Welcome everybody to Midday magazine for this Monday,
February 3rd, 2025.
Have your host, James J. Mailoff here.
In part two today, we're gonna welcome in our friend,
Mary Schultz, with she is the chair of Empty Bowls
and focused looking forward to that.
Right now we have with us in studio,
Sally Kissner, executive director of Saver the Arts.
Sally, good to see you.
Thanks for being here.
Thanks for having me.
Our friend, Eric Brittnocker,
from the Performing Arts Center.
Eric, thanks for being here.
Hello, thanks.
And on the phone, we have with us, Ron D. Stefano,
co-creator, bachelor's of Broadway.
Ron, thank you very much for being here with us.
My pleasure.
Appreciate the time.
The way we do these, Ron, I will talk with Sally and Eric
after kind of talk with you for a little bit.
We had kind of break this up into two parts
when we have somebody like you joining us.
So we're gonna get into the show in a moment,
but Ron, I have somebody like you on the phone.
I've got to find out a little bit more about you
and our audience loves this stuff.
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself,
a little bit of your origin story, if you will, Ron?
Oh my goodness.
Sure, it's a long and twisted story
and I will summarize it as briefly as possible.
I'm actually went to college for chemistry
and ended up in the entertainment industry
sort of through an alternate pathway
that most people would never take.
I sort of took a summer between getting my bachelor's degree
and heading towards getting my doctorate
and took a little summer adventure job doing small,
podonk theater and I met somebody
who sort of changed the entire course of my life
and that person is now my business partner,
but at the time she was a fellow musical theater performer
like myself and we ended up creating
after Dean Friends for nearly a decade,
a two person song and tap dance show called Two On Tap,
which actually has played so many venues throughout your area.
After getting our experience with that around 2015,
she wanted to start a family and sort of get off the road
but she wanted to, you know,
not take away performance opportunities from me.
So we ended up starting to create shows
and one of the shows that we created was called Shades of Boo Blay
which is another show that has played
so frequently in your area
and then we looked at each other and said,
hey, I think we're pretty good at this.
So then we started creating these shows
and our latest production is Batchers of Broadway
which was created in 2022
and is now touring the country.
You saw an opening, I almost need for this
in our whether it's theater or what have you.
What was it about the early days of this
when you're putting together those original shows
that told you, yeah, audiences want this,
audiences want more of this?
Well, there are kind of two groups of thought
about live concert performances.
There's the people who are theatrical
and are doing stage shows, hello, Dolly
and, you know, D-Reff and Hanson
and then there are the concert people,
the musical acts, the Beatles, the Eagles
and there's not a lot of crossover between
sort of that dramatic presentation
and that pure music presentation
and we, coming from theater but loving real, authentic music,
wanted to find something in the middle
and we used our theater sensibilities
and Melissa has always had a really strong draw
to real, authentic music, not theatricalized pop music
and rock music but a real pop and rock music
maybe because she had an older brother
who lived through the 70s and 80s.
So that's where we sort of found our way in
was being one of the only companies
that was creating these shows
that were delivering a real authentic musical product
so audiences that are used to live concerts
are going to enjoy them
but have a little bit of extra flair,
a little bit of choreography, a little bit of production
that brings it to the next level.
And Ron, I'd like to ask this question to people,
all the creatives I talked to,
I'm very curious with your answer,
given your history and what you told us before
about not really thinking about getting into
the entertainment industry when you were young,
when you were thinking of a career,
who were some of your influences
were they latent life, were they young,
when they were young and you were always an entertainer,
you just didn't know?
Well, you'd have to talk to my parents.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that is, they're all.
But I think I always,
I always enjoyed attention.
Actually, that's not exactly true.
I was super shy until I was nine or 10 years old
and then something flipped where I had to do something,
some sort of school presentation in front of people
and I kind of heard the applause for the first time
and got hooked.
I think that's the story for a lot of performers
where you just get that,
you feel that it's a real exchange with an audience
and it triggers all those dopamine responses in your brain
and you just chase after it for the rest of your life.
That, I guess, was me.
But because my family is so strongly rooted in science
and math, I mean, my sisters took, you know,
got a master's degree in biology
and my mom was a nurse and created these curriculums
all over Florida for premedical high school magnets.
I, it just wasn't a viable pathway.
We're all artists and we're all musicians,
but none of us do it as a career so much
so that my mother, I'm gonna have it embroidered on a pillow
at some point, but my mother said,
national merit scholars do not sing and dance for a living.
So I proved you're wrong
and now she actually works for our company.
So there's a very full circle moment there.
But yeah, it's just,
it all just kind of happened organically.
I just went in the direction and then followed my heart
and it took me somewhere else.
We're speaking with Ron Stefano from Bachelor's of Broadway.
You're gonna be coming to town here just shortly.
We're getting the details of that,
hiring tickets and much, much more.
Ron, when it comes to this show,
the performances, all that, you touch on this a little bit,
you wear a lot of hats, man.
I do.
The one I'm wearing the most right now is travel agent
when a show is on a tour like this,
the amount of logistics that are required,
the flights, the luggage, the car rentals,
the planning out, the best way to get from point A to point B
so that everyone is keeping their endurance and strength
and health up to be able to sing this show six to eight times a week.
You know, when people are in Broadway shows,
with the exception of those people who are carrying the show,
the leads of the show, most people are on stage
over the course of a two and a half hour show
for 20 minutes, 25 minutes.
It's very rare that a performer will sing constantly for 90 minutes.
So it requires a lot of, almost like a marathon runner.
It requires a lot of strength, a lot of endurance,
a lot of training.
So the biggest job I have right now is supporting them in that
and making sure they have the logistics behind them
to be able to show up to every audience and get their best.
I know in Wisconsin Rapids,
we're doing a wonderful student outreach in the afternoon
which has to be accounted for in terms
of the performers endurance they're used
to having their prime time be in the evening.
So when you have a student performance,
and usually we do 45 minute presentations,
which are shorter presentation of the show,
not the full 90 minutes,
but when you have that happening in the afternoon,
you have to make sure they're supported and cushioned
so that they've gotten a great night's sleep
and they're not driving six hours into that moment
because it's gonna be a longer day for them.
So yeah, it's a lot of hats,
producer, director, travel agent,
choreographer, mental health counselor.
I mean, the list is on and on.
You mentioned the outreach of the student outreach
and we're gonna talk with Sally and Eric
a little bit more about that,
but I'm curious of you and the performers,
what that means for you guys to be a part of something like that.
Oh, it's incredible.
I just received a batch of photos.
The gentleman just did it earlier this week
in Harlandon, Texas, actually down in the southern border.
And to see them, they actually did it in a classroom
with about 50 choral students surrounding them
at an arc and so it was a very intimate thing.
You could see on the faces of these children
that their lives were being changed
to see Broadway professionals come to their community,
thousands of miles from New York City
and bringing real authentic Broadway performances
into a classroom.
It's just, it's the way we're creating the next generation.
It's the way we're creating the arts funders
of the next generation.
Some of these kids might not be professional performers,
but they might love the arts enough
and they become successful enough in another career
that they are then sponsoring the next set of performances
in Wisconsin Rapids or putting their companies ad
in front of the patrons
because they see the value of keeping arts going.
It's just so important for us to do this kind of work.
Well said.
And we speak to this quite a bit here at WFHR
and when the three of us get to get their Eric and Sally
and I talk a lot about artists supporting artists
and how important that is, especially in Wisconsin
where Wisconsin finished it at last
in the union funding the arts.
It's never been more important to support the arts
in this state and events like this really help us do that.
And you hit it on the other part of this too
of inspiring and creating other artists
and keeping these things going.
I think that you have such a unique perspective to offer
as well because like you said so many of us,
I was seven when I knew what I wanted to do.
I wanted to be an actor and everything.
For you, you got, you found this a little bit later in life.
I think you have a maybe even more of a rounded out perspective
given that for kids and another thing too
that the three of us are able to do when we get together
and having you here Ron really hits this home is,
hey, like the arts, hey, you like entertainment?
Well, it maybe you can't sing, maybe you can't dance,
maybe you can't, but you can still be a part of things.
You can still certainly be an artist
and be a part of the creative process and everything.
We need a lot of people.
There's a lot of people like Ron out there
wearing a lot of hats to be able to do.
There's so many different jobs you can do
to be a part of the entertainment universe.
Oh, true, and not to be crass about it,
but yes, there's people who can do props,
people backstage, people running the show,
but also people writing checks.
That is a valuable, valuable part of the arts process.
So if you can do that, you are part of the arts creation.
Have you been to Wisconsin before Ron?
Oh, so many times.
Every single corner of that amazing state.
I thought so.
What we're looking forward to having you here.
I just, I thought you'd been here before,
but I didn't want to remind you that this time of year,
no roller coasters.
I'm sorry, we know the roller coasters,
and I'm running right now.
You must have been in my website.
Yes, I have.
I'm a big roller coaster fan.
I have my trip to Disneyland planned
in a couple of weeks too,
so I'll get my fix in.
Before we let you go, Ron,
let's get into just some of the details of this show.
What people can expect from bachelor's or Broadway,
gentlemen of the theater.
Yes, it is a very exciting,
high energy celebration of over now,
100 years of music from Broadway.
It is celebrating those early shows,
Rodgers and Hammerstein,
South Pacific, Carousel,
moving through the 70s and 80s with our mega musical,
Spanum of the Opera and Lay Mizz and Miss Saigon.
And even touching on some of the contemporary shows
that has entered now the zeitgeist,
we have songs from Wicked and songs from Dear Evan Hansen
that I've recently hit the silver screen.
So this show is three dashing gentlemen,
singing this music in brand new arrangements
in three-part harmony,
backed by an exciting nine-piece live band.
It's gonna be a top notch, high quality,
super exciting concert.
And if you don't even have to be super familiar
with Broadway to enjoy it,
we say that we put something in for the husbands
who got dragged there.
So if you hear a song you don't know,
we promise you the next one you're gonna hear
is can't take my eyes off of you from Jersey Boys.
So there's something in there for everybody.
I was gonna say, it looks like a lot of thought
not only went into the song selections
and play selections and everything,
but the order of those songs.
I thought that was really unique.
That's right.
I mean, Melissa and I are the creators of the show
are basically educators first.
She's a former dance educator
and being from a family of educators,
it's my background as well.
You have to change the modality.
When you're in front of a group of people,
everyone responds in a different way.
So you can't do the same thing
for more than eight or nine minutes in a row.
You've got to keep changing it up.
So there's a tremendous amount of variety in the show.
And we're super proud of what we've done
with taking very seemingly traditional songs.
The audience will know the lyrics and music too.
For example, give my regards to Broadway,
a song written in the early 1900s that people know
as this traditional kind of goofy little march.
Well, we've reimagined it as this beautiful,
soaring pop treatment.
They're gonna know the music,
but they've never heard it this way before,
especially played with this exciting live band.
Can I thank you enough for the time, Ron?
This has been a lot of fun talking with you,
getting to know you a little bit more.
We're really looking forward to you
and the team coming here to town.
Before I let you go, though, as a journalist,
I have to ask hard questions from time to time.
Ron, do you have a favorite Broadway show or song?
Oh, my goodness.
I don't even know how to ask you.
It changes, it changes on a day-to-day basis.
I just say, you know what?
And I don't wanna say I'm embarrassed to say it,
but I was so surprised by a recent show
I saw on Broadway called And Juliet,
like Ampersand, Juliet, for your audience that doesn't know.
It's a retelling of the Romeo and Juliet story
using contemporary pop music, answering the question.
What would have happened if Juliet had woken up
and decided not to end her life
like her boyfriend, Romeo, did?
What happens if she goes on and has a life of her own
and sort of goes the girl power route.
It's super fun, super exciting.
I'm not normally a huge fan of jukebox musicals,
but I went in with no expectations
and I left that theater having had such a great time.
So I'd say that's one of my current favorites.
Right, great reference, too.
And so speaking of artists supporting artists,
shows like that and mentioning things like that
are only gonna help the future of theater.
Cause I think that is about a big part of it
is plays like that and some of the things
that they're reimagining that they're doing
with some of these bringing in old
and new people to theater.
We're gonna be bringing young old,
we're gonna fill the pack for you, man.
Thank you so much for the time, Ron.
You guys have a great, a safe trip getting here.
We're looking forward to having you in town soon.
My pleasure, thanks so much for having me.
Man, was that a great interview?
That was a lot of fun.
Big thank you to Ron for joining us.
The harmonies of them.
It's just, I went to, I'll be honest with you guys.
I was prepping for the interview this weekend
and I went down a rabbit hole.
And I almost didn't, I have to do a lot of work tonight
because I didn't prep for other interviews
because I was too busy being entertained by these guys.
Sally, it's a fantastic show.
Can we get into some of the details?
You bet.
The show is February 20th at 730 at the pack
and tickets are $49 for adults
and as usual, 10 for students.
You can purchase them online at saverthearts.com
or give us a call 715-424-2787
or stop by and see us 1048th Street,
South and Wisconsin Rapids.
And Sally, this is a great show as it is
but you guys are also offering something even more with it.
Dinner in a movie, dinner in a show.
Dinner in a show.
The meal will be held at the ridges.
Tickets are $26 for that.
And we have to shut down ticket sales February 6th.
So you have through Thursday.
So give me a call.
You purchase those directly through the Arts Council
and you have three options for your meal
that you select when you get your tickets.
Thank you for that, Sally.
Eric, I wanted to mention with you
that the Mead Winter Foundation is sponsoring
outreach opportunity for students in the afternoon
of the performance.
I imagine the kids are excited about this one.
Yeah, I guess we have a group
from Rapid School of Performing Arts coming over
and I would anticipate that there's
going to be some student groups joining us as well.
We really like these student opportunities
as Ron mentioned earlier in the interview
that this is an opportunity to change
the life and trajectory of some kids
and what they might be interested in going into.
And it's so true that there's a lot of things behind the scenes
that take far more than just the performers
on stage that we see and grow accustomed to.
And so it's just inspiring that we're
able to offer these outreach opportunities
here for students within our community
because you never know where these kids are going to go.
And we have students that go through our programs
that are successful in managing theaters
or successful performers.
Successful in like comedy sports improv.
People are doing this right now today
that graduated 10 or 15 years ago.
So this influence is great.
And we have the opportunity to do that with this show.
We had a chance to talk with Colin Mockery,
recently on Director's Playhouse.
And so much of what Colin talked about
is we're hitting on some of the things
you're mentioning there and how important that is with young people
and how that can just change directories.
How you just don't know where that spark can start.
And whether they stay in the entertainment industry
or take those skills and go into this business industry
or this one, the confidence is the same.
No matter what industry they go in,
they build that confidence.
You and things like this are able to help that with these kids.
Yeah, I think just being able to offer ways
to express ourselves as humans is just really important.
And we're giving people the opportunity
to see life from somebody else's perspective,
just new opportunities.
And I think that's just really what it's all about
is being able to create, to kind of be free
and to be artists in our own right.
And whatever that means to us, it could be visual,
it could be performing, it could be music dance.
I mean, it spans the range.
Mm-hmm.
And as we worry about empathy with kids
or just people in general more and more
the arts are such a opening of that
and a creation of that in so many ways,
among many, many other things.
And being a lot of fun, I don't want to lose.
I don't want to escape past that or anything.
The arts are a lot of fun.
The kids have a lot of fun with these
and they're going to have a great time with this group.
This is got to be one of those shows, Sally,
that you saw, and you had to have these guys.
You had to have them in town here.
I did.
I was looking at Broadway
because we've had a lot of requests for that.
And I love Broadway myself.
But I looked at several different groups
and for some reason I just kept coming back to this one.
It just really hit me.
It works out just as you planned, Sally,
for the movie Wicked to be huge.
And here we have Broadway shows coming in
where they're going to be singing a little bit of Wicked.
But nicely done by you.
I know you planned it that way, though.
Right, yes.
But it has kind of worked out that way.
Well, I couldn't, you know,
I saw Ron Distofano's name on some of the tech writers
and I was like, where did I see this name before?
And then he mentioned Shades of Boo Blay.
And then I was reminded of how great it is to work with him
in his group because they're so professional
and they're so good.
And so Shades of Boo Blay was awesome.
And I'm sure that this show is going to be just as good.
Uptown was another one.
Uptown?
Yeah, yeah.
So they've been here a couple different times.
He said he played around the area.
But, you know, him and his group
have played here multiple times.
Yeah, yeah, they're good and nowhere to stay.
They're going to know where to go.
They don't have that.
You know, I think I'm sorry.
I haven't thought of this before, Eric.
I think about it with the kids so much and everything
and them being influenced and them learning from these artists.
I imagine you're able to do that from time to time, too.
But just learn to pick up different things,
be influenced.
Yeah, I soak it in.
You know, I mean, you have the ability
when you work in this industry to work with just incredibly
talented people and people who have done things
that we all maybe in some ways aspire to do
or we think about, you know, all our dreams are this or that.
And so, you know, you have the opportunity
to work right alongside these people,
shoulder to shoulder with them.
And like, we're all giants in our own right,
even in our own community.
Like, you know, I sit next to Sally.
And it's like, you know, the work that she does on a day to day
basis is incredible for the people in our community
and the people that come from multiple states
away to come see shows like they did last Friday.
You know, we have a way to generate local, you know,
stimulus in our economy by bringing people in
by these arts programs.
We're able to create, you know,
just cultural opportunities within our own community.
And that stuff's huge beyond what the performers bring to us.
You know, we're doing great things just right here
in our community as well.
We've got a great show coming up,
but we just gave you a great one
because you two just nailed it.
Nicely done, you guys.
Well done.
Sally, one more time.
Let's go over the details of this show
and how people can get tickets.
The performance is February 20th on a Thursday 730 PM.
Tickets are $49 for adults and $10 for students.
You can go on saverthearts.com to get your tickets
or give us a call 715-424-2787
or stop INCS at 1048 Street South and Wisconsin Rapids.
We're open Monday through Thursday from 10 to 230.
I'd also like to mention our sponsors for this show.
As mentioned, Mead Whitter Foundation
is sponsoring the Outreach, which is phenomenal.
And then we have show sponsors WSAW Channel 7.
Rapid School of Performing Arts is also sponsoring this.
Erin and G. Herman's Plumbing and Heating.
Modern Woodman of America, which is Curtis Langa Mayer
and cobblestone hotel and suites where our performers stay.
Big thank you to all of them.
And you can find out more about bachelor's of Broadway
by going to the website, bachelor's of Broadway.com.
Be sure to read more about Ron at his website,
rondistofano.com.
And of course, you can get your tickets
and find out more about this season at saverthearts.com.
Both of you, thank you so much for the time
and a big thank you to Ron.
Thank you.
We'll be back more midday magazine coming up here at WFHR.
