Bringing Broadway to State Street

The process isn’t easy, yet remains mostly invisible to the audience

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Touring Broadway productions don’t travel light. They move with trucks of sets, costumes, audio and lighting equipment. When they arrive at Madison’s Overture Center, a load-in process begins — John Penisten, Overture’s director of production, calls load-in days “chaotic,” as costumes and props are organized backstage, while huge sets and equipment are rigged onto the Overture Hall stage.

A show like Hamilton — running at Overture from Jan. 6-18 — takes two and a half days to load-in, says Penisten, and a scenery- and costume-intense show like The Lion King can take up to four.

Of course none of this is visible when audiences take their seats to enjoy a Broadway show at the Overture Center. They see professional actors clad in intricate costumes and vivid sets on stage. What they don’t see is the extensive behind-the-scenes work by Overture staff to bring Broadway to Madison, season after season.

That process begins more than a year in advance of each season, when Tim Sauers, Overture’s co-CEO and chief artistic experiences officer, and Karra Beach, director of Broadway engagement programs, sit down with their partner presenter, Broadway Across America. Their mission: to determine what Broadway shows will make a stop here.

“We look at what’s doing well in New York, what shows are popular for people in Madison and what we know would do well in our city,” says Sauers, who is a passionate theater fan, taking in nearly 200 shows this year, from high school productions to shows in Chicago, Milwaukee and New York.

The team also consults its Broadway season ticket subscribers to learn what shows interest them, says Beach. That’s not unheard of, but it is unusual for artistic directors to involve patron choice as much as Overture does. Surveys are sent to its Broadway subscribers to learn what shows capture their attention, and for the last four years, Overture has taken groups of about 50 subscribers to New York, where they see shows on Broadway together and discuss which ones would be a good fit for Madison.

Once the shows are set and scheduled, Penisten’s intense planning work begins — it’s his job to coordinate with the touring productions to ensure shows are integrated with Overture’s overall performance and staff schedules.

“A lot of my job is living in the future,” says Penisten.

Penisten speaks with the head carpenters of each show months in advance to coordinate the logistics of how many crew members and stagehands Overture needs to provide to load in the show, and who from Overture’s “sound, audio, video, lighting, rigging, carpentry, props, wardrobe, hair and makeup departments” are needed.

It’s all quite detailed. Penisten confirms sound check times and the logistics around integrating the touring and house systems. Because Overture Hall has three balconies, Penisten often works with Overture’s head audio technician and a tour’s sound engineer to integrate their sound systems, ensuring the sound is good even in the upper seating.

Penisten credits Overture’s “technologically and physically advanced space” for the crew being able to “routinely set records for load-ins and load-outs.”

“We can unload two trucks at a time at our loading dock, which is unheard of for a lot of venues,” he says, while Beach notes that Overture has “an excellent crew and fantastic stagehands, and we hear all the time how great they are.”

Some Like It Hot, which ran at Overture from Nov. 11-16, had a five-truck load-in time of 7 a.m. on Nov. 11, yet performed its opening show at 7:30 p.m. that very same day.

There was a time when Madison didn’t have a theater that could handle several large-scale Broadway shows per season. Overture’s precursor, the Madison Civic Center, had the Oscar Mayer Theater, originally built in 1928 as the Capitol Theater and intended for films. While it did host one or two Broadway shows a year starting in 1974, the theater lacked a load-in dock, and Penisten says “it’s a miracle that we ever got a four- or five-truck show in on a Tuesday night,” unloading on the street and onto the stage “with no direct path.”

In the 1990s, Pleasant Rowland and Jerry Frautschi donated $205 million to replace the Civic Center with the Overture Center for the Performing Arts. Overture Hall was designed specifically for large-scale Broadway productions.

Overture increased the number of touring Broadway productions after The Lion King’s run during the 2009-10 season, says Sauers — audiences flocked to the show they recognized from the big screen. Overture has since included at least one big-name show per season — Hamilton taking that role this season.

The reach of Broadway shows on the Overture stage goes beyond Madison, says Shari Gasper, Overture’s director of communications and editorial content. People from smaller surrounding communities who are interested in Broadway, but don’t have the money or time to travel to New York, appreciate the opportunity to see large-scale Broadway productions close to home.

And the shows introduce musical theater to local students who might not have known that a career in musical theater was possible. Gasper cites Jamal Stone, who grew up in Sun Prairie and was a member of Overture’s Jerry Ensemble (a program meant to foster excellence in high school musical theater) in his high school years. He returned to the Overture stage as a professional in Some Like It Hot this fall.

In line with Overture’s mission to provide “extraordinary experiences for all” and boost accessibility for people with disabilities, three Broadway shows this season include captioning services for the first time (The Book of Mormon and the upcoming Beauty and the Beast and Hamilton).

“I work closely with the shows to make sure they understand the need for [accessibility],” says Beach. “We’ve built so much around our accessibility, and making sure that all of our patrons have access to extra experiences that help them appreciate the show and see the show in a different way.”