DISNEY FLIPS THE SCRIPT

The world’s biggest, busiest theater producer is shifting the model and making international more important than ever.

Hallo aus Hamburg, where I caught a performance of Die Eiskönigin for this edition’s SPOTLIGHT STORY, and welcome to Jaques, your biweekly guide to the international theater industry. New to Jaques? Here’s a post where you can learn more, including why I keep trying to make you pronounce it ‘JAY-kweez.’

In the spotlight for this edition: How one of the most influential musical theater producers in the world, Disney Theatrical Group, is rethinking Broadway’s traditional international pipeline. Before we dive in, though, here’s what’s happening around the world.

ABROAD/WAY BULLETPOINTS

• Speaking of Disney: The Lion King will launch a new open-ended run in Toronto in November 2024, and local press is calling it “an unprecedented move.” That’s because the musical, to be produced locally by Canadian impresario David Mirvish, has already had a sit-down, Broadway-replica run in Toronto (March 2000-January 2004), and since then tours of The Lion King have made stops in the city in 2011, 2014 and 2019. “Mirvish Productions has always put on shows that have not previously been seen by Toronto audiences for these high-profile [open-ended] engagements,” wrote J. Kelly Nestruck in The Globe and Mail. “Indeed, it’s rarely the case that a commercial show opens for a second sit-down run anywhere in the world in its original creative incarnation.” The story notes Mirvish’s belief that Toronto’s first Lion King would have run longer if it hadn’t been impacted by SARS in 2003, and that the title’s enduring success around the world was a major factor encouraging him to bring it back. In a separate piece, Nestruck called the return “major news for the local theatre industry from an employment point of view,” with Lion King set to join Come From Away as concurrent, open-ended productions expected to have a long-term impact on the city’s economy.

• The fallout from the September suicide of a company member at Japan’s high-profile Takarazuka Revue continues to prompt a flurry of local coverage as a labor standards inspection office conducted an on-site investigation of the company. Meanwhile, Takarazuka itself vowed to set up a panel of experts to improve corporate culture following the allegations that bullying and overwork prompted the 25-year-old company member to take her own life. Just a day after The Mainichi revealed that the troupe had already been hit with an official work improvement advisory back in September 2021, Takarazuka held its first performance in two months. New company chairman Koji Murakami, who took office that day, addressed the audience, offering “deepest apologies” for “the great concern that we are causing regarding the current situation.”

• Fresh off its 20th anniversary on Broadway, Wicked adds to its global roster this week with a new UK/Ireland tour kicking off in Edinburgh (Dec. 7-Jan. 14). It’s one of a number of Broadway-replica productions running around the world—there’s also an Australian staging now in Sydney (until Feb. 4) and soon moving to Melbourne (starting March 6)—and as fellow Substacker Natalie Rine points out, there are also some entirely new, non-replica productions of Wicked starting to show up around the world. Earlier this year a Brazilian non-replica played Sao Paolo (March 9-April 30, 2023), and now Denmark’s Fredericia Musicalteater and AHA Creations have pacted for a new non-replica to play Copenhagen starting in fall 2024 (when you can expect Wicked to be everywhere thanks to the big-budget Hollywood marketing campaign for the movie adaptation hitting cinemas Nov. 27, 2024).

• Studio Ghibli adaptation Spirited Away: Live on Stage hits HBO Max Dec. 24. With director John Caird (Les Miserables) overseeing a cast of 32 humans and more than 50 puppets, the well-received production premiered at Tokyo’s Imperial Theater and toured Japan last year; it arrives in the English-speaking world next year when it starts a run at the London Coliseum in April.

• Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 will make its Asian debut in Shanghai (Jan. 13-March 3, 2024) in a joint production of Shanghai Grand Theater, Shanghai West Bund Theater, and Eternity Culture. Chloe Treat directs and choreographs a non-replica, immersive staging of the Dave Malloy musical.

• Stage Entertainment’s upcoming Hamburg production of pop Shakespearean redux & Juliet will translate the book scenes into German but the songs will be performed in the original English, since that’s how the globally popular songs are known around the world anyway.

• As Here Lies Love in New York wraps up a run featuring Broadway’s first entirely Filipino cast, Prison Dancer, a musical based on the dancing inmates of Cebu who became a viral sensation back in 2007, just played an engagement at Ottawa’s National Arts Center. Created by Romeo Candido and Carmen De Jesus, directed by Nina Lee Aquino and starring an all-Filipino cast, the show premiered earlier this year at Edmonton’s Citadel Theatre, where Hadestown had a developmental run on its way to Broadway.

SPOTLIGHT: THE PIPELINE GOES BOTH WAYS NOW

The press event this morning for the new Disney musical Hercules looked, in many ways, like any other on Broadway. Cast members performed songs, design sketches were previewed, and a lead producer—in this case Disney Theatrical Group’s Chief Creative Officer, Thomas Schumacher—was on hand to tell the backstory.

But this event wasn’t anywhere near Broadway. It was in Hamburg, where Hercules premieres in March in a co-production between Disney’s theatrical division and its longtime European partner Stage Entertainment. When actor Benét Monteiro performed the title character’s signature tune, he didn’t sing “Go the Distance.” He sang “Endlich angekommen.”

For Disney, international is a vital component of their business—and Schumacher thinks it’ll only become more important, not just for him but for the industry as a whole. “I don’t think people understand how big the international theater market is,” he told me after the Hercules showcase. “That’s what this business really is now, and I think you’re going to see it more and more as the world adopts this American tradition and makes it their own.”

Hercules will kick off performances just as Disney Theatrical Group (DTGroup) itself marks 30 years on Broadway. In the three decades since Beauty and the Beast arrived in New York, DTGroup has grown into the world’s biggest, busiest international producer of Broadway-style theater, with more than 90 overseas replicas under its belt. Over that time the company has both won the respect of a skeptical, cliquey Broadway establishment and forged enduring relationships with the overseas producers who’ve joined them in bringing their work around the world. (Think Stage in Europe and Shiki Theatre Company in Japan.)

I’ve written before about how Disney’s global reach has allowed the company both the nimbleness and the tenacity to snatch success from the jaws of Broadway disappointments like Tarzan and The Little Mermaid. But this new Hercules, along with a heavily revised revival of Aida now in the Dutch city of Scheveningen, underscores an expansion of their strategy that’s seeing them develop new productions overseas with an eye toward bringing them Stateside, rather than the other way around.

“It used to be that you opened a show on Broadway and then you did a U.S. tour, and if the show had heat you started to think about where else it could go around the world,” Disney’s Anne Quart tells me. “For us that dynamic has totally changed. When we were thinking about producing Hercules, those international conversations happened well before we even started.”

In the wake of a recent restructuring, Quart became one of the three top leaders who will guide DTGroup into the future—and potentially shape the international theater market along the way. In September, she was appointed Executive Vice President, Producing and Development, and Executive Producer, while her fellow Disney veteran Andrew Flatt was named Executive Vice President and Managing Director. Both now share leadership responsibilities with longtime DTGroup chief Schumacher.

All three of them have made Disney’s international activities a top priority. “As part of our longer-term strategy, we’re really wanting to acknowledge that not everything needs to come out of New York and that there’s value in regional voices,” Flatt says. “How can we use the network of global talent that’s out there to create things from scratch, in different territories, in different languages, to test and see what works?”

In this edition’s SPOTLIGHT STORY, I’ll highlight:

• An inside look at DTGroup’s evolving global strategy, featuring the voices of all three members of its newly anointed triumvirate

• Hercules’ Hamburg launch, including an exclusive look at new costume designs and insights from Stage CEO Arthur de Bok

• a wide-angle view of DTGroup’s global footprint and the factors that helped them grow

• Three industry takeaways you don’t have to be a multibillion-dollar media conglomerate to appreciate

Let’s go the distance.