Broadway Debut

The old movies portray Broadway producers as either cigar-chomping ogres who ogle girls in chorus lines, or as tap-dancing Mickey Rooney types who turn sinking shows into successes. Associate Producer John Hart '75 fits neither role, and his first show, Eubie!, a 22-song salute to composer Eubie Blake, has been a critical and popular success from the start.

The show is a musical revue in which an all-black cast of seven actresses and five actors, ac- companied by a nine-piece jazz band, sing and dance their way through a fast-moving montage of Blake's work. (Blake, a fast-moving 95-year-old, son of former slaves, has been making music since before this century began. Dartmouth paid tribute to his accomplishments in 1974 by awarding him an honorary degree.) The show's director, Julianne Boyd, conceived the revue after hearing an old recording of Shuffle Along, the 1921 musical written by Blake and Noble Lee Sissle which opened Broadway to black talent.

Hart majored in government at Dartmouth, not drama, and he stayed on the audience's side of the curtain. "I loved theater at Dartmouth, but I was turned off by the Drama Department clique," he explained. "On Broad-way, actors seem to have grown up; they're not always performing off-stage." After graduation, traveling in Europe, and working on a Great Lakes freighter. Hart decided it was time to begin a professional career in New York. He wrote his resume, interviewed with banks ("although I didn't really want to be a banker"), and went to work for a business consulting firm before realizing he was most interested in show business. "I knew I didn't have much in the way of the usual skills," Hart reflected, "but I thought I did have the ability to raise money."

A fellow member of the board of governors of the New York Dartmouth Club, Richard Press '59, encouraged him to work in theater rather than film production and introduced him to a producer who was working on a show featuring the music of Eubie Blake. Hart attended the backers' audition last March, "fell in love with the show," lined up $200,000 of the $350,000 needed to put it on stage, and signed on as an associate producer.

"Capitalizing a Broadway show is a complicated and risky affair," Hart explained. The odds are not on the side of success. He estimated that eight out of ten productions do not break even, and said that a money-loser is not even much of a tax shelter unless it closes in the same fiscal year it opens. Shares or "units" of Eubie! sold for $7,000, and backers receive 100 per cent of the profits until they recoup their investment. Then profits are shared with the producers and writer. With Eubie! producers were looking for a theater that would balance two competing objectives: a house small and intimate enough to encourage rapport between the actors and audience, but big enough to allow them to make money. The theater they chose, the Ambassador, has 1100 seats and the potential for a $144,000 per-week gross. To be profitable, the show needs to take in between $70,000 and $80,000 each week, Hart said.

The production costs of a small-cast, musical revue like Eubie! are comparatively modest one of the reasons for its financial success - but an unexpected event such as a newspaper strike can make expenses multiply. While the papers were out last fall, Hart pointed out, the show's weekly advertising bill' shot from $7,000 to $20,000 (because of the necessity of buying more television and radio time) and the advertising budget increased by $100,000

Although some producers limit their involvement in a show to raising money and hiring the director. Hart likes to be involved creatively. "I think I have a good artistic sense, coupled with a good audience sense," he said. "I can help the director by seeing the show from an objective distance." He admitted, however, that producing can be a disconcerting business, especially for a beginner. "You have to pick a show you believe in," he noted, "but there are lots of unknowns. We fired our original choreographer a week before we opened in Philadelphia, for example. We didn't know what was going to happen."

He didn't need to worry; praise from critics has been lavish. Jack Kroll in Newsweek said the members of the cast "can all do just about everything you can think of with a face, a body, and a spirit brimming with the joy and pride of superlative play that is performing at its best. Humor, sweetness, sex and jive re-create the thermonuclear fusion of vaudeville, operetta and musical comedy that Blake and Sissle brought to Broadway."

Hart has plans for earning other favorable reviews. He and a partner are negotiating the off-Broadway production rights for a David Rabe play, Goose and Tom-tom, and a musical based on the life of the 1872 presidential candidate, Victoria Woodhull, is scheduled to go into workshop production this month before an anticipated fall opening on Broadway. Woodhull's advocacy of free love probably cost her some votes. Hart said, but it didn't discourage the attentions of some of the tycoons who sat with her on the New York Stock Exchange. "It's going to be a fun musical comedy," Hart promised. "I think it will be the MyFair Lady of the 1980's."

Leslie Dockery and Lonnie McNeil kick their heels in Eubie!, a Broadway musical revue. John Hart '75 is an associate producer.