Theater Is an Inconvenient Business

Broadway producer Kevin McCollum is a rare creature—a visionary who takes chances on young writers and new work. He has more faith in daring, grown-up material than celebrity actors and saccharine endings. He has spun hits from scripts starring young people with AIDS (Rent), puppets who sing about sexuality and poverty (Avenue Q), and depressive protagonists who may or may not commit suicide at the end of the show (The Drowsy Chaperone). If you care at all about making quality work (and making money) in American theater, pay careful attention to this man.

McCollum came to the 5th Avenue Theatre last week to discuss his latest hit, In the Heights—a musical about Dominican-Americans living in New York, which won a pack of Tony Awards and will open in Seattle on September 28. The 5th Avenue invited me to interview McCollum, in part, because he is a successful Broadway producer and I am a critic who routinely dismisses Broadway as 90 percent bullshit. I sat down with McCollum and had one of the best conversations about theater I’ve had in years. Here are some excerpts from what he said, slightly chopped up and rearranged for clarity:

On his early life: When I was 14, my folks died and I moved from Hawaii to Chicago, where I became a performer. I was an actor and got a master’s degree in film production from USC in Los Angeles. Then I started the Booking Group in New York—I would go to producers and say, “I can sell your show to Seattle,” for example. Then along came Rent. Jonathan [Larson, its creator] was a friend. I’ve always been humbled and very, very sad that we lost Jonathan.

On how to become a Broadway producer: People ask: “How do you become a producer?” Take writers out to lunch. Producing is alchemy—it’s alchemy between people. I’m trying to think of a better way to describe it, but I can’t. I’m not a huge fan of turning movies into musicals; I’m not a fan of jukebox musicals. I care about finding and developing original material. I’m very happy that I’ve brought four new writers and four new directors to Broadway. Most people producing come from money—I didn’t come from money, and there are only a handful of us like that. I wish I had more peers. I don’t want to name names, but there are fewer than 10 of us who are commercial producers who are not nonprofit who take a writer and grow a show.

On how he chooses which musicals to produce: My shows initially sound impossible. If it sounds like a sure thing, I run away. Theater is an inconvenient business, and you have to surprise people. I am an enemy of cynicism, and the cynicism comes when you aim too low. I love shows that, on paper, make people say: “What? You’re going to put puppets on Broadway? You’re going to put a drug dealer on Broadway? These people have AIDS! You’re going to produce an entire show about a guy who just plays a record? You can’t do that!”

On live entertainment in the age of the internet: People in the theater complain about the internet and iPhones, but this age of technology is driving us together. We’re learning that the internet is the tool, not the destination. The destination is to gather together, and inconvenience is what builds culture. We have to go to the river to wash our clothes and we tell stories while we’re washing, and that’s how culture is born.

On the problems with Broadway: Unlike film or TV or anything else, it’s a finite inventory and a diminishing-inventory business—there are only 40 Broadway theaters. All the deals are the same: It becomes about the real estate, which becomes about celebrity. The pressure to get stars and create new stars is very difficult. I’ve even asked myself before, “How do we keep the show running?” and felt the pressure of celebrity over who’s right for the show. We’ve lost the sense of urgency and deadline in making things—it’s all about the lawyers now. Too much deal and too little show. And the ticket prices are more expensive. Rent opened with a top ticket price of $67.50. Now it’s $140. Broadway is doing well in terms of numbers, but its profit margins are less—we made more per ticket at $67.50. And you cannot target the discounts anymore because the internet is the advertising. If I send a discount code to 12 people, it’ll get linked all over the place—it’s hard to strategize ticket prices and discounts because it’s frictionless. And the real estate on Broadway is more expensive. I’m playing around with off Broadway—open a show there and let the people tell you where it should go.

On unions: I’m not anti-union at all, but I’m anti-inefficiency. It’s a challenge, because the current rules are the result of years of bad negotiation. For example, Sunday work is time and a half. Why? Because that’s when people are available to come see shows! Why not make Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday time and a half? Take Wednesday off! Take all of September off—treat it like a golf course. Let’s reseed all the theaters in September! People always lose money in September, anyway.

On his favorite moment as a producer: It was the second preview of La Bohème, and the movie Moulin Rouge had just come out so there was some interest. Two twentysomething kids came out and I asked, “Did you like it?” And they said, “Yeah, but how were they allowed to rip off Rent like that?” And I thought, “Aha! My job is done.”

On theater, death, and drugs: People are thirsty for new material but they sometimes mistrust it because they’ve been duped before and want to feel better about the ticket purchase up front. I’m disappointed often by the theater, but I’ve never been disappointed for the artisans who make theater. Critics forget we’re making something in real time out of thin air—and lots of personality. It’s passionate chaos and it dissolves the minute you make it. Going to the theater is about contemplating your own mortality more than any other art form. It’s not projected, you can’t leave and get a sandwich and come back, it’s not free. Theater is about keeping people surprised and in awe about life. The business I’m in is closer to the drug business than anything.

On developing In the Heights: I saw a reading and didn’t love it—and this is how producing is alchemy. He wrote this show about a kid who was gay and a dad who was a baseball person, and I said, “We don’t need a Hispanic Rent. What do you do during the day?” He said his day job was teaching seventh graders ESL, and I said, “Write about that.” We built a theater for it at 37th and 10th—it’s a very New York story. We spent $2.5 million and lost another half a million during the run at 26 weeks. It was a 250-seat theater. We had to sell the theater right after the recession hit because there was a dispute—I learned to “stick to the business you know.” So we had a $3 million investment and got $7 million to make a $10 million musical. And it was successful. There are two things that can make a musical successful: winning the Tony for original musical and getting a movie made of a musical. I didn’t like the Rent movie, but it helps.

On this interview: When does the interview begin? Is this conversation it? Well, try not to make me look stupid. Just kidding. You work for an alternative weekly—I get it. Do whatever it is you have to do.

This story has been updated since its original publication.