Transcript
A (0:01)
80% of shows don't recoup. Nobody knows anything. I always say William Goldman, who wrote the Princess Bride and All the President's Men, among many other things he said about the film business, nobody knows anything. And so I always use that because we have no idea what's gonna work. We're going on our gut and our passion and our belief. So who is to say?
B (0:29)
I'm Mary Long, and that's Jill Fuhr. She's a Broadway producer, one of the people who helped bring Hamilton, which has grossed over a billion dollars since its 2015 debut, to Broadway and beyond. I caught up with Jill to talk about the business of Broadway. We also discussed how to find investors to finance shows when most projects don't even make back their initial investment. What made Hamilton work and theater's scalability problem? Jill, the world of theater is kind of its own little island. So maybe you can start by G, I guess an idea for those that are unfamiliar with the business of theater. What is it that a Broadway producer actually does?
A (1:11)
A Broadway producer wears many hats. And there are a lot of different ways to be a Broadway producer. If you look at the Playbill title page, you'll see a lot of names, usually above the title. And that's because there are lead producers, which is what I generally am. And we're the people who shepherd the whole show from beginning to end. And we're responsible for literally everything. Developing it, raising money, overseeing the casting, the marketing, the advertising, making decisions about when we should close, if we can raise a priority loan to keep running. So many, many questions that we answer. But there are also co producers who are the people who help us get the shows up by either giving or getting a certain amount of money. And there are different tranches, and you get more bang for your buck depending on how much you give or get, right? And we have kickers once we hit profit, et cetera. But I often say that producing is the art of saying yes, judiciously and no, politely. I read that somewhere, and I think it's a perfect way to encapsulate what we do. Because what I'm trying to do is to support an artist's vision, but it also has to make financial sense. So there, you know, there's a lot to balance in that equation.
B (2:40)
So maybe let's talk about how something goes from a vision that an artist has, an idea that an artist has, to a actual project that is real, physical, and hopefully makes financial sense. How does a show go from idea to production?
A (2:58)
Well, every show has its own DNA so every show takes a different path, and part of the producer's responsibility is to figure out what path makes the most sense for that particular show and that particular creative team. And you do that. Obviously, with the creative team. You're not just making that decision unilaterally. But, you know, I'll use Suffs, which is my recent show about the suffragists who got the 19th Amendment passed just as an example. My producing partner, Rachel Sussman, she had the idea to do it. She brought the only firsthand account of the moment to Shana Taub. It was a book called Jail for Freedom by Doris Stevens, who was a character in the show. And she gave it to Shayna. She said, I think this needs to be musicalized. People don't know this story, and I think you're the person to do it. Shayna read it. This was back, by the way, in 2014. She read it. She loved it. She said, I'm your gal. I want to do this. Two years later, in 2016, they came to me because neither of them, they're much younger than I am, and neither of them at that point had had any commercial experience. So Rachel specifically wanted to work with a woman who had done it before. And so we started in earnest in 2016 with. We had like a 45 minute session, which was just us, where we had some actors come in, Nicky James being one of them, who ended up in the show. She's been one of Shayna's muses since the beginning. So we started with that. Then we partnered with the Public Theater, which was amazing for us. And many shows partner with not for profits before they actually make a move commercially. And it's a way to test out the project. You get to use their contracts so it's cheaper. Typically, you enhance a production that the regional or not for Profit produces. So, for example, with Sups, we raised 50% of the production costs for the Public Theater run. When we did that, we were attached as the commercial producers. So we went to the Public. We didn't get the greatest reviews. We got mixed reviews. There were wonderful things about the show, problematic things about the show. We took the next year and a half to work on it, and we knew, we thought we knew what we had to do, and basically everyone had written us off. But we really believed in the story and the timing. Never. It kept getting timelier. And then we brought it to Broadway last year, 2024. So, you know, 10 years from when they started. It's endless. It is an endless journey. And there are twists and turns and you just never know what's going to happen.