![]() ![]() Tickets are on sale by phone at (800) 477-9505 and online at High school theater performers have the opportunity to join the Fireside professionals on stage June 6. "High School Musical" opens Thursday and continues through July 5. "The Sound of Music" is on the Fireside calendar for Aug. Of course, many people love the "old stuff," and they have no reason to fear its disappearance. We don't want to be the theater that only rehashes the old stuff." ![]() "We're simply trying to widen our appeal. "We still really want our group business, which is our mainstay," he said. Older people are staying employed and independent longer, Flesch noted, and are less likely to seek their entertainment in bus tours and groups. Societal changes are among the reasons the Fireside is pursuing new audiences. "Beauty and the Beast" did well at the box office, according to the artistic director, and "Evita" attracted new theater-goers but was a ticket sales disappointment. ![]() "High School Musical" is not the Fireside's first deviation from the old musicals songbook. "We want to get to those people," Flesch said. ![]() They will have their 30-something and 40-something parents in tow, and it is likely many of them have not been Fireside customers. The artistic director will be pleased to see all those young faces coming through the doors for "High School Musical," but it doesn't stop there. Philip William McKinley, who directed Hugh Jackman in "The Boy From Oz" on Broadway, is among the guest directors who have worked at the Fireside.īroadening its theatrical offerings and potential audiences is another marker of growth as well as a sign of the times. "We have rarely in the last five years not had someone with recent Broadway credits onstage," Flesch said. While Equity membership is not a stamp of talent or ability, the vast majority of seasoned and polished musical theater performers are in the union. The theater has grown in size and quality over the years, with the largest artistic leap taken when it began hiring Equity (union) actors 15 years ago. The arena-style Fireside Theatre opened in 1978, and Flesch has produced all and directed most of the more than 135 shows staged there. "High School Musical" is definitely a new direction.įlesch, a Long Island native, has been the Fireside's artistic director since Dick and Betty Klopcic decided to add a theater to their Fort Atkinson restaurant more than 30 years ago. "We have tried to go in some different directions in the last few years." "This is obviously targeted at a brand-new audience for us," Flesch recently said over dinner. The screen musical has spawned a national concert tour and ice show as well as the stage adaptation. The TV movie's soundtrack was the bestselling album in 2006.Ī Disney Channel sequel was broadcast in 2007, and a third edition of "High School Musical" was released to movie theaters last fall. It drew 7.7 million viewers in its premiere broadcast and became the first Disney Channel original movie to be broadcast on the BBC. Aimed squarely at kids, the first edition of the show, released three years ago, is the most successful television movie Disney has produced for its cable TV channel. The Fireside is about to open a live stage version of Disney's phenomenally popular "High School Musical" series. If that doesn't convince you, try this on for size. The sharpest evidence is this: The Fireside has a Facebook page ( /fbfireside). Programming has favored middle-of-the-road entertainment that appeals to the large-group business that has always been a critical component of the for-profit theater's financial health.īut change is in the air, even in the often nostalgic world of dinner theaters. No David Mamet and not much Stephen Sondheim. Like virtually all dinner theaters, the Fireside has not been cutting-edge. Senior citizen theater was the image, even though it might not have been exactly fair and accurate. Fort Atkinson's Fireside Theatre is not your grandmother's playhouse anymore.īeing a diplomatic fellow, artistic director Flesch might not phrase it quite that way, but the reality is that Wisconsin's largest dinner theater wants to shed a perception that has pigeonholed it for years. ![]()
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