By Dan McCue
Staff Writer

Although presenting Broadway road shows has been part of the North Charleston Performing Arts Center mix since its opening in 1999, the series got a major boost when New York’s fabled Nederlander Organization decided to expand its offerings beyond its typical markets of Broadway, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Diego.

Since then, it’s added North Charleston, Knoxville, Tenn., and Ashville, N.C., to the short list of cities it visits. It reportedly will soon add a fourth in Durham, N.C.

Basically, the partnership works like this: Once Nederlander decides what 10 or 12 shows they’ll tour next fall, they send a list of those shows to David Holscher, general manager of the North Charleston Performing Arts Center, the North Charleston Coliseum and the Charleston Area Convention Center, who then gets together with his staff to decide which might work best in this market.

“We survey current core ticket holders, we meet and try to pick four or five that we think we can sell out or nearly sell out for a brief run,” said Holscher. “Then we get back in touch with New York and try to make the schedules work.”

North Charleston is considered a two-night town in the theatrical business, having consistent proven it can sell out or nearly selling out two consecutive performances of a given show.

While that makes the partnership one that the Nederlander Organization values, it also has a slight downside; it means North Charleston is only able to get shows for mid-week performances.

“That’s because touring companies split the week, playing only three-night towns on the weekends. Being a three-night town is something you grow into and something we’re evolving toward, especially with the growth in population the region is experiencing,” Holscher said.

“The one thing you don’t want to do is try to be a three-night town before the audience is there to support the shows. Being overly ambitious will only make you look bad.”

Like Internet pre-sales for concert tickets, the next season’s Broadway offerings are made known to a select population, known as series subscribers, before the general public, typically through a flyer given to them during the run of the last show of the season; this year’s final show is “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” which is scheduled for April 10 and 11.

“In April, May and June we’ll run our direct-mail campaign, and then put individual tickets on sale in October, shortly before the start of the season,” Holscher said.

But don’t expect individual tickets for the entire Broadway series to go on sale all at once. Hoscher said instead the Performing Arts Center generally only sells tickets for one performance at a time. When one show ends, tickets go on sale for the next.

Dan McCue is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dmccue@charlestonbusiness.com.

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