Alan Shore
Appearances
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
Here's Shore. Initially, my partner and I put up all the money. The reason for that, having come from the financial world, I've always looked at myself as a fiduciary. I am not willing to ask other people to put money into something that I don't feel comfortable with.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
And until we got to the point with three summers of Lincoln where we believed that we had something special, it was only at that point that we decided, okay, we're going to move to the next step. It's very expensive. And we will bring in outside investors. At what point was that in the development of the show? That was last November, December, when we did our three-week workshop.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
Up until that point, essentially, myself and my partner were fully funding the project. And what did it cost up until that point? Probably mid to high six figures. That went into hiring the people to write the show, the composer, the the lyricist, the director, actors, actresses, for us to hear what it is that the writers actually came up with.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
That was a year and a half process where we had several workshops and all of that cost money.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
Later, I spoke with the commercial producers, Alan Shore. I think without exception, everybody went away thinking this is really something special. And Richard Winkler.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
Alan Shore, I am the general partner for Three Summers of Lincoln.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
Here's Shore. The best way I can analogize it is the producer or the lead producer is the CEO of a company that is producing a piece of live theater. they're ultimately responsible for every decision that gets made. What have been your greatest hits as a producer thus far? Leo Polstadt was the most recent. Prior to that, Lehman Trilogy, I was involved with Come From Away. I will stop there.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
Have you had flops? Flops? Yeah, we had one. It was called Diana.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
We had a production that we thought was great. So why not bring the cast back in a healthy way and live capture it on stage and sell it to Netflix? Or Netflix came to the production and said, we'd like to do this.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
When you have a new musical and you try to live capture it, you don't get the essence of really what's there. And so, although it was a great idea at the time, some great ideas just don't necessarily work.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
It first started the summer of 2020 during COVID where none of us had anything to do but sit around and think. Literally. when George Floyd was murdered, our president at the time had mentioned that he had done more for black people than anybody since Abraham Lincoln. And that started me thinking, well, what did Lincoln actually do? Let's get to the facts.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
I had obviously read books about Abraham Lincoln. I saw the movie Lincoln that Steven Spielberg produced. But that only told the story from 1864 through 1865. So the question in my mind is, what happened before that? How did Lincoln get there? So I called Richard, my partner, and I said, what do you think about doing a musical about Abraham Lincoln?
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
So I said, well, I don't know if it does or not, but what else have we got to do? Let's explore it. And the first person that I called was an acquaintance, Doris Kearns Goodwin, who I thought was the authority on Abraham Lincoln. That's a pretty handy acquaintance to have. Well, she lives in Boston, so that helps.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
So I called her and asked her and her producing partner if this would be something she'd be interested in participating in. And fortunately for us, she readily agreed.