Hello again from Beyond Broadway!
This month, we’re speaking with Carolyn D. Miller, a Producer who has worked both on Broadway with Memphis: the Musical and in the Regional Theatre scene. Her most recent project is her own production company in NYC called Buck60 Productions and an outreach and service program called Broadway South.
AKR: I’m sorry we couldn’t meet in person while you were down here in Memphis recently. How was your experience outside of New York City and Broadway?
CDM: It was kind of a wild ride. A show is a show. It doesn’t matter if you’re trying to get it up on Broadway or producing it in DeSoto County [Mississippi], it is a tremendous, herculean effort. We were doing Beauty and the Beast, produced by DeSoto Family Theatre, which is located in South Haven Mississippi. Daniel Meuller, the director, who is also a theatrical designer and who is the whole reason I became involved at all, grew up in South Haven, and the DeSoto was his hometown theatre company. He and I had a very fateful conversation one night, on a rainy New York day at Junior’s Restaurant in Schubert Alley. He was very interested in giving back to the community that gave him so much and so, Beauty and the Beast was essentially the pilot production for a group that Daniel and I are currently calling Broadway South.
AKR: So, Broadway South is a community outreach and service organization. What did you learn from your pilot production?
CMD: Daniel’s original intention for this project was, “Oh, I want to bring a projection designer down for Beauty and the Beast, and I want to bring a sound designer down.” Well, we realized that DFT didn’t have too many people who were interested in technical theatre, and so what Broadway South needs to do when working with a community theatre is bring in a choreographer. We brought in Broadway’s Kevin Covert who has been in the original Broadway companies of Spamalot!, Memphis: the Musical, and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying with Daniel Radcliffe. We do have to figure out a model for how we sustain this kind of project, because we really want to make it affordable for the organizations that we’re trying to serve.
AKR: What is your theatrical background?
CDM: I went to the University of Colorado at Boulder where I got my BFA in Musical Theatre. When I was there, I decided there weren’t enough musicals in the school year, so I chose to do A Chorus Line as my thesis project. That was such a successful “experiment” that I actually founded a non-profit theatre company in Boulder called the Boulder Broadway Company. When I moved to NY, I got a job with producers who, at the time were producing Off-Broadway and had a property that was moving to Broadway. That was Memphis: the Musical. That was my first producing job.
AKR: And this was Junkyard Dog Productions?
CDM: Yes. I joined Junkyard Dog about three months after they opened, which was an incredible experience because I was hired to do administrative things for them. The company was made up of four producers, Randy Adams, Ken and Marleen Alhadeff, and Sue Frost. Because two of them are Seattle-based, it was basically producers Sue, Randy, and myself in the office everyday. That meant that I had opportunities to be in casting sessions, or in commercials, or in meetings with authors, or in marketing meetings. So, little by little, I went from being administrative to being part of the producing team. Looking back, the most interesting thing I ever did was to say, as Memphis was moving into rehearsals for Broadway, “You know, I’d really like to blog.” [The producers] were not too familiar with the blog scene and so what that meant is that I felt sort of responsible for creating a ton of content for Memphis. The production had given the actors flip cameras and I got one, so I started editing little backstage videos and doing interviews and things like that with the cast. This was at a time when the more your content was refreshed, the higher your website appeared on Google search results. So, the fact that I was blogging everyday, and the fact that it was embedded in the show website actually had very interesting side effects because it meant that Memphis: the Musical – a show which is a difficult name to define in a unique way because of Memphis the city – kept rising in organic search results somewhat because my content was refreshing daily. So, as producers, we were like, “oh this little fun blog is actually doing something. This is really interesting.” Because my personal projects have been developing quickly, I have recently left Junkyard Dog as an Associate Producer and have started my own company called Buck60 Productions in an attempt to develop musicals and other projects of my own.
AKR: Did your work on Memphis: the Musical inspire your concept for Broadway South in any way?
CDM: When I was involved with Memphis: the Musical on Broadway, I got a letter from a schoolteacher in Harlem that said, “I saw the show, and I teach 5th grade in Harlem and I think, because of the themes of the show, and what my students are studying, that it would be awesome if there was a way for my students to come see the show.” So, I swiveled around in my desk chair and just announced to the office, “How do we get these kids in Harlem to the show?” We developed a program called Inspire Change which was a non-profit through which we could bring students from local area schools to see the show, and add a whole educational component. So, between Broadway and the national tour, thousands of kids all across the country ended up being served by this program.
AKR: Was Inspire Change the program behind the video of the flashmob at the end of a matinée performance of Memphis a few years ago?
CDM: Yes! That was a huge undertaking. That event came about when the head of Audemars Piquet saw the show and wanted to do something really big and give back to kids at the same time. We hired several teaching artists to travel to these various schools to do the workshops with them and teach them the finale choreography. Ultimately, the kids jumped the cue – they were supposed to do it during the bows, but there is a giant pause in the score for Huey to say “My name is Huey Calhoun, goodnight and hockadoo!” Because of that pause, the cast could actually hear the kids sing along. So it all worked out!
While that is awesome, I kind of thought of Broadway South as being the reverse of that, which is: all I needed and all I was interested in was one kid. If we can effect change in one child, if we can inspire them at some point, who knows what can happen?
AKR: Are there any new or emerging playwrights that you’re particularly excited about?
CDM: There are definitely some composers I’m interested in: Michael Mott, Ryan Scott Oliver, and Joe Iconis. Goodspeed Musicals, which has a writing colony which is, I think, two years old now, and they do a lot to feature musical writers, and I’ve just been invited to their showcase, which is once a week every week in February, to see new writers like Adam Gwon and Elizabeth A. Davis, who was nominated for a Tony for her role in Once: the Musical, but has now written a piece. I’m really excited by the gentlemen who do PigPen Theatre Company, they did a show in NY called The Old Man and the Old Moon, and they’re doing things with original stories, original music, and puppets. There’s a brilliant theatre company out here that does a four person Hamlet and a four person St. Joan in rep that kind of blew my mind in a way – Bedlam Theatre – they’re now at the Redgrave Theatre off Bleeker.
AKR: Who was, or is, your greatest teacher?
CDM: My Kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Matthews, because she saw that I wanted to do more in class than she was teaching other students, so she gave me a math book to do while other kids were doing other things. She invested in me really early on, and that was awesome because I realized I could ask for more challenges from my teachers. My second person is my Development IV (History of Theatre) teacher at the University of Colorado, Merrill Lessley. One day after class, he said, “Carolyn, are you going to apply for grad school?” And I said, “No, I wasn’t thinking about it. Why?” And he said, “Because we need people like you in the theatre.” And that exploded my brain. He gave me the validation to be a theater professional. That is essentially what drives me to Broadway South – to someday look at a child and say, “We could use you in the theatre, if you want.”
Thank you, Carolyn!
Live, Love, Learn,