The Producers: What they do for love

It's not the pursuit of fame and fortune that brings up the curtains on Long Island theater

BY STEVE PARKS
Newsday Staff Writer

January 14, 2007

"I wanna be a producer
Show the world just what I've got"
-- From the Mel Brooks musical "The Producers"


"Under the right circumstances, a producer could make more money with a flop than he could with a hit," says accountant Leo Bloom.

In fact, Max Bialystock, his co-conspirator in show-biz fraud, concludes that you could make a killing.

That's the premise of the ridiculously successful Broadway musical "The Producers," in which Bialystock & Bloom sell 25,000 percent of a show that's a cinch to close in one night. Well, that's Broadway -- land of long shots and, under the right circumstances, long open-ended runs.

But for The Producers of Long Island -- land of sure things (where you can find 'em) and weekend runs of four to eight weeks -- it's impossible to make a killing. Even with ticket buyers in every seat.

"We're a nonprofit -- and we're very good at it," says Jeffrey Sanzel, artistic director of Theatre Three. His biggest annual onstage role is fiction's most famous miser, Ebenezer Scrooge. Together with financial director Vivian Koutrakos, he produces live theater in Port Jefferson for a company that has thrived, more or less, on the North Shore since 1969. Sanzel, artistic director since 1993 (with a year's hiatus), is one of a dozen or so Long Island producers running theaters from Elmont to East Hampton.

"You have to love doing this," Sanzel says. "It's not going to make you rich or famous, that's for sure. But you do hear applause every night."

56 years as a producer

Frederic De Feis has been hearing applause every night -- or at least every night he has a show -- for 56 years. Having celebrated his 80th birthday in 2006, he's the dean of Long Island producers, though he started out at Pittsburgh's Duquesne University.

He migrated to Brooklyn and then Queens, eventually landing at Idlewild Airport. (That's how long De Feis has been in the regional theater business: He was here before they renamed the airport JFK.) His aptly named Theatre-in-the-Skies was on the fifth floor of Idlewild's control tower. "We got quite an international audience in those days," says De Feis, recalling his 1959-63 run at the airport.

By the time the Beatles arrived in 1964, De Feis had moved on to a vagabond career in Nassau and Suffolk counties. "It was the first taste of dinner theater on Long Island," says

De Feis. His Arena Players also toured libraries and, in summertime, state parks. "We developed an audience and proved that there was a following for serious theater east of the East River," De Feis says.

During a stint as an Equity company (union scale for actors, directors and crew), Arena presented the classics -- Shake.speare, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller -- across the Island. De Feis still produces two Shakespeare plays each summer in the courtyard of Centerport's Vanderbilt Museum.

In 1972, Arena found a permanent home in an East Farmingdale strip mall, echoing its Idlewild roots by locating just across Route 109 from Republic Airport. De Feis added a second stage for "plays that challenge, provoke and stimulate the discriminating theatergoer" -- those are his recorded words that introduce every second stage performance -- plus a children's theater and acting school. Among those who got their start at Arena are Brian Dennehy and Edie Falco.

Some nights, the applause gets pretty thin at Arena Players and other local theaters. Opening night on a Thursday, for instance. Even if it's a whodunit or a sex farce. Or especially at the end of a six-week run of, say, an Arthur Miller play that's not "Death of a Salesman" or a Tennessee Williams that's not "A Streetcar Named Desire." (The Stage in Merrick currently is taking a chance on Williams' "The Rose Tattoo.")

"I think that we are rather lucky here that they do support many of the local theaters," says Bob Spiotto, producer of Hofstra Entertainment, a university-affiliated company whose casts have included such pros as TV star Tony LoBianco, Tony nominee Lorraine Serabian and the late Eddie Bracken. "What is more difficult to convince them of, however, is that ticket prices do need to increase, albeit slowly, as the costs of producing shows has also increased across the board," says Spiotto, who, like most Long Island producers, also directs and occasionally performs in his shows.

On the Island, Sanzel points out, "You can take a family of four to a show for less than $100. You can't get a single Broadway ticket for that amount -- and that doesn't include transportation, parking, etc."

Make it convenient

Along with production values, parking, convenience and comfort have been cornerstones of the company run by the family Newsday once dubbed "The Shuberts of Long Island." That would be the Zabacks, who own three theaters. Patricia Zaback has been the troupe's artistic director since its early dinner theater days: "I Do! I Do!" at Smithtown's Watermill restaurant in 1972.

The company's first home was above a furniture store on Route 110, also known as BroadHollow Road. "BroadHollow was similar sounding to Broadway, so we named the new theater BroadHollow Theatre," says Richard Dolce, Pat Zaback's son by a previous marriage.

It was during her Long Island theater pursuits that she met and married sales manager, now producer, Jerry Zaback.

"At least there was plenty of free parking," Jerry recalls of the discount furniture location. You had to walk through the bedding department to get to the upstairs performance space, but management left the back door unlocked for the convenience of theater patrons.

BroadHollow later opened stages in Lindenhurst (Studio Theatre) and East Islip (BayWay Arts Center). Following operations in Beth.page, as well as SUNY Old Westbury and Molloy College in Rockville Center, BroadHollow opened its new flagship theater in November at Elmont Public Library.

Among the little things Long Island theaters do for money:

Seasonal favorites: Theatre Three produces "A Christmas Carol" each holiday season. Up to 30 performances, with schools filling seats from Thanksgiving to Christmas -- the equivalent of a dance company's "Nutcracker."

Educational shows: Smithtown Center for the Performing Arts has taken its production of Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" to schools since the show's 2005 premiere. And Theatre Three has taken Sanzel's original play, "From the Fires: Voices of the Holocaust," on the road for a decade.

Acting classes: Parents will pay to get their kids onstage. "Disney's High School Musical" is the current phenomenon. "It's been going like gangbusters," says Broad.Hollow's Pat Zaback, who extended "High School Musical" through Jan. 28, while another production is running at CM Performing Arts Center in Oakdale. Some companies charge students a workshop fee of $150 or more to appear in shows.

Theaters use their space for other entertainment: concerts, films, operas, comedy nights, midnight cult shows such as "Rocky Horror" (Cultural Arts Playhouse in Old Beth.page) or "Reefer Madness" (Studio), or "Friday Night Face-off" (Theatre Three), Long Island's improv answer to Comedy Central's "Whose Line Is It?"

And there are other ways to make production ends meet. To ensure an audience, producers survey their patrons on what they would like to see. "We try to build a season that will appeal to our audience," says Ed Brennan of Airport Playhouse in Bohemia. Meanwhile, the BroadHollow Theatre Company stages its biggest musicals both at BayWay and the BroadHollow at Elmont for consecutive five- or six-week runs, while the smaller, more intimate Studio in Lindenhurst stages edgier comedies and dramas.

Taking a risk

Ah, there's the rub. It's the very thing that drives the producers of Long Island crazy. You can do a Neil Simon. Or an Agatha Christie. Or a sex farce that advertises its drawing card in the title ("How the Other Half Loves"). Or you can try something that's artistically challenging, not to mention gratifying to the producer.

"We try to take a risk or two every season," says Theatre Three's Jeffrey Sanzel. Of course, any musical is a risk. Even a gold-plated title such as "Cabaret." Depending on the size of the theater and length of the run, musicals cost more than 10 times what a straight play demands in terms of rights, which includes a fee the author gets each time a show is performed.

A musical may cost $10,000 or more, while a play may go for less than $1,000 in rights. (Fees vary widely, depending on the age of the show.) "And that doesn't include what it costs to put on a musical," Sanzel says. You need to hire an orchestra, music director, choreographer and, usually, a larger cast than a play requires. That's why Arena Players, with its main stage of 239 seats, no longer produces musicals, while the 450-seat main stage at Theatre Three offers two or three a season.

But there are only so many titles. And precious few new ones. It's not unusual that some shows appear on multiple stages in the same year. "One season we had five productions of 'Cabaret' on Long Island," Sanzel says. "And you never know. It's not always that the show is new. It's just group-mind. Very Jungian."

The only sure way to avoid .duplication is to put on a brand-new show.

Neil Sedaka was looking for a tryout space for a new jukebox musical inspired by his songbook. But producing "Breakin' Up Is Hard to Do" last fall was a tough call for Bruce Grossman of Cultural Arts Playhouse. "They wanted us to commit to six shows a week for 10 weeks. We usually do weekends for eight weeks." But in the end, the familiar oldies by Sedaka "put butts in our seats."

Equity companies

There is a pecking order in Long Island theater. And the two Equity companies are at the top of the food chain. Which isn't to say Gateway Playhouse and Bay Street Theatre always get their way. Gateway, with its 57-year history as Long Island's leading musical theater, boasts of launching careers. Robert Duvall, for instance, played summer stock at the red barn theater in Bellport.

Producer Paul Allan is third-generation Gateway, following in the footsteps of his grandfather Harry Pomeran, his mom, Ruth, and his dad, Stan Allan, a longtime Brookhaven town clerk, who died in 2005. That Gateway is a successful for-profit company bespeaks the resourcefulness of this jewel of a family business. The playhouse knows what it does best and delivers a Broadway-scale reproduction of a recent or classic hit, usually with a slight variation that keeps critics and other aficionados on their toes.

Yet even upstarts, such as 5-year-old Smithtown Center for the Performing Arts, led by Ken and Laura Washington, can deliver a coup once in a while. While Gateway usually counts on its clout as an Equity company (it auditions in Manhattan for a cast of Broadway actors who haven't achieved top billing yet), the seasonal factor can work against it. Aside from its holiday shows in December, Gateway's season runs from May to October. In this case, Smithtown, itself auditioning in Manhattan for key roles, landed first rights to the surprise Broadway musical hit "Urinetown" -- and delivered a knockout autumn production that also featured faces and voices familiar to Long Island audiences, such as the tireless but never tiresome Mary Ellin Kurtz.

Out East, a theater juggernaut emerged 15 years ago. Out of the ashes of a rock and roll club on Sag Harbor's Long Wharf rose Bay Street (borrowing its name from the nightclub). But Bay Street Theatre, with its base of East End patronage and an impeccable pedigree (co-founders Emma Walton, daughter of Julie Andrews and Tony-winning set designer Tony Walton; her husband, actor-

director Steve Hamilton; and Sybil Christopher, Manhattan disco entrepreneur and first wife of Richard Burton) can be counted on each summer to present world and/or American premieres that most Long Island companies cannot afford to take a chance on. They draw audiences that often include such celebrities as Nathan Lane, Alan Alda, Mercedes Ruehl and Alec Baldwin. Several Bay Street shows have migrated to Manhattan, among them the Off-Broadway rock revue "Love, Janis."

Ticket prices at Gateway and Bay Street, $40-$60, reflect the companies' Equity status and higher production costs.

The little guys

How can a little troupe, like the Hampton Theatre Company, which plays in the Quogue Community Hall, compete with that? Most non-Equity theaters on Long Island pay actors $25 or less a performance.

Hampton competes with Bay Street and occasional productions at Guild Hall's John Drew Theater in East Hampton by putting on shows in the off-season -- late fall, winter and early spring. And by selecting highly literate plays (no musicals). "We pick plays purely on their merit, their interest to us and whether we think our audience will enjoy them," says producer Sarah Hunnewell.

Surely a luxury, say producers from other parts of the Island. "If you can't put butts in the seats, you're dead," says one producer who didn't want to be named but who speaks for nearly every producer -- except the fictional Bialystock & Bloom.

"You can't make a killing in this business," Jeffrey Sanzel says. "Not on Long Island. But you can make a living. If you love it. And we all really do love theater, or we wouldn't be doing this night after night."

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