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Bringing Broadway to Iowa | Urban Plains

Bringing Broadway to Iowa

The evening was uncommonly warm for November as crowds drifted out into the street. The large throng of showgoers gradually thinned to a few scattered pedestrians as they moved farther away from the theater. Some talked and smiled, and quite a few hummed refrains of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat.

But the crowds weren’t swarming around New York City’s big Broadway theaters — they were right in the middle of Des Moines, experiencing Broadway in a city with a total metro area population of 569,000, compared to, for example, the Twin Cities’ 3.2 million.

Last fall, Des Moines played host to the popular musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat, shown here during its 2007 run in London.

“When you go out to dinner in downtown Des Moines and you hear the buzz and people talking about a show, they’re genuinely excited,” says Cindy Hughes Anliker, communications manager for Des Moines Performing Arts. “They’re proud that we have Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat here, or we have a popular show on Broadway like Motown or Kinky Boots coming to Des Moines. There’s just something really electric and inspiring about it.”

These high-profile traveling shows didn’t show up in Iowa’s capital by accident. Des Moines and its theatre community have purposefully shaped the city, both culturally and economically, to be a hotspot for traveling acts, which enhances life for thespians, spectators, and the city itself.

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Reaping the Benefits of a Broadway Boom

Midwestern cities are no strangers to Broadway stopovers. Chicago’s Broadway scene entertains 1.7 million people per year — a far cry from the nearly 12 million tickets purchased in New York but higher than Kansas City’s 300,000 annual theatergoers. The Twin Cities have more theater seats per capita than any other U.S. city besides the Big Apple. But both Chicago and Minneapolis-St. Paul’s populations are at least 10 times larger than Des Moines’s. And yet Des Moines continues to bring in equally recognizable titles, like The Book of Mormon and The Lion King, which debuts April 28.

“It’s not typical, for a town our size at least, to get the actual top-tier Broadway touring productions. Typically, a town our size would get maybe the second level productions,” says Maxwell Schaeffer, an actor in productions at theDes Moines Playhouse and a local media personality on 93.3 KIOA. “We’ll get shows here even before Kansas City or Omaha or even Minneapolis will get them.” Case in point: In November, The Bridges of Madison County launches its nationwide tour at the Des Moines Civic Center (perhaps fittingly, as the real-life Madison County is just southwest of the Des Moines metro area).

The Broadway hit Kinky Boots landed in Des Moines this past year. Here it’s being performed in NYC with Cyndi Lauper, who wrote the music and lyrics.

The growth in Broadway buzz in the Midwest runs parallel to that of the nation as a whole. Since 2004, Broadway show attendance has increased by almost 13 percent — about 1.51 million additional attendees nationwide. And according to The Broadway League, the industry trade association, performances have also seen an increase of 145 additional playing weeks, while gross ticket sales have nearly doubled. But it’s on the road that shows have seen the most growth. In the past 10 years, touring gross ticket sales have increased by a third.

And that growth is largely the result of enthusiastic, small-city crowds. “Show [producers] tell me time and time again how awesome the Des Moines audiences are,” Anliker says. The 11,000 season ticket holders in Des Moines are just one selling point — the DMPA can promise a half-full house before regular tickets even go on sale. It’s more than just numbers, though. “Our audiences are truly engaged in the shows,” she says. “They laugh in the right places. They get the meaning behind the show. They’re educated; they’re excited; they’re engaged. So the audience here, they’re truly special. We appreciate what they do to help us bring these high-caliber shows to the Civic Center, to our community.”

Show Me The Money

While enthusiastic audiences are encouraging for Broadway leaders, it’s the dollars that seal the deal. And the Des Moines theatre community does what it can to deliver. “We invest in Broadway,” Anliker says. The DMPA offers financial contributions to Broadway shows, most recently, Disgraced and The Last Ship, as a way of calling dibs on a future tour’s schedule.

Joseph drew in big crowds to Des Moines, a city of only 569,000 people.

Libbie and Anliker agree that a well-funded theatre scene contributes to not only the economy, but also to the city’s culture. “It creates a community that people want to live in,” Libbie says.

Luckily, from an economic standpoint, touring productions are mutually beneficial for the performers, producers, and the city of Des Moines. Anliker says traveling shows make a local economic impact because showgoers “make an evening” of a performance. “They just don’t go to a show; they start with dinner, or, if they’re from out of town, they stay at a hotel,” she says. “So when you have 2,700 people going to a show every night for a week, before you know it, you have thousands of people visiting local restaurants, hotels, and retail establishments, and you see that we’re creating an economic buzz.” She estimates that the Willis Broadway Series, the series that brings in big-name NYC shows to Des Moines, generates about $30 million for the local economy.

That’s not just smart marketing talk from Anliker. The Broadway League reports that each ticket sale contributes 3.5 times as much to the local economy. And market analyst Michael Libbie says investing in Broadway shows improves Des Moines’s economy. “There’s a number of ways that the shows contribute to the economy of the city,” Libbie says. “It’s what we call clean money. There’s no manufacturing that goes on with the arts, necessarily. It’s tourism dollars that come in. Those types of dollars assist in the overall economic well-being in a city like Des Moines.”

5And with additional funding and culture comes more talent and higher-quality, non-Broadway productions. Local, amateur performers like Schaeffer appreciate high-quality productions coming into town. “As a performer, you get to see professionals living out your dreams,” Schaeffer says. “It ramps up the quality of local productions because we are all competing for the same dollars. The truth is that it makes everybody work a little harder and want to try to aspire to that Broadway level.”

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