RISE Series E6: Heather Shields and Erica Rotstein (The Business of Broadway)
The Women & Theatre RISE Series presents mini-interviews conducted at the Inaugural RISE Summit with network partners of RISE Theatre, all of which are organizations working to increase equity in the theatre industry. In this episode, Hayley and Amy talk with Heather Shields and Erica Rotstein from The Business of Broadway. Scroll down for episode notes and transcript!
Episode Notes
Hosts: Hayley Goldenberg and Amy Andrews
Guest: Heather Shields and Erica Rotstein, The Business of Broadway
Music: Chloe Geller
Listen to all published episodes of the Women & Theatre RISE Series here.
Many thanks to RISE Theatre, Maestra Music, Playbill, and all the amazing organizations working to increase equity in theatre!
Episode Resources:
The Business of Broadway website
Follow Business of Broadway on Instagram
About The Business of Broadway:
The Business of Broadway’s goal is to pull back the curtain and democratize the business knowledge that has so often been withheld and therefore perpetuated a hierarchical system with producers situated at the top. By empowering people with deeper insight into how the artistry and economics interplay, their aim is not only to lay the groundwork for more effective and nonhierarchical future collaborations, but also allow people to urgently challenge the ways in which the business has historically operated and consider how we can build a more equitable, inclusive industry model that serves everyone.
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Episode Transcript
(Music)
Hayley: Hello, beautiful people, and welcome to the Women & Theatre RISE Series! We’re your hosts, Hayley Goldenberg…
Amy: …and Amy Andrews! On this series, we share mini-interviews conducted at the Inaugural RISE Summit with network partner organizations of RISE Theatre.
Hayley: We’re thrilled to uplift these amazing organizations that are working to make the theatre industry a more equitable space.
Amy: Today, we’re excited to share our interview with Heather Shields and Erica Rotstein of The Business of Broadway.
(Music)
Hayley: Hello, beautiful people! We are here at the Women & Theatre Podcast booth at the RISE Summit with Heather Shields and Erica Rotstein from Business of Broadway. Heather, Erica, thanks so much for being here with us. Could you please share your pronouns and tell us a little bit about Business of Broadway?
Heather: Hi everyone, I’m Heather Shields, my pronouns are she/her.
Erica: I’m Erica Rotstein, my pronouns are she/her.
Heather: So Erica and I are two of the co-founders of The Business of Broadway. We’re not joined today by our colleagues Rachel Sussman and Sammy Lopez. In 2019, we got together because as relatively early-career producers, we started to sense this barrier towards true equitable change within our industry, and that barrier was simply knowledge. And so we created The Business of Broadway essentially to demystify how the commercial producing theatre model works.
We figured we cannot actually make real, lasting, equitable, impactful change unless everyone is on the same page about how it’s historically operated, how we got to this point. And so we started teaching these classes really to speak to the theatre makers, the people who didn’t necessarily identify as business people or weren’t necessarily interested in producing, but were seeking a greater understanding and maybe a little bit more agency within their own artistic career.
And of course, then the pandemic started, and we pivoted online, and we just found that there was a deep, deep thirst for this information, not only here in New York, but around the country and the whole world. I mean, the other night, we had people joining us from Australia, we had England, we’ve had people from Malaysia and South Africa join us. So it’s been a very enriching experience.
Erica: And part of what has also happened is - you know, we sort of set out with this goal of creating a shared foundation of knowledge, a community of folks who all were operating from the same starting point in conversation and in understanding about how the business works.
And what that has also turned into is a community of humans who can sort of use that shared foundation to ask questions and to interrogate the model as it currently operates and think about how we might be doing things better in order to make the industry more equitable, more successful - by whatever million of measures you might use to measure that success. And it’s really lovely the way sort of a community has formed around The Business of Broadway as well.
Amy: That’s fantastic, thank you both! Could you tell us something that you’re working on right now, at Business of Broadway or in general, that’s lighting you up?
Erica: For Business of Broadway, Heather was talking a little bit about how we’ve sort of accidentally had this international reach. And one of the partnerships that we’re now in our third year of is a partnership with Korea Arts Management Service, KAMS, which is a government-funded organization in Seoul that is supporting the professional development of musical theatre producers in Seoul. And so actually, we are about to have our third exchange moment with KAMS, where they are bringing a cohort of Korean producers here to New York…
Hayley: So cool!
Erica: Right! For like, 10 days of immersion, and we are their education partner. And that’s now every October, so that’s on the horizon.
And then, as individuals, frankly, all four of us - each of us wears many, many hats. And so I think there’s different things lighting us up based on which hat we’re wearing. But it’s interesting how the work we do with BoB has sort of found its way into the work we do as producers and vice versa. Like, I at the moment am working on a “Get out the vote” music video project for Broadway Votes.
Hayley: Amazing.
Erica: …which is a new theatre industry nonpartisan initiative to harness our community to get out the vote. And Heather is - if you don’t mind me speaking on your behalf…
Heather: Please!
Erica: …currently building out what it looks like to lean into more immersive content. She’s been a producer of a show called BATSU! since its creation, she’s now on Twenty-Sided Tavern, and sort of looking at - what does it look like to use immersive as an adjacent and new learning model relative to Broadway, right?
Rachel has an entirely new production company called Soto Productions that she’s helping to build, focusing on bringing new voices into the marketplace.
And Sammy is one of the co-founders of Theatre Producers of Color, which is looking specifically at - how do we open doors and access for new investors who haven’t otherwise had the opportunity to become a part of theatre in that way? And so, what’s also fun about our collective is that I also get lit up by what lights them up, which is pretty cool.
Hayley: Yeah! That’s amazing.
Amy: That is the best thing about collaboration, yeah.
Erica: Amen, amen!
Hayley: Heather, could you talk a little bit about - what’s one of the biggest challenges that’s facing the theatre industry right now?
Heather: Yeah, so I have good news and I have bad news. So the good news is that we at The Business of Broadway have pretty much found the one answer to the question of what is wrong, what’s broken about the Broadway business model.
Hayley: Please share!
Heather: And the bad news is that - it’s everything. I shouldn’t say everything, but the bad news is that it’s much deeper, much more systemic than simply Broadway, than theatre, than the business model. It’s national issues, it’s state, it’s local issues - everything from a lack of universal health care to the income gap…
All of these things put burdens not only on potential audience members, but how can…you know, every single show is a startup, right? And when you put the burden of health care on that small startup’s employer, that can balloon the costs, and that’s not a good way to be running a small business. So these are things that we can do.
There’s also the fact that for decades, for generations, we’ve been eroding the funding for the arts, so we have now generations of theatre-goers - or actually, a lack of generation of theatre-goers… People, young people - and I say “young,” I’m also including our own generation, which is by most measures not necessarily “young” anymore - elder millennials will always be young! …But you know, even starting at Generation X and our own generation, arts funding has just been gutted on the national, state, and local levels, and so you know, we have people who don’t have a habit and an appreciation of theatre. And so we’ve seen subscriber bases in the nonprofits completely decline.
And so our issues are more than just one producer or one arts organization coming up with a great, brilliant, brand new idea. It’s much more systemic than that. And so when we actually zoom out, our problems are not specifically our own. And what is going to be the most impactful for the health and long-term success - again, as Erica said, by however you measure success - we have to look at the health of our country and our communities and our neighbors.
Hayley: Yeah, couldn’t agree more.
Amy: Yeah. Let’s get out the vote and make some change, right?
Erica: Amen.
Amy: Fantastic! Could you tell us - what do you think is one small step that listeners can take to make our industry a little bit more equitable?
Erica: If I had to guess, I’m gonna - I’ll speak on the micro, and Heather will speak on the macro. (laughs)
Hayley: I love that collaboration, you know each other that well.
Erica: On the micro, which is to say within our own community, right… I think for me, candid, transparent, collaborative communication is the number one way for us to navigate together toward finding a path forward, right? I think because the financial model has become as strapped as it has, and because unfortunately, so often artists are working for less than they deserve in our industry… There is a certain culture of distrust, I think, that has seeped.
And I think to the extent that we can approach trying to solve these problems together as collaborators and be in honest transparent conversation about the challenges we’re facing, the needs we have, our desire to support one another and create an industry that supports everyone working within it, I personally think that is a major step that we all can take together. Just sort of assuming goodwill and trust and choosing to be in communication and collaboration with one another towards finding the answers.
Heather: And I mean, I’m just going to hearken back to something that you said - VOTE! You know, vote locally, vote nationally in the federal elections, and statewide elections. Get involved in your local arts organizations in your local community, whether you’re in New York or elsewhere.
I like to talk about how this is the oldest art form in the entire world. Telling stories is something that we’ve been doing since the beginning of humanity, and so we’re poised in this very privileged position to be able to talk about the needs of our fellow humans better than almost anybody. So just getting involved, and… yeah, voting! Broadway-Votes.org for all of your voter registration, what is on my ballot, all your needs.
Hayley: Amazing.
Erica: It’s nonpartisan as well.
Heather: Correct, nonpartisan.
Hayley: Great! Thank you so much for being here today with us, Heather and Erica. Before we run, can you tell our listeners where they can find you and also Business of Broadway on the internet?
Heather: So Business of Broadway is thebusinessofbroadway.com, on social we are @bizofbway, and I’m just @heathereshields.
Erica: And ericarotstein.com.
Amy: Fantastic! Thank you both for being with us, and thank you all for listening to our conversation with Heather Shields and Erica Rotstein from Business of Broadway.
(Music)
Amy: Women & Theatre is a proud network partner of RISE Theatre.
Hayley: Thank you so much to RISE, Maestra, Playbill, and RISE Program Manager Victoria Detres for collaborating with us on this series. Thank you for listening to the Women & Theatre Podcast. We’re your hosts, Hayley Goldenberg…
Amy: …and Amy Andrews! If you like what you heard, subscribe and give us a 5-star review wherever you listen.
Hayley: You can also follow us on social @womenandtheatreproject to make sure you never miss an episode.
Amy: The music for this show was written by talented Women & Theatre community member Chloe Geller.
Hayley: Thanks again for listening, everyone. See you next time!
Amy: Bye!
