You Know This Wise Guy

January 15, 2019 / strazmarketing

Chazz Palminteri took a moment of his childhood and parlayed it into the cultural phenomenon known as A Bronx Tale. We’ve seen him in The Usual Suspects, Bullets Over Broadway, Analyze This and as a cop, mobster or some form of tough guy in a ton of other film and TV roles. We caught up with Chazz on the phone in December to interview him for the “Behind the Persona” feature of INSIDE magazine and talk about the musical adaptation of A Bronx Tale coming to The Straz Jan. 29. [Note: Chazz isn’t in the musical but he did write the book and DeNiro directed.] During the conversation, we uncovered what he thinks is the greatest acting work he’s ever done—which happens to be a little film that not many people know about. And, shockingly, it’s not A Bronx Tale.

We published the whole interview on Act2, our official podcast, this week, and we’d love for you to hear the wealth of stories Chazz brought to the conversation.

For this blog, though, we’re going rogue. We’re going first person.

Chazz Palminteri in A Bronx Tale on Broadway. (Photo: Joan Marcus)

Hello, Strazzers. Marlowe Moore here, the senior writer for The Straz and normally the anonymous voice of this blog on behalf of our favorite performing arts center. I decided to step out from the fourth wall on this occasion because my conversation with Chazz revealed the kind of tales and insights that performing arts nerds like myself die a thousand deaths to know.

With Chazz, I died two thousand deaths—first, when he shared the anecdote about the time Arthur Miller (Death of Salesman, The Crucible, A View from the Bridge, husband of Marilyn Monroe and my personal writing hero) gave him writing advice; second, when he disclosed that he believes his greatest acting work was his role as the father in Dito Montiel’s shattering and extraordinary film, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints.

Chazz in A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints.

In 2014, I met Dito Montiel at the Sanibel Island Writers’ Conference, which, by the way, happens to be one of the dopest writing conferences in the country. I went, not because I am dope but because I am frugal. SIWC is also in the sweet spot budget-wise for nonprofit mavens like myself. If you’re a writer, a dope person or frugal, you should check it out.

I had no idea who Dito Montiel was, but screenplay writing happens to be my favorite form, and Dito was slated to talk about how he managed to land A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints in Hollywood. I found a seat in the small classroom, then a shaved-head, thick-shouldered New Yorker ambled through the door, taking a small space on the side of the room. “Hey, everybody. I’m Dito,” he said. “I’m not really sure I’m qualified to give this workshop, but here goes.”

Dito and Dwayne Johnson filming Empire State.

Often gazing at his shoes or shifting his eyes toward the doors and windows, Dito unfolded his life story. A kid in Queens. A bad neighborhood. A best friend. An affront by a rival gang member. A baseball bat.

Dito got out. He wrote. He played music. He kept his head down after his boy got a life sentence and found a way to Los Angeles. But he lived with the ghosts. To make peace with them, he doodled a graphic memoir during a day job in an audio lab. He titled it A Picture Guide of Saints.

“This is really good,” a friend told him. “Hey, did I ever tell you I know Robert Downey, Jr? Bob? I think I could get this to him. This is the kind of weird shit he loves.”

The doodles made it to Bob. Bob made it to Dito. They became friends. In 2001, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, Dito’s memoir of his friends in Astoria, gets published. In 2006, RDJ—along with Sting and Trudie Styler—produce the film.

“A lot of it was luck,” Dito told us during the workshop. “Bob and I are weird in the same way. It just worked out. I didn’t even know how to write a screenplay. I thought the ‘EXT’ for exterior shot meant ‘exit’ like the character was leaving the scene. I didn’t know. But I wrote the screenplay. I directed it. Things went from there.”

I realized at the end of the workshop that Dito Montiel is, by nature, a shy guy. I don’t believe he meant for the big take-away for screenwriters to be “hope you know a random person who knows Robert Downey, Jr.” Although, I do believe that’s probably honest writing advice. I think he wanted with his whole heart for his story to be known because he had—in his heart—a debt to pay to a friend he loved. In the weird way stories work, it found its way because Dito wouldn’t give up on it.

If you know anything at all about Chazz Palminteri and how Robert DeNiro ended up making A Bronx Tale into a film, you’ll understand why Chazz fell in love with A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints.

After the conference, I went home and checked out A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints from the public library. I was expecting the typical Mean Streets tropes, but this movie is different.

In the film, Robert Downey plays the adult Montiel with Shia LaBoeuf playing the younger Montiel in Queens during the flashback sequences. Antonio, Montiel’s best friend who ends up with life in prison, is played by Eric Roberts, whose acting in this film is The Pope of Greenwich Village-level. Just stellar. The young Antonio acting opposite LaBoeuf? Channing Tatum. Tatum, whose performance skills I’d just studied intensely in multiple viewings of Magic Mike and knew from his work in the Step Up franchise, changed my life. The fact that he can take himself to the place he had to go to for A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints makes me even angrier about Jupiter Ascending. Nobody better talk junk to me about Channing Tatum’s acting skills. Nobody. We just need Dito directing every time I guess.

Dito’s foil, his antagonist, his god and his oppressor take the form of his emotionally complex father Monty, played by Chazz. “I’ve done 60 movies,” Chazz told me, “and A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints is one of my favorite all-time movies. I think it’s probably my best performance,” Chazz told me.

Hands-down I think it’s Palminteri’s best performance, and I believe his work as Sonny in A Bronx Tale is so sublime his gestures alone should win an Oscar. But what he does as Monty is whatever actors do when they go to that place beyond performing. When Monty enters the scene, my heart races, my blood pressure spikes, I feel so much loss for Dito that I can barely keep my seat.

The film conjures the thing we never talk about when we talk about tough guys, when we glorify their violence in films: that boys get sucked into a world that buries love in anger so thoroughly that, as men, they cannot function for their confusion about how to care for themselves and the people they love. “At the end of the film,” Chazz said, “when my voiceover is talking about, ‘Don’t worry, Dito. Antonio didn’t have anybody [to care for him]…’ Oh. I think about it even now, and I can cry.”

Which is precisely what I did at the moment Chazz refers to here. For reasons I still struggle to articulate, my natural reaction to the conclusion of A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints was to run in the bathroom, shut the door, fall on the floor and bawl. I lived alone at the time, so I had no reason to do any of those things. I could have cried in bed, but I was running from or to something that I needed to experience privately despite the fact that I was already alone; I don’t know. Dito—and Chan, and Bob, and Chazz and Shia—made me look at something so deeply sad about men trying to love in their culture of violence and being oblivious to the fact that they were trying to love at all that stayed with me all this time. There is something about men’s love and the debts they feel towards each other that I don’t understand. Dito’s story cracked some understanding inside of me, and I believe that’s what art is for, why we doodle our ghosts into existence. I consider myself profoundly lucky to have had a few moments to talk about it with someone in the film.

Please see Chazz in A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints. Then check out the interview with him on the podcast. And see A Bronx Tale the musical. Chazz promised you’ll love it.

Thrilling new Jaeb show asks: What would you do if you only had a Hundred Days with the love of your life?

January 8, 2019 / strazmarketing

Let’s say one morning you hustle into your favorite coffee shop, order your regular, and as you’re dawdling by the pick-up counter, you happen to make eye contact with someone at the high-top in the corner who happened to look up the same time you did. An exchange occurs in that moment: you capture each other, an undeniable knowing that you are supposed to be together passes between you. You brave the unknown; you travel the 8,000 miles across the coffee shop to speak. A conversation leads to a date that leads to a long weekend where you wake up Tuesday to discover yourself in love.

You become that skipping, smiling, whistling, happy happy joy joy supernova of a besotted lump experiencing what it feels like to be the most favored in the universe. Nothing could throw a hitch in your skip.

But news arrives you didn’t expect – a diagnosis, a deployment, something that sets your time together against the clock. You found the love of your life, yes. But, you’ll only have one hundred days with that person.

Three and a half months.

How would you choose to live each and every one of those days? So goes the premise of Abigail and Shaun Bengson’s autobiographical punk-folk-indie-rock-electronica blues show, Hundred Days, which runs in the Jaeb Theater Jan. 15 – March 24.

The show, which reveals their love-at-first-sight story and the crazy events that followed, does so through a rock concert structure, almost like a reverse musical.

Hundred Days is a concert that tells a story – a very personal, very extraordinary, very funny story about the make-or-break need to become vulnerable if you want to make love stay.

Professional singer-songwriters, the Bengsons wrote all the songs for show, pulling from their favorite theatrical forms to get Hundred Days exactly where they wanted it to be: leaving audiences wishing the show itself lasted at least as long. The show has been a huge hit in New York and San Diego, where it ran before the Bengsons packed up their guitars and drums and headed to Tampa.

Our INSIDE magazine caught up with Abigail and Shaun during their opening weekend at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego to talk about Hundred Days, family life and their upcoming Florida debut at The Straz.

INSIDE MAGAZINE: Tell us a little bit about this show. It’s a departure from the traditional musicals we normally have at The Straz and it’s not a jukebox musical or a concert. What is it?

ABIGAIL AND SHAUN: It’s true that Hundred Days is not your standard musical theater fare. We started out as musicians and moved into the world of writing for theater because of our passion for telling stories and the ability theater has to bring people together for big moments of shared emotional catharsis. So, our music pulls from a wide variety of genres that inspire us, like folk, punk, indie rock, blues and electronica. We also pull from a lot of different theatrical styles when it comes to building the structure and form for the stories we want to tell, including folklore storytelling, documentary, concert and stand-up comedy. Our core collaborators Sarah Gancher, Anne Kauffman and Sonya Tayeh have also been hugely instrumental in creating this new, music-theater hybrid. They helped us push the form and the sound as well as weaving in more traditional theatricality throughout our work. And really, the truth is, even with all of the ways in which we are trying to break the mold, at its core, Hundred Days is a story told through music just like any other piece of musical theater! It’s all in the service of building an emotionally compelling story that we hope will resonate with our audiences.

IM: How “true“ is the “based on a true story” part of Hundred Days?

A&S: It is embarrassingly true! We really did have our first date, then three weeks later, we were hitched. Something about the moment of our falling for each other shattered any illusions of youthful invulnerability we had, made us realize the pain of placing so much of our hearts into such a fragile vessel. Some details and events are changed in the show in order to fit it all into 90 minutes, but any change that we made was designed so that the show would better convey what it felt like to go through that time – the joys and the terrors that we felt. There is a scene in the show that is an actual transcription of a conversation we had. It’s in there in all its glory and its humiliation.

Photo from Instagram: @hundreddaysny

IM: You all spend a lot of time together. What’s your secret to staying a happy, healthy and productive family?

A&S: Yes, we do spend a whole lot of time together. We’ve actually really worked for many years to be able to build a life in which we could be together as much as we can possibly be. It is truly the blessing and the joy of life that we get to. This is the exact opposite of how we’ve handled pretty much every other relationship in our lives. We’re both huge introverts and usually need a great deal of personal space. But, it’s just not like that with each other. There is certainly a lot that we needed to figure out in terms of combining and balancing family and work and it’s a daily practice to try and get it right. Finding that balance has become even more true since the birth of our son two years ago. We really thought we were already operating at full capacity, but, man, we can’t believe how many plates we have to spin at once trying to keep the art going and raise our boy in a way we feel good about. If there is any secret at all, it’s being as open and honest with each other as we can, trying always to talk things through, really working to try and hear and support each other. That can be easier said than done, but it really does come down to that for us.

IM: Share some of your musical influences and mentors … how do you create the Bengson “sound“ in this show?

A&S: We grew up listening to all sorts of music and we hope that it comes through when you listen to our tunes. We’ve been writing this show for more than a decade, and you can hear a lot of the different styles of music that we’ve been writing and listening to from over that time. The core of our music is really all about folk, both American folk music as well as from places all over. We grew up listening to a lot of ‘60’s folkies like Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Odetta and Ewan MacColl. There’s a lot of music being made right now that inspires us a lot too that draws on that folk tradition – Sufjan Stevens, Joanna Newsom, Sharon Van Etten. We also really love it when that folk sound meets punk music (The Pogues, Gogol Bordello, Flogging Molly). We are also huge fans of big vocalists and singers from Motown, soul, and Latin music like Etta James, Aretha Franklin and Caetano Veloso. The newest elements that we have loved playing with is using big heavy electronic beats and playing with interesting electronic sounds and textures like The Flaming Lips, Björk, Kanye, James Blake. Everyone onstage in Hundred Days plays an instrument and sings, so this blend of acoustic and electronic elements with a big choral sound is what this show is about for us.

IM: Hundred Days is the kind of show that really touches the heart. Do you often have audience members sharing stories with you? Would you mind sharing one or two touching moments you’ve had with fans?

A&S: We have heard a lot of sweet stories from people! Our favorite thing is getting to hear stories from both the brand-new young couples in the house as well as from couples who have been together 50-60 years. There was one older couple in their 80s who were sitting beside our associate director, Caitlin Sullivan, and she couldn’t honestly tell what they were thinking about the show. But, as they were leaving, she heard the woman say, “That is exactly what it felt like to be young and in love. That is just what I remember.” That really meant a lot to us.

IM: What do you hope audiences will get out of this show?

A&S: In many ways, these are frightening and confusing times we are living through. We find that it’s easy to get beaten down, to numb yourself out, to give up. This show is about the power of fear and the ease with which it can prevent us from living. This show is our way of continuing to challenge ourselves to love and to live and to not give in even when the stakes feel insurmountable. And also – we hope everyone will enjoy the awesome music and hilarious jokes.

In the studio recording the cast album. Photo from Instagram: @hundreddaysny.

A Note to Fans from Abigail and Shaun:
If anyone is curious to hear the music before the show, we just released the official cast album. You can find it on iTunes, Spotify, wherever you go for your music. We worked hard on it, and we are proud to get it out there and share it with folks. We are so honored to get to be coming to Tampa, to be welcomed into this theater and this community. We are looking forward to meeting all of you!

Frequently Asked Questions about HAMILTON on-sale Nov. 16

November 13, 2018November 13, 2018 / strazmarketing

Here we go, Strazzers. The public on-sale for HAMILTON starts Friday morning at 9 a.m. This handy FAQ guide tells you what to do to get ready and what to expect the day-of. Whether you’re planning to buy online, in-person or on the phone, this official information will help you be as prepared as possible for your shot at seats.

Company – HAMILTON National Tour – (c) Joan Marcus 2018

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Because of the nature of live events, details are subject to change.

WHEN IS HAMILTON COMING TO THE STRAZ CENTER?
Feb.12 – March 10, 2019

WHEN DO TICKETS GO ON SALE?
Friday, Nov. 16, 2018, at 9 a.m. Tickets will be available through the Straz Center’s official Ticket Sales Office – online, by phone and in-person. Only tickets purchased directly from the Straz Center at STRAZCENTER.ORG, 813.229.7827, 800.955.1045 or in person at the Straz Center Ticket Sales Office are guaranteed to be legitimate tickets for the Tampa engagement of HAMILTON.

WHERE CAN I PURCHASE?
• Online: STRAZCENTER.ORG/Hamilton. You must set up an account through our ticketing system before you purchase online. See “What Should I Do Now To Get Ready To Purchase” below.
• By phone: 813.229.7827, 800.955.1045 (outside Tampa Bay)
• In-person at the Straz Center Ticket Sales Office at 1010 N. MacInnes Place, Tampa, FL 33602; the Ticket Sales Office is located on the south side of the Straz Center campus off of Tyler Street

Online: Log in to purchase HAMILTON tickets by typing STRAZCENTER.ORG/Hamilton into your browser on Nov. 16, 2018 starting at 6 a.m. Everyone will be placed in the Virtual Waiting Room and will be randomly assigned a place in line when sales open at 9 a.m. Those arriving after 9 a.m. will be placed behind those who arrived earlier. You must set up an account through our ticketing system before you purchase online. See “What Should I Do Now To Get Ready To Purchase” below.

Phone: Those choosing to purchase by phone do not have an option for advance queueing. The Ticket Sales Office phone system will be activated at 9 a.m. Please do not call before that time.

In-person: On-site sales will also occur at the Straz Center Ticket Sales Office on Nov. 16, 2018, at 9 a.m. Sales will be conducted using a wristband lottery and random selection of wristband numbers. Wristband distribution will begin at 5:30 a.m. and continue until 7 a.m. under the Grand Canopy in front of Morsani Hall. (No overnight camping allowed.) Arrival prior to the start of wristband distribution is not advised or necessary since the purchase line will be based on random selection. However, you must be in the wristband line by 7 a.m. to get a wristband. Wristbands will only be distributed to those 13 and older. There is no guarantee everyone receiving a wristband between 5:30 – 7:00 a.m. will be able to purchase tickets. Those arriving after 7 a.m. will be placed in queue (and given different sequentially-numbered wristbands) and will not be eligible to make a purchase until everyone who arrived prior to 7:00 a.m. been served, if tickets are still available.

HOW MUCH WILL TICKETS COST?
On-sale prices will range from $86 to $196 with a limited number of $489 premium seats. Handling fees apply. Prices are subject to change.

ARE THERE ANY DISCOUNTS AVAILABLE?
There are no discounts available for HAMILTON.

HOW MANY TICKETS CAN I BUY?
There is a strict limit of four (4) tickets per household. All orders will be checked before tickets are mailed, and orders will be cancelled if we discover duplicate accounts, bots or other means being used to circumvent the four-ticket limit.

WHY AM I ONLY ABLE TO PURCHASE 4 TICKETS?
To allow as many people as possible the opportunity to purchase tickets for HAMILTON, the number of tickets any household may purchase has been limited. Guests found in violation of this policy will have ALL their tickets cancelled.

ARE THERE GROUP SALES AVAILABLE IF I WANT TO PURCHASE MORE THAN THE TICKET LIMIT?
Group sales are not available for HAMILTON.

WILL I BE ABLE TO PICK MY SEATS?
When purchasing online the ticketing system will assign you the best available seat(s) in your preferred performance/price level at the time you purchase. In-person selections will be made the same way. If asked to search an alternative performance for different/better seats, the original selection will be released and could be purchased by another buyer in the interim.

IS THERE AN AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE-INTERPRETED PERFORMANCE?
Yes. There are two – the Thursday, Feb. 14, 2019, 7:30 p.m. performance and the Saturday, Feb. 23, 2019, 2 p.m. performance.

WHAT SHOULD I DO NOW TO GET READY TO PURCHASE?
1) Make sure you have an account in the Straz Center’s ticketing system and that you know your password. The name and address on your account must match the name on the credit card and billing address you use for payment. To confirm or create your account, go to STRAZCENTER.ORG and click on the My Account tab at the top of the page, or go here. If you experience any problem with your account, call 813.229.7827 between 12-8 p.m. Monday-Saturday or 12-6 p.m. Sunday or email us at comments@strazcenter.org. Please contact us for assistance no later than Nov. 15.

2) Decide which performances and price levels meet your needs. Choose several options in case your first choice is not available when your turn to purchase arrives.

HOW WILL ONLINE SALES WORK?
Because of the extraordinary interest in HAMILTON, The Straz will use a virtual waiting room to facilitate the online sales process. Below is detailed information how online sales will work and what to do ahead of time to prepare to purchase.

Jon Patrick Walker – HAMILTON National Tour – (c) Joan Marcus 2018

Online Purchase Guide for HAMILTON

BEFORE NOV. 16, 2018:
Make sure you have an account on STRAZCENTER.ORG and that you know your password. The name and address on your account must match the name on the credit card and billing address you use for payment.

Check your account information by going to STRAZCENTER.ORG and clicking on the My Account tab at the top of the page, or go here.

If you experience any problem accessing or setting up your account, contact The Straz for assistance by Nov. 15. Call 813.229.7827 between 12-8 p.m. Monday-Saturday or 12-6 p.m. Sunday or email us at comments@strazcenter.org.

Decide in advance which performances and price levels you want to purchase. Choose several performance options in case your first choice is not available when your turn to buy arrives. Go here to see the performance schedule and price levels or visit STRAZCENTER.ORG/Hamilton.

PRICE LEVELS – subject to change without notice; handling fees apply
Premium: $489; select center front orchestra seats in rows FF-A
1: $196; front and mid orchestra; mezzanine front, sides and boxes
2: $186; mid-to-rear orchestra; rear mezzanine
3: $146; rear orchestra; balcony front, sides and boxes
4: $116; rear balcony
5: $86; gallery

ON FRIDAY, NOV. 16, 2018:
1. Type STRAZCENTER.ORG/Hamilton into your browser to log in to the Virtual Waiting Room.
• You can log in to the Virtual Waiting Room starting at 6 a.m. on Nov. 16, 2018.
• You will be RANDOMLY assigned a spot in line at 9 a.m.
• Buyers who log in after 9 a.m. will be placed behind those who logged in earlier.
• Once you are assigned a position in the virtual line, you can either leave your browser open and/or sign up to receive an email alert when it’s your turn to buy.
• Any key updates on performance availability will be posted in the Virtual Waiting Room as they become available. They will appear on your screen if you have the Waiting Room tab open.

2. You will have 10 minutes to complete your order if your turn arrives.
• Don’t miss your shot! Watch your email if you sign up for an alert, or keep a close eye on the Virtual Waiting Room tab.
• Know which performance and price level you want before your turn arrives.
• The credit card you use to purchase must match the name and address on your account. We will check orders and will void those where credit card name/address do not match.

3. Buy your tickets.
• The purchase limit is four (4) per household
• The use of bots, duplicate accounts or other methods to circumvent the four-ticket limit will result in cancellation of all tickets.
• You may choose your performance and price level. Select Your Own Seat is not available. The system will assign you the best seat available in your chosen performance/price level at the time of purchase.
• You may split your tickets between different performances and price levels. Add all tickets to your cart before entering your payment information and checking out.
• You will be asked to log in with your STRAZCENTER.ORG account to checkout. Make sure you have an account and know your password ahead of time. You can confirm/create an account here.

Shoba Narayan, Ta’Rea Campbell and Nyla Sostre – HAMILTON National Tour – (c) Joan Marcus 2018

On-Site Purchases for HAMILTON

HOW WILL THE ON-SITE SALES AT THE STRAZ CENTER TICKET SALES OFFICE WORK?

On-site sales will occur at the Straz Center Ticket Sales Office on Friday, Nov.16, 2018.

Sales will be conducted using a wristband lottery and random selection of wristband numbers. Wristband distribution will begin at 5:30 a.m. and continue until 7 a.m. under the Grand Canopy in front of Morsani Hall. (No overnight camping allowed.) Arrival prior to the start of wristband distribution is not advised or necessary since the purchase line will be based on random selection. However, you must be in the lottery wristband line by 7 a.m. to get a wristband.

Lottery wristbands will only be distributed to those 13 and older.

There is no guarantee everyone receiving a wristband between 5:30-7:00 a.m. will be able to purchase tickets. Those arriving after 7 a.m. will be placed in queue (and given differently colored and sequentially-numbered wristbands) and will not be eligible to make a purchase until everyone who arrived prior to 7 a.m. has been served, if tickets are still available.

The purchase line will be organized based on a RANDOM selection of lottery wristband numbers. The first group will be pulled at approximately 8:30 a.m.

There is no guarantee that everyone receiving a lottery wristband will be able to purchase tickets. Sales will end when the available seats have all been allocated.

Shoba Narayan and Joseph Morales – HAMILTON National Tour – (c) Joan Marcus 2018

DO YOU PROVIDE ACCESSIBLE SERVICES?
Yes. Detailed information about all Straz ACCESS programs and services are available at STRAZCENTER.ORG/Plan-Your-Visit/Accessibility. Wheelchair-and scooter-accessible seating may be purchased in person, by phone and online. Bariatric seating is also available when purchasing in person or by phone.

WHEN WILL I RECEIVE MY TICKETS?
On Nov. 16, you’ll receive an email confirmation of your order. Tickets will be mailed on or around Jan. 8, 2019. All HAMILTON tickets will be mailed to the address specified in your account. Digital delivery is not available.

WHAT IF I CAN’T FIND MY TICKETS OR THEY GET LOST IN THE MAIL?
Tickets will be mailed on or around Jan. 8, 2019. Tickets that have not been received, for any reason, including lost or stolen, will be reprinted with a new one-of-a-kind barcode and held at Will Call under the original account-holder name, and may be picked up with a valid photo ID beginning two hours prior to curtain time on the performance date ONLY. No exceptions. No name changes on tickets are permitted.

DOES THE STRAZ CENTER MAIL TICKETS INTERNATIONALLY?
The Straz Center does not mail tickets internationally. All orders placed with an international mailing address will be held at Will Call for pick-up beginning two hours before the scheduled performance.

PROTECT YOUR TICKETS AFTER YOU RECEIVE THEM.
Each ticket has a one-of-a-kind barcode, and your tickets can be compromised if you share your tickets along with your personal information online. You can still share your excitement online, just make sure to #CoverTheCode by covering the bar code and any other personal information on your ticket.

I FOUND TICKETS ONLINE THAT ARE TWICE AS EXPENSIVE AS YOUR LISTED TICKET PRICES. WHAT GIVES?
If you search “HAMILTON Tampa,” you will likely find many reseller sites advertising HAMILTON tickets at prices higher than those of our official site. Be aware of what site you are on before you make any purchase. Only tickets purchased directly from the Straz Center at STRAZCENTER.ORG, 813.229.7827, 800.955.1045 or in person at the Straz Center Ticket Sales Office are guaranteed to be legitimate tickets for the Tampa engagement of HAMILTON. Buyers who purchase from a ticket broker or third party should be aware the Straz Center is unable to reprint or replace lost or stolen tickets and is unable to contact patrons with information regarding time changes or other pertinent updates regarding the performance, and they run the risk of overpaying or purchasing fraudulent tickets.

HOW CAN I BE SURE I’M ON THE OFFICIAL STRAZ CENTER SITE?
A good check is to look for strazcenter.org or shop.strazcenter.org in your browser window. Reseller sites sometimes use similar URLs and graphics to fool buyers, so pay close attention and look for this exact name.

WHAT HAPPENS IF I BUY FROM A RESELLER OR BROKER?
When you buy from a non-official source:
• The Straz cannot be responsible for tickets purchased through unauthorized third parties.
• The Straz cannot guarantee that your tickets are valid and, therefore, cannot guarantee admittance.
• The Straz cannot replace your tickets if they are lost or stolen.
• You may be paying much more than the ticket’s face value.
• The Straz cannot contact you with information regarding time changes, show cancellations or other information.
• The Straz cannot issue a refund to you in case of an event cancellation.

CAN I RESELL MY TICKETS IF I CAN’T GO?
Pursuant to s.817.36, Florida Statutes, a Straz Center ticket may not be offered or resold for more than $1 over the face value of the ticket. Significant penalties apply. We regularly monitor resale sites and we void sales when we discover violations of our resale policy and/or the Statute. Tickets are a revocable license; tickets found for sale on the secondary market, through third parties or brokers, or accounts found to have exceeded maximum allotments will have all their tickets cancelled.

WHY ARE YOU USING A VIRTUAL WAITING ROOM?
This is an important tool for combating ticket brokers and bots, and it guarantees you keep your virtual place in line. You will get regular updates on your place in line and ticket availability.

WILL THERE BE A LOTTERY DURING THE ENGAGEMENT?
There will be an electronic lottery through “HAMILTON–The Official App” for 40 $10 orchestra seats for all performances. Details about the lottery will be announced closer to the engagement. The best way to be informed about how the lottery will work is to subscribe to Straz Center text alerts by texting HAMILTON to 73005. Standard text messaging rates will apply.

WHAT ARE LIMITED-VIEW or SIDE-VIEW SEATS?
Limited-view and side-view seats are in locations that may have an obstructed view of the full stage.

WILL MORE TICKETS BE RELEASED LATER?
Any additional inventory will be released for sale if and when it becomes available. Check STRAZCENTER.ORG/Hamilton regularly.

CAN I GET ON A WAITING LIST FOR TICKETS?
No. There is no waiting list for HAMILTON tickets. We encourage you to text HAMILTON to 73005 to be notified if any additional inventory is released. Standard text messaging rates will apply.

WHAT IF I CAN’T ATTEND MY PURCHASED PERFORMANCE?
Since all sales are final; we are unable to offer refunds. Be sure to check the following information before completing your purchase: show title, day, date, time of performance, and number of tickets. Tickets can be donated to the Straz Center’s Operation Tickets program which provides theater experiences to underserved persons in the Tampa Bay area. The Straz Center is a 501(c)(3) corporation and your donation is tax-deductible.

HOW CAN I REQUEST A DONATION FOR HAMILTON TICKETS FOR MY FUNDRAISER?
We are unable to accommodate donation requests for HAMILTON.

CAN I PURCHASE PARKING DURING THE ON-SALE?
After receiving confirmation of your performance date and time, pre-paid parking may be purchased at strazcenter.pmreserve.com.

CAN I PURCHASE DINING DURING THE ON-SALE?
On Nov. 17, 2018, the Straz Center will contact purchasers via email with the opportunity to book dining reservations at Maestro’s Restaurant or The Café, both on-site at The Straz.

Joseph Morales and Company – HAMILTON National Tour – (c) Joan Marcus 2018

About The Show

WHAT IS THE RUNNING TIME FOR HAMILTON?
Running time is 2 hours and 45 minutes, including intermission.

IS THERE AN AGE REQUIREMENT/RECOMMENDATION?
HAMILTON is appropriate for ages 13+. The show contains some strong language and non-graphic adult situations. As with all Broadway shows, children ages five and under are not permitted. Every patron, regardless of age, must have a ticket.

IS THE ORIGINAL BROADWAY CAST PERFORMING IN THE TOUR?
No. Tampa’s engagement of HAMILTON is part of the national tour. Casting for the tour reflects the same talent, attention to detail and high quality as the Broadway production. We encourage you to check out HAMILTON’s tour schedule at the official HAMILTON page. For more information about the cast in this U.S. tour, visit: http://www.HAMILTONmusical.com/#tour.

WHERE CAN I LEARN MORE ABOUT HAMILTON?
Website: HAMILTONMusical.com
Facebook: HAMILTONMusical
Instagram: HAMILTONMusical
Twitter: @HAMILTONMusical

Make Sure Your Tix are Legit

October 30, 2018October 30, 2018 / strazmarketing

Conventional wisdom holds that if you say something three times you’ll remember it. The safest, most affordable tickets to Straz Center shows come from only one place:
“Strazcenter.org”
“Strazcenter.org”
“Strazcenter.org”

Shoba Narayan, Ta’Rea Campbell and Nyla Sostre in the HAMILTON National Tour. (Photo: Joan Marcus 2018)

With sold-out season ticket packages for the huge Broadway season ahead featuring a four-week run of Hamilton, we’re trying to get you the best information about single tickets before scam artists with fakes find you first.

People, this thing about our upcoming season and ticket buying is serious.

You may hear the thundering approach of a particularly revolutionary Broadway blockbuster.

But – there are hundreds of other people who hear cha-chinging cash registers racking up your credit cards with fake tickets.

Those people have already set up websites that look like they sell Hamilton and other Broadway tickets to Straz shows. However, they’re either lying and the tickets aren’t real, or they managed to buy season tickets from us and now they’re going to jack up the prices 500% and illegally sell our tickets to you. Another problem is that those illegal seats are often sold several times. If you don’t buy through us, we usually have no way of knowing whose tickets are legit, and we have no way of helping you get your money back.

So, the best choice you can make is the best choice you’ve always had: buy straight from strazcenter.org or our Ticket Sales Office (813.229.7827). We also invite you to come to the Ticket Sales Office in person so we can meet you and give you good, old-fashioned, face-to-face exceptional customer service. The bottom line is that we need you all to be extra vigilant this year and help us spread the word that 1) tickets are going to be more difficult to come by for all Broadway shows on the regular season because we have so many new season ticket holders and 2) predatory scalper schemes will be on the rise.

We can learn a lesson from the folks in Los Angeles who posted their Ham tix on Facebook, only to have some very crafty people lift the barcode from the pictures and create counterfeit tickets they then sold online at exorbitant cost. If you don’t buy directly from us, there’s no way to prove the seats are yours if there has been a double sell – even if you believe you bought them fair and square. Trust us, this happens even during seasons when we don’t have the cultural phenomenon of our time, so please stay away from ticket brokers, scalpers or any source other than strazcenter.org or our Ticket Sales Office.

“Hamilton has permeated pop culture, and no other show has done that, at least not off the bat. Theater people were excited about Wicked or The Phantom of the Opera. Everyone’s excited about Hamilton,” says Vice President of Marketing Summer Bohnenkamp. “There’s been a 68% increase in the number of season tickets we’ve sold since last season. That’s exciting for a number of reasons. We’ve never seen a jump like that in the 18 years I’ve been working on Broadway shows. The closest was the first time The Lion King came, which was about a 20% increase. The challenge for people wanting to buy single tickets, though, is that all of the inventory is now very limited. So, if you want to buy a ticket to, say, Hello, Dolly! or A Bronx Tale, there will be limited seats available because we have thousands and thousands of new season ticket holders.”

If you’re not a season ticket holder and you still want good odds at seats to our shows, the best bet is to become an annual donor to The Straz. By doing so, you get priority access for single tickets, which means you get the chance to buy tickets to most shows before they go on sale to the public. Give our Development Department a call for more information.

“The inventory is still limited, but at least you’ll have early access to that inventory,” says Bohnenkamp. “Buy when the tickets go on sale. I know we’ve been saying ‘don’t wait,’ but we really mean it. We’ve been saying it for a reason, and that’s so you don’t walk away disappointed. We want everyone who wants to see a show here to be able to see that show. This year is going to be a little bit harder. Remember – don’t search for tickets online because the paid ticket broker ads show up first, not the real Straz. Just type in strazcenter.org.”

In addition to the regular Broadway season, we offer a boutique collection of Broadway encores not on the subscription season. Thus, these shows have many more seats available. If you want to grab dinner and a show without confronting the Hamilton effect, you’ll have some super choices throughout the year. “We’ve got the new tour of Les Mis which is gorgeous, and it will be here for a week,” Bohnenkamp reports. “We’re bringing back Kinky Boots, which everybody loved. We’ve also got Tap Dogs coming back – it’s having an international resurgence so we are really looking forward to presenting it in Tampa after almost 20 years. Then there’s Rock of Ages for an entire week over the summer which will be tons of fun.”

Witch Way

October 23, 2018October 23, 2018 / strazmarketing

Halloween lurks and looms. Witch means (see what we did there?) it’s time to take a look at some really great harpies, hags, conjurers and spellcasters from stage and screen. Here’s a Ten List since we had too much toil and trouble trying to figure out how to rank the best witchy stories and characters ever.

Into the Woods
You thought we’d start with Wicked, didn’t you? Ah-ha! A trick!

This Sondheim favorite would fall apart without the machinations of Witch, who plays a pivotal role in the entire plot (as witches do). When Into the Woods—which is a wild adaptation of Grimm and Charles “Cinderella” Perrault fairy tales—opened on Broadway in 1987, guess who played Witch? (Answer at bottom).

Macbeth
As noted, witches tend to co-opt a story, sending hapless protagonists straight to madness and/or death. Nobody does it better that The Weird Sisters, Shakespeare’s trio of heath-living hags, who show up smack-dab in the middle of Macbeth’s victory lap to plant some pretty poisonous prophecies in his soldier’s brain. If anything, these ladies teach us eye of newt is not to be trifled with. Not at all.

Wicked
Here we are! Wicked. The Wicked Witch of the West gets a name, a backstory, a psychology, a friend. What is not to love about this show? And the original Broadway cast? Idina Menzel, Kristin Chenoweth, Joel Grey, Norbert Leo Butz. Fuggedaboutit. So here’s another trivia question … Norbert Leo Butz, who played Elphaba’s love interest Fiyero, later starred on what Netflix series set in the Florida Keys? (See below.)

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
No matter whether this tale comes to life on the page, on the stage, in animation or on the big screen, children everywhere remember the shameful temptation of Turkish delight thanks to the frosty witch of this classic. The White Witch solidifies, literally, her glorious evil by freezing Mr. Tumnus and then we feel great about hating her for the rest of the story.

Hocus Pocus
So, this colorful little film turned 25 this year and is seeing a well-deserved anniversary celebration. After years with cult status, coven status?, the film’s characters landed lead roles in Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party at the Magic Kingdom, putting them in league with Disney’s witches, the Who’s Who of pop culture witchery. The poorly-reviewed Sanderson Sisters in the movie—powered by a buck-toothed Bette Midler, rubber-faced Kathy Najimy, and ultra-curvy “straight man” Sarah Jessica Parker—get their revenge at last, which, like destroying the main characters’ lives, also seems to be the destiny of great witch characters.

The Wizard of Oz
When you have an army of flying monkeys in jaunty fezes and matching capes, you are next level wicked. When you set fire to a straw person whose only desire in life is to have a brain, you are the worst. And then you threaten a dog. This is so much evil we can’t write another word about it.

The Crucible
Okay, back up. Even though the characters in the Arthur Miller classic about falsely accusing people of being witches so they get killed is technically about fictional fake witches, the point of the whole story is that real humans can be eaten by fears that turn them even more evil than someone who ignites a scarecrow-man. Leave it to Mr. Miller to use witches as deconstructed symbolism that are no fun at all.

Harry Potter and the NOUN of NOUN
Where to start, where to start … J.K. Rowling’s global takeover with this story repackaged witchcraft and wizardry that made not only magic cool as all get out but also—school. Witch school was the place everyone wanted to be, even the disgusting warped force of soul-splintered evil driving the main story arc. The question here is, who’s your favorite witch—McGonagall? Bellatrix? Fleur? Hermione? Ginny? Ginny was the best, right? Or Nymphadora? Too many choices.

A Wrinkle in Time
A very huge shout out to any story that successfully mixes quantum physics and witches. The universe and its mind-bending sub-atomic particle activity is in the capable metaphysical, zen-like hands of Mmes. Who, Whatsit and Which. Here we have a trinity of good witches marshalling a girl to heroic super-heights in negative space and it’s an interesting read. That in and of itself is powerful conjuring.

The Witches of Eastwick and The Craft
We said ten list, but here we have an Eleven List. Another trick! Ha-ha!

Truthfully, we again faced insurmountable indecision. If this Halloween-y blog was worth its salt, we’d have a Thirteen List, wouldn’t we? However, our last two screen covens represent the perennial attraction of witches but to different generations. Beautiful women, unlimited power. Cher on the one hand, Neve Campbell on the other. Even Jack Nicholson couldn’t survive in a world of Susan Sarandon’s magic (may be factual), but let’s face it: Michelle Pfeiffer has zero trouble casting a spell. Zero.

We’ve tricked you a few times in this blog, so how about a treat? Come see other famous witches when the Opera Tampa Singers perform The Witching Hour on Oct. 26 from 7-8 p.m. in the Jaeb Courtyard. It’s FREE!

How’d you do with your trivia?
1. Bernadette Peters played Witch in the original Broadway Into the Woods.
2. Norbert Leo Butz starred in Bloodline as the flighty youngest brother Kevin Rayburn.
3. Treat! Our favorite Potter witch is Nymphadora. No, Hermione. We mean Ginny!

He Had It Comin’

September 11, 2018 / strazmarketing

Belva Gaertner (L) and Beulah Annan (R)

The true story of the accused but acquitted Chicago beauties who inspired musical legends Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly

The Bob Fosse masterpiece we know and love today as Chicago the musical actually started with two real women and two real murdered men. In Chicago. In the Roaring 20s.

1924 to be exact.

A headline from the Chicago Tribune on June 6, 1924 (L) and Belva Gaertner sitting with her defense attorney, Thomas D. Nash (R).

In March of that year, Belva Gaertner, a comely cabaret singer, happened to leave a bottle of gin in her parked car. Unfortunately, she also left a dead man and a gun in the car as well. Accused of killing said man—a young car salesman named Walter Law—Belva found herself in the Cook County jail, the subject of newspaper headlines and journalists who voted her “most stylish” in the clink. Decked out in ravishing bell hats, furs and delicately form-fitting dresses, Gaertner endured her trial as one of the two most famous faces of Murderesses Row. (It was really called that.)

A headline from the Chicago Tribune on April 4, 1924 (L) and Beulah Annan with lawyer William Scott Stewart on her left and her husband, Al, on her right (R).

The other, 23-year-old Beulah Annan, found herself in Belva’s company on Murderesses Row in April. Called “the prettiest woman ever accused of murder in Chicago,” Annan, in a lapse in judgement, confessed to the murder of her manstress, Harry Kalstedt, later backtracking, stating she and Harry “both reached for the gun” during a quarrel. We bet you’ve figured out which character Beulah becomes in Chicago by now, but if you haven’t, Beulah also came with a faithful and extremely naïve husband who stood by her during the trial despite having found a dead man in his bedroom with his wife.

Naturally, there’s also a lot of booze in the backstories as well as another beautiful woman—innocent of any crime other than being a flagrantly biased journalist. This woman, Maurine Dallas Watkins, worked for the Chicago Tribune covering crime “from a woman’s perspective.” Watkins wrote very descriptive and judgy accounts of Belva and Beulah, then, when all was said and done, she took her ultra-popular crime articles to Yale University to finish studying playwrighting, which she’d abandoned for the Tribune gig. [It’s worth noting that Watkins started her studies at Radcliffe College and was in the same class as Eugene O’Neill.]

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Maurine Watkins, the Chicago Tribune crime reporter who went on to write the play Chicago, circa 1927. (Photo: Florence Vandamm, Vandamm Studio)

At Yale, Watkins turned the stories into a play.

You guessed it: Chicago, starring Velma Kelly—a comely cabaret singer—and Roxie Hart, the gamine beguiler with a dopey, impossibly faithful husband. The show landed a spot on Broadway, ran for 127 performances before closing, then years later fell into the hands of another comely cabaret singer. That woman, Gwen Verdon, happened to be married to Bob Fosse. “Bob,” we imagine her saying, “you gotta make this into a musical. It’s what I want … give in!” [Gwen played the devil Lola in Damn Yankees, so whatever she wants … you know the rest.]

Fosse tried to convince Watkins to give him the rights to the script, but she wouldn’t. Watkins was pretty amazing, which you can read about in this tribute by the Tribune.

When she died, though, her estate granted Fosse and Verdon the rights. Chicago the musical, starring Verdon and Chita Rivera as the most famous Merry Murderesses, was born. Belva and Beulah faded to the corners of Windy City history while Velma and Roxie hot honey ragged their way into musical history.

Catch Chicago when it razzle-dazzles The Straz next week.

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Gwen Verdon as Roxie Hart (L) and Chita Rivera as Velma Kelly (R) in the 1975 Broadway production of Chicago, directed by Bob Fosse.

A Director of Production Services TELLS ALL!

August 21, 2018August 22, 2018 / strazmarketing

The performing arts are big business. In this industry, we have a lot of super important jobs for people who love the theater but who may have no interest in performing professionally. This week, we sat down with Gerard Siegler, Straz Center director of production services, who plays a huge part in making sure the shows work and the forty-billionteen details of a live performance have been handled.

Gerard Siegler, director of production services for The Straz.

CAUGHT IN THE ACT: What are production services? What do you do? Take us through a typical day in the life.

GERARD SIEGLER: Sure … there’s no typical day. The gist of my job and the job of any production manager is to deal with all the backstage needs. This would be the technical elements like making sure that we have equipment that shows need. Sometimes it means getting hospitality, booking hotel rooms, booking transportation, either to or from the airport and even sometimes air flights and things like that.

It’s a wide range of duties, sometimes it’s as simple as a speaker needing a microphone or AV equipment all the way to Broadway shows—making sure that their set is going to fit within our space and making sure we have the equipment they need.

CITA: How does this work? Let’s say we book The Phantom of the Opera, and you get the memo that Phantom is coming. Then what happens on your end?

GS: Sure. Every touring show has what we call a “rider.” A rider is basically a bible of what the show comes with, what labor they need, meaning stagehand labor—that’s something else we’re in charge of—what equipment they bring, and then what equipment they need. It also specifies how long it takes to load in a show, how long the show is. The riders are sometimes so in depth it goes into what kind of candle an actor needs for their dressing room.

When Phantom is put into the books, one of the production managers is assigned to the show. They go through the rider, make sure that we can accommodate everything that the show needs. What we can’t accommodate, we either supplement or we can redirect them to what we have and then come up with alternatives—if it’s a smaller rental. If they’re adamant about, “I need this amp for my guitar.” Then we will rent stuff if we don’t have it.

That production manager will work through the show. Normally the advance happens anywhere between a month to three months out, depending on how large the show is.

For Broadway shows, it normally takes about anywhere between 10 and 16 hours to load in a show. Most Broadway shows load in Monday, and we have our first performance on Tuesday. They’ll load in the entire show, they’ll do soundcheck, and then they load out … The production manager is usually the first person in and the last person to go. My typical day when I’m doing a show starts around 7:00 a.m. and gets done at 1:00 a.m. the next day.

CITA: You do that for four days in a row?

GS: Yeah, four days in a row. The Broadway shows are one of the easier shows to do. Morsani Hall is considered a roadhouse. A roadhouse means that we have most of the things that happen within Morsani, so it’s self-contained. For example, Phantom comes with everything they’re going to need. Broadway shows, for the most part, come with everything they need besides a few little odds and ends. They tend to be the easy ones. It’s the rentals, and the one-offs, and the concerts that sometimes end up being the most difficult for us.

CITA: Why is that? It seems like you’ve got a concert, you just get a mic, you plug in a sound system, you’re good to go.

GS [laughs]: It’s typically not like that. For instance, some of the smaller concerts just bring the artist and the artist’s guitar, and we supply everything else. What you see on stage is maybe 20% of the actual equipment it takes to run the concert. All you really see are the back line, the piano, the drums, a monitor … but to get all of that to work, it takes a while to load in.

Your dance shows even take longer sometimes, so your modern dance shows, like MOMIX, are very light[ing] heavy. We load in their lighting before they even show up. The day before they come in, we’ll have crew on that will set their lighting which is something that’s dictated by the show. MOMIX sends us a rider with a lighting plot, and we set the lighting plot even before they arrive. Sometimes what is a two-hour show takes three days to put together.

This is what the stage in Morsani Hall looked like when Wicked was loading in, 2017.

CITA: Right. A lot of what creates the magic and creates the illusion of theater is what production and costuming does. It’s the stuff that the audience doesn’t have to think about consciously. They can absorb lighting and music subconsciously and feel the feelings that they create. The catch-22 for you all is that nobody knows if you’re doing a good job unless you do a bad job.

GS: Exactly. We don’t get compliments, we get criticism. The only time you actually know we’re there is when something goes wrong.

CITA: Alright readers, so that means our production staff needs more compliments when you see a good show. When you see Gerard around, tell him that he did a good job. So Gerard, how did you end up here? First of all, tell us how long you’ve been at The Straz and then how does somebody get involved in theater production?

GS: I’ve been at the Straz … April was nine years. I started with the Patel Conservatory. I was one of their production people then moved over as a production manager to The Straz about five years ago. Last June, I became the director of production services.

I started out as an actor. I did theater in high school and performed on Ferguson Stage as a thespian. When I moved to college, I started a theater track for acting and needed a part time job, so I started doing work in the college tech shop. My technical director at the time took me under his wing and said, “You can make a whole career out of just doing this.” My sophomore year, I changed directions and did more technical theater.

Tech Theater-Annie_FameAtBlakeHS_TechTheater 021

Gerard Siegler hangs lights for Blake H.S.’s production of FAME.

CITA: Were you at USF?

GS: No, I went to Flagler College in St. Augustine.

CITA: Did you find that you enjoyed the technical side more than you did the acting side?

GS: I did. I could see the product progression more, and that satisfied me more. But it’s more pressure because, like I said, you do one wrong thing and it makes or breaks a show. For me, though, building the set, running sound, running lights, putting all that together, that really interested me.

CITA: And then you got a degree in theatrical production?

GS: Yeah.

CITA: Then what happened to you?

GS: After Flagler, I went to the Shawnee Playhouse in the Poconos for summer stock. I was the assistant technical director. One of my friends who graduated with me, we both decided that since we were already in Pennsylvania, we should move to New York City for a year. That’s what I did. I moved to New York for a year, did some odd jobs, picked up some theater stuff here and there, and then moved back to the Tampa Bay area to get married. My wife, who is in the theater department at the Patel, said “Why don’t you just come out and be a summer intern for Patel?” The day before I came in for my interview for the summer internship, the technical production person for Patel had put in his one month notice that he was leaving.

CITA: Whoa!

GS: I was hired for that position, and that was my start.

CITA: And the rest is history.

GS: Exactly.

CITA: Okay, so here you are, and you’ve been doing this for a while. You got seasoned out there in the world on your career trajectory. Do you still get nervous before a show goes up? Do you ever have feelings of, “Oh my gosh, I hope nothing goes wrong. I hope we did the lighting just right, I hope—”

GS: I get nervous the morning or the night before, thinking “What did I miss? What is going to go wrong?” Really, all it takes is for one little thing to go wrong and it can throw the whole day, especially when you’re dealing with different personalities. I’m dealing with local stagehands anywhere from … Three is normally our smallest crew, to some Broadway shows where you’re looking at 75-80 labor hands. Not to mention the actual tour, they’ve come with their own staff. So there’s always that sense of “What did I miss? What happened? What’s going to happen?” [laughs] It doesn’t matter how much pre-planning you do. When you get here and you get on the grounds, half the time the plan gets thrown out the window within the first 30 minutes.

CITA: Show business can get a little frustrating sometimes.

GS: As for the show itself, the only time I get nervous is when we’re falling behind. With The Straz being as well-known as we are, we sometimes get the first stop on tours. Once, a Broadway show had issues with their automation track. The floor that you see for Broadway shows, sometimes it’s painted elaborately, and that’s not actually our stage. It’s another deck that gets put on the stage. Sometimes they have what’s called an “automation track,” which is grooves within the stage that moves the furniture on and off.

For this show, we’re the first stop. Five minutes before I was supposed to open up the house and have the audience come in, their automation track broke. This is opening night of the first show of this new Broadway tour. I have to hold opening the house until we can get the track fixed because if we don’t get it fixed then the effect doesn’t work. That was nerve-wracking.

CITA: Did you get the automation track fixed in time for the show?

GS: Yeah. We were 20 minutes late opening up the house. We have a great usher staff and front of house staff that helped with the audience. We started only five minutes later than we would normally start.

CITA: We love these behind-the-scenes stories because it’s the show that people don’t see. It’s the high drama, the high tension of getting it to go flawlessly, or start on time. When you have all of these moving pieces in live theater, you don’t get a do over. Is that kind of excitement what drives you as part of technical production?

GS: I get my most joy from show to show. If you’re an actor touring, doing the same role for a year and a half, you’re doing the same role for a year and a half. Whereas, within a year and a half as a production manager, or the director of production services, I’m in charge of a couple hundred shows a year. I have a team, so it’s myself and there are three other production managers. Between the four of us, we are in charge of all the theaters except TECO theater.

Gerard Siegler works shows from all genres which includes being backstage with one of the dinosaurs from Erth’s Dinosaur Petting Zoo.

CITA: Which is almost unbelievable, that a staff that small can do that many shows. Because we don’t book shows in just the theaters. We’ve got Live and Local, we’ve got Straz Live in the Park, we’ve got Fourth Friday. We have so many other events that are happening outside of the theaters, too, that just the four of you make happen.

GS: Yeah. It’s not just the shows themselves. For instance, opera has two performances that they do, but the average opera takes anywhere between two to three weeks on the physical stage to go through. You’ve got a week of loading in the set and lighting and a week of tech rehearsals. Then you have two performances, and then you load it all out in one day and you’re on to the next one. That to me is what gets me going. It always changes. Hamilton is going to be here for four weeks this season. At each show there will be some new challenge that pops up, whether it’s, “My costume ripped” or “We ruined a costume.” Or, “The washing machine went out.” You’re always on your toes.

Close-up view of a sound board.

CITA: For people who want to be in the theater but not on stage, how do they get to where you are?

GS: I started in high school. I was one of three boys in my high school theater department, so I did a lot of stuff onstage, but I also did a lot of tech prep work. I helped with the sets, helped with the lights, even though I didn’t think about it as a career until college. If you really, really, really want to get a job nowadays behind the scenes, you either become an audio engineer or something with video. Those are the two things that are not going anywhere right now. We’re always looking for someone in audio, visual and lights. You have to be very good at what you do because as much as the actors are onstage doing their best, sometimes we’re the ones that break the performance because mics are popping.

CITA: Or you make the performance flawless.

GS: Exactly. Yes.

CITA: We have classes in technical theater here, right? Workshops for students?

GS: Yes. Patel has a stage management class and we’re going to try to work with them this year to make a technical theater class that deals with a little bit of everything. I give tours all the time to college and high school groups, especially that are technical theater oriented to come. They look at our stage; they can go into the booths.

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Inspiring the next generation of production managers, Gerard and his son Maddon on Carol Morsani Hall stage.

CITA: That’s cool.

GS: They go up to the fly rail—10 stories up. CJ Marshall, who’s our director of operations, has really tried to spearhead getting younger people interested in technical theater because when you go to a high school program, you get 30 kids who want to be actors and maybe two or three who want to work back behind the scenes. We’re trying to invest in the future.

CITA: That’s fantastic. Do you love your job?

GS: I do love it. Like I said, it’s a new thing every day. It always keeps me on my toes. This summer we’re updating and renovating a lot of our old equipment. We’re excited in the production department. We’re taking on a lot, especially with the next season almost here. It’s always fun.

testing the new hearing system at Paw Patrol

A family affair – Audrey Siegler, Patel Conservatory theater department managing director and Gerard’s wife, with their daughter Ellie, Gerard and son Maddon. Gerard is testing the new assisted listening system while the family enjoys Paw Patrol.

Caught in the act

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