In celebration of Denver Center Attractions’ 2011 season announcement yesterday, we asked John Ekeberg (Director of Programming and Operations for Denver Center Attractions) how a show makes its way from New York to Denver. Here is his response:
John Ekeberg, Director of Programming and Operations for Denver Center Attractions
When a producer launches a tour of a Broadway show, usually there is a year and a half to two years after the show has opened in New York before the tour is launched. The touring show is not the same company as the Broadway engagement. The producer mounts an additional physical production specifically designed to tour in trucks and puts together a separate company of actors, musicians and technicians. Many times the Broadway engagement continues to run in New York while the touring production is out on the road. In the instances when the Broadway engagement has closed prior to the tour going out, they will sometimes use parts of the Broadway sets or costumes on the tour.
The first step in booking a tour is to contact the specific booking agent that is representing the show you are interested in. Each touring show is represented by a booking agent who is responsible for negotiating the dates and financial terms of the tour between the producer and the theatre presenter. One of the challenges in getting a tour to Denver is to find dates when the tour can get here at the same time the theatre is available. Because the shows travel the country in trucks, the scheduling can get complicated. In order for a tour to close in one city on a Sunday and get to the next in time to open on a Tuesday, the distance between cities has to be manageable. For instance, if a show is travelling around the northeast in the summer, we won’t be able to get it to Denver in those months. It may be coming out west in the fall, but if we have booked other shows over those months, then the theatre may not be available and it becomes a challenge to get the show to Denver. Ideally we can make both schedules work so that we can bring the show to our audiences.
And there you have it – the first step in bringing a Broadway show to Denver!
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This is good information for performing arts companies to have when creating their guest performance schedule, and it is also interesting for audiences who wonder when and how specific shows might be coming to their city. And it puts into perspective the complicated elements that arts complexes have when creating their Broadway tour season. It seems possible to predict when a show might come to your town by following the New York run and then tracing the tour across the country. Thanks.
Posted on July 12th, 2010 at 1:28 pm
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