talk a little bit about off Broadway because you're very active in that space. You general managed I Love Your Perfect, Now Change for nine of its twelve years, yes?

[16:27] Nancy Gibbs: Right.

[16:28] Ken Davenport: And a whole bunch of other shows. What do you think about its current state?

[16:32] Nancy Gibbs: I think we were on a panel together.

[16:34] Ken Davenport: Yes, we were a long time ago.

[16:36] Nancy Gibbs: In theater, we all had to take up a little bit today.

[16:38] Ken Davenport: Yeah, I still get emails about that.

[16:39] Nancy Gibbs: We were on a panel about successful commercial producing off Broadway.

[16:44] Ken Davenport: Mm-hmm. 2005 was so we wouldn't have got on a panel like that today, would we?

[16:49] Nancy Gibbs: It's 2017, twelve years later. What do you think about the current state of commerce?

[16:55] Nancy Gibbs: I think it's very sickly. I think we—I started off Broadway, I started working in Off Broadway in the mid-eighties through the early two thousand and had multiple shows in order to make a living. But I had, at September 11th, we had four shows running. Bat Boy was the only one that didn't survive. I Love You, Delaguarda and The Vagina Monologues all were running at that time, and we all scurried and made deals and got waivers and did whatever we needed for the shows to survive. But it really somehow—the first of all, Broadway was not thriving from the eighties. I mean, I'm amazed. In the eighties, half of the Broadway theaters were dark. And they were trying to do whatever they could to get people.

No one was doing plays at all on Broadway. And still not easy to do a play on Broadway. But so off Broadway, people turned to off Broadway, and there was a heyday, and somehow the finances were just about right. The rents weren't too high, the advertising wasn't too expensive, and it wasn't as expensive as Broadway, and you did small, intimate shows. I mean, the biggest show you could do was about ten actors. So Little Shop was ten, and Bat Boy was ten, and so that really helped the—now you can—I'm not sure you can do even four actors off Broadway and make it supply. I don't know how to make off Broadway survive. The numbers are just too high. The theaters that you could get deals at are pretty much gone, and the theaters that exist all have huge mortgages to pay, so there's no relief in the rent.

Advertising is pretty much the same. So it was a very exciting time off Broadway. I mean, we had times when I had two shows at the West Side Theater, which was very exciting. So it was really, really something else for a while, but it doesn't exist, and I don't think it'll ever come back.

[18:57] Ken Davenport: You don't? Is there nothing, no magic wand that you think we could wave? Is there anything that we could do?

[19:03] Nancy Gibbs: Oh, I don't think the unions will take rollbacks. So right now, the salaries are too high for the economics of off Broadway. Because you can't get your tickets low enough to undercut Broadway when every Broadway show that's struggling is advertising thirty-five dollars. And yes, you're in the top row of the balcony, but Broadway is still the world of glitz and glitter and neon and all of that, and you have to work at off Broadway. But there were dedicated people who would work to go into off Broadway. There's still a lot of people who go to off Broadway, but the nonprofits have really taken over that void and doing a great job of doing great plays. I mean, MCC and MTC and Playwrights and Second Stage are all doing great work in Roundabout, all doing great work in particular for plays, which is great. But the commercial operative theater is just incredibly, incredibly challenging, and I just don't know how you can make it work.

[20:05] Ken Davenport: Yeah, it seems like we've suffered at the hands of our brothers doing better. Broadway landed so well now, and everyone wants to go, which is great for Broadway and the nonprofits. But commercial off-Broadway, definitely too bad because it's a real inroad for a lot of young producers and managers. So those folks that used to get their start off Broadway like you did, where do you think their entry point is to our industry?

[20:37] Nancy Gibbs: I think that because there's so many general management offices, I mean, we have a steady rotation of interns through our offices, and we often hire from interns. So we have, I think, four or five interns per—basically we do winter, spring, and summer. So three times a year we bring in interns. So I think that's one place they do it, and I think the nonprofits are great, although the world of nonprofit and the world of commercial theater are very different, and you really have to kind of decide to work in commercial theater. You have to be willing to work with metrics. You have to be willing to know that if this show closes, I'm out of a job, and I'm gonna have to look for a new job. But so many of us have a short attention span, that works.

[21:24] Ken Davenport: When you general manage a show and then you produce a show, does your style change at all when you do both?

[21:31] Nancy Gibbs: I work because we general manage the most here. Sometimes my general manager thinks, oh, Ken's gonna say no to this because it's gonna cost more money, and I surprise him by saying yes.

[21:42] Ken Davenport: You fell into the producer track.

[21:44] Nancy Gibbs: Exactly.

[21:46] Ken Davenport: How do you control yourself as a producer?

[21:49] Nancy Gibbs: It's really tricky. The manager hat sits much more comfortably on my head than the producer hat. So I tend to always think like a manager, and sometimes I need partners to make me be more aggressive as a producer and get it out there. So I've been successful with that. That's been helpful to me to have good partners who say, no, we've gotta go do this.

[22:10] Nancy Gibbs: Um and uh so I think that helps. But I tend to think like a manager, even as a producer, but it the producer is still about that vision of where can this show go? How do we get out there? And you have to have the relationship with the uh with the creatives that I don't always have as a manager because sometimes someone else in the office might have that relationship. But as a producer I feel it's very important that you know your designers and you know uh the author and the director and and get to the theater uh relatively often. I mean, I always thought of the company manager, the general manager should be there, but now I really think the producer who needs to get to the theater because ultimately the actors and the crew and the musicians, they work they think they work pretty good.

[22:58] Nancy Gibbs: Yeah, I have to reiterate that I remember just starting out as a producer and on Ultra Boys getting sidetracked with one of my other shows and realizing I just wasn't around Ultra Boys enough. And the moment I was things just got a little bit better. Definitely. Well you talk about partnerships. So many shows are so expensive and it takes so long and so much effort. Partners are so important I think now in the producing producing science. How do you pick up the what do you look for in Well I I look for for someone who has experience as a producer and not just as an an investor because a lot of investors really feel that oh I I would like to do that and that's tricky. That's a tricky there's a big leap from being an investor or um a a co-producer that raises money and actually being in the room.

[23:47] Nancy Gibbs: So and and the room is too small to get everybody into the room. The the room is the the weekly ad meeting where you sit with the ad agencies and you figure out what's going on and that you can't really put twenty extra people in that room. So I think a lot of uh producers today they're having meetings with their their co-pros uh who represent their investors and then have the ad meetings and the so forth on their own. So in so I think that works pretty well. But you need a couple of really solid partners with producing experience in the room. Well let's play a little game. Let's just imagine it this way. You you're putting together a new musical team. You get to pick one of the following people director, composer, lyricist, bookwriter.

[24:34] Nancy Gibbs: Which one would you want to pick? Which really is. Which one do you think is most important first to the development? Well, I think it's the director. I think the director has got to be the one who first of all they have to they o they're only gonna sign on if they think there's some value there. And also I really never I've never commissioned a show, and it's not really something I'm interested in doing because I always would rather have the creatives do something that really comes from them. And I do think that sometimes commissioning means that it becomes this is work for hire. It's not paid as though it's work for hire, it's paid as though they're full creatives. But I I really think that the I like the writing team to do something that they truly want to do that they think is important.

[25:21] Nancy Gibbs: And then the producer and the director, I think, have to decide how to best realize a shared vision. I mean, uh uh from my point of view, what a producer does is three things. The producer is the person who picks the project and the team, and however that in kind of your your game plan there, they then have to get the people to raise the money, and then they have to guide the market because they have to determine that they know how to get enough people across the threshold of the theater to pay back your ten million dollar investors. That's the trickiest part. Because there are a lot of people who make shows, and there are a lot of I mean, I've been a longtime board member of of NAMP, the National Lines of Musical Theatres, and I've seen I was on their play selection committee for four years, and you read lots of shows and there's some very wonderful shows and they're just not commercial.

[26:18] Nancy Gibbs: And I don't know how to help those people because you need that those commercial that commercial production in order to have the long life that a show needs to pay people back. So doing an obscure uh topic or obscure movie that's from long ago that nobody's ever heard of, I think is a real challenge these days. And because I'm not sure if it's really going to I mean they're all of these usables based on old movies. I'm not sure those movies have the same resonance that they may have had as the film. And if the film has done incredibly well, I'm not sure that's the right way to do it. Well, star-driven movies I think are really challenging because uh I think that you want to see stars and also you can go back after the show and go watch the movie at night, which you didn't used to be able to do on demand.

[27:10] Nancy Gibbs: I imagine you spend a lot of your time negotiating. Hmm, that's not my primary responsibility usually. I negotiate more of the physical production things than than actually the and sometimes that and that's that can be a challenge. I mean I learned the hard way, the um bat boy designer, you know, wanted more equipment, made a deal with the shop to get more equipment for a lower price, and so when I needed help and I went back to the shop and they said, Well, we really need to do fifty percent reductions so we can get past um nine eleven, they said, We already gave you fifty percent reductions like you can't do that without telling the producer and the manager that you're doing that.

[27:52] Nancy Gibbs: You're not doing me any favors. So every bit of equipment is not just a piece of equipment, it's uh prep time and loading time and maintenance time, it goes on and on and on. As a producer, how do you approach raising money from investors? Do you have uh strategies? What do you look for in an investor? Tell mean you're not. I can I try to find people that that I connect with that that like the kinds of things that I like and uh and it's challenging I think sometimes. Um I've spent most of my career in this business, so most of the people I know don't have any money or don't have enough money to invest.

[28:30] Nancy Gibbs: Um so I think that's always a a big challenge. So what do you tell them about the risk involved? How do you tell people I invest? Pretty much give them the statistics that about seventeen percent of shows and I'm that may be an old figure, but I think it's probably about right still. Seventeen percent of shows make their money back. But it's really about supporting something that you'll we will um that you're proud of that you want to say, I was a part of that. Uh which is what we had on on uh on Bat Boy. I mean, those are people they all were adamant that that show happened and we it was um very important to them that it it be seen.

[29:11] Nancy Gibbs: Uh so I think it's about and that you'll get a they'll get a great party and then they'll get uh opening night tickets, which can be glamorous, but you know, that if they don't I mean someone asked me if they should invest in Avenue Q and I said, Well not if you don't have the money to lose. Well that was bad advice for me looking backward, but if if it had been the show next door, then it would have been the right advice. I think it was the right advice. I always tell my investors, write the check like you're never gonna see it again.

[29:39] Ken Davenport: Correct. What's what is the g the one single greatest change you see throughout your career?

[29:45] Nancy Gibbs: I know, I I think that the I think we've just exploded and I think from a financial point of view and that makes it crazy. I think it means that we have to have more producers that know more investors that really don't know anything about theater. I mean I I've got investors who are are going, I need I need a report. You have to tell me right where we are every second. It's like, well, we're really managing this show and we're juggling a lot right now. So but a a lot of producers do a do very good investor maintenance.

[30:14] Nancy Gibbs: And that that doesn't always work for shows when their investor maintenance is not as high. But I think it's just the explosion of the costs. I mean, the union costs have gone up every year. I mean, in the eighties they were going up ten percent a year, and now they're only going up two to three percent. But we don't have inflation in that regard. So the costs are just huge today. Both off Broadway, on Broadway. It just it's just too big.

[30:39] Ken Davenport: Well, we're gonna dovetail that into my final question, which I I predict your your answer already, but I'm going to this is my genie question. So I want you to imagine the genie from Aladdin comes to visit you and says, I want to thank you for your 30 years of business. Amazing. Uh by granting you one wish, what's the one thing you want this genie to wish away in an instance that would make Broadway a better place for you and for everybody?

[31:06] Nancy Gibbs: And yet one wish, everybody listening, she's shaking her head. I'd want the genie to put it all back in a bottle, but let's go back to simple. I I think we need to simplify it. I think what what does simple mean? I think it is about going back to the roots of why we go to the theater. And that's about human connection between what's on stage and the audience. And I think we put so many things in the way of that. Physical production and giant everything. I I just think that if we could could go back just like I say, I'm my the shows that I love the most are simple. Bat Boy, Striking Twelve, Play That Goes Wrong, which in its own way is a very simple show.

[31:51] Nancy Gibbs: I'm from a way. Certainly I I think that you know something like Indecent on Broadway this year. It it doesn't mean it's inexpensive, because Peter the Starcatcher, people thought it was uh two trunks in a row. And but that was three hundred thousand dollars worth of set behind it, but three hundred thousand dollars today is cheap for a Broadway set. So it's it's really can we just go back to why how we make that relationship work with the what's on stage. The less that get gets in the way, the better.

[32:22] Ken Davenport: Uh I'm I love your approach. It's artistic. No one would ever imagine you're a numbers person and all that you want is simple and theatricality. By the way, $300,000 for a set. That's a house in a lot of places in this country.

[32:35] Ken Davenport: So even that's a lot of money. Uh thank you so much for for joining us today.

[32:39] Nancy Gibbs: Thanks all of you for listening.

[32:41] Ken Davenport: Don't forget to subscribe. Don't forget to tell me what you think of the new microphone. We'll see you next time. Thanks, guys.

[32:46] Ken Davenport: Don't forget to register for our super conference on November 11th and 12th. Check out all the information on the Producer's Perspective.com today. We'll see you there.