Give My Regards to Beijing: Five Questions for Robert Nederlander Jr.
September 15, 2009 Davi Napoleon
There are people who love to pack their bags and head out. Me, I’d rather vacation in my backyard. And when producers bring shows to me, I’m grateful.
During my formative years, I circled the globe with the help of Harvey Lichtenstein, who brought the world to the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Since I moved to Michigan, I’ve depended on the University Musical Society (UMS), which has saved me innumerable schleps to London; I’ve enjoyed top Shakespeare companies and Simon McBurney’s remarkable Complicite in Ann Arbor. This season, UMS has booked my passage to Russia for the Maly Drama Theater of St. Petersburg’s Uncle Vanya.* I’ll be home by bedtime.
Thanks to the Nederlanders, whose theaters in Detroit present a variety of national tours, I’m also able to enjoy the best of Broadway without boarding a flight. I’ve always associated the Nederlander name with Broadway and Detroit, where the family began to build the theatrical empire David T. Nederlander founded in 1912 when he bought the Detroit Opera House.
Now the Nederlanders, who produce, co-produce, and book in their theaters, own nine houses on Broadway, three in London, and several in various parts of the United States.
Fortunately, Robert Nederlander Jr., president of Nederlander Worldwide Entertainment (NWE), who acquired the Nederlander theaters in San Francisco, Bethesda, and Sarasota for off-Broadway as well as Broadway offerings, doesn’t share my aversion to travel. In 2000, he began exploring the possibility of taking mega musicals to China, and in 2005, NWE formed Nederlander New Century (NNC) with a Chinese partner, marking the first foreign joint venture the Chinese government allowed in its performing arts industry. Audiences throughout China and America are the beneficiaries.
In 2007, NNC brought 42nd Street to nine cities in China, and the next year, they brought a Chinese dance company to New York to perform The Dream of the Red Chamber. That was just the start of something new. I talked to Robert Nederlander Jr. about it.
DN: You toured Savion Glover’s tap dance show internationally. But when you started taking huge Broadway musicals to China, you took touring to a new level. What’s different and what’s the same about taking a Broadway hit to, say, Detroit and taking the same show to Beijing? Do you market a show the same way, for instance?
RN: There are several aspects to that. One relates to the technical challenges that we or any Western producer faces traveling about China. The audience is still relatively new outside of Shanghai and Beijing, so there’s a an educational process to exactly what Broadway is….It’s only recently that the concept of having to purchase tickets as a single ticket buyer has developed in many markets. You acquire tickets through friends or through your workplace as opposed to buying them as an individual, and changing buying habits is one of the challenges for any Western company.
It’s not an easy environment to do business in. It just takes time. You have significant cultural differences in how business is undertaken, and there’s a language barrier. English is taught in the schools, and it’s widespread. With that said, this certainly isn’t universal, and any show that comes in has superscript text translation that most theaters are capable of supporting.
You learn that without a great interpreter, you’ll have trouble in whatever you do. I remember early on I was conducting a negotiation, and it was an interpreter I hadn’t worked with before. I don’t remember the exact nature of the point that was being negotiated, but I recall saying I needed to consult an attorney regarding it. After a long pause, the response I received was something to the effect, ‘Well go ahead, you can try.’ I thought that was a puzzling response, so I asked the interpreter. ‘You said you were going to explore suing him.’
You want to catch those mistakes early. You just gotta be flexible and you gotta be prepared to take your lumps.
There’s also the language of our business. We have particular terminology and having great interpreters who understand the vernacular [is essential to creating] an effective bridge between a local technical team and our technical team. You’re locked into a schedule and being able to load in and out is essential. The more time it takes to set up a show, the fewer shows you’re able to perform whenever you tour across anywhere. In the United States, there are certainly regional differences in how shows are presented and marketed, and having a local partner with a strong familiarity with local conditions is fundamental, too.
DN: How do you develop those partnerships?
RN: I’ve probably hosted between 50 and 100 cultural delegations to China. Over time and through those visits, you find as you would anywhere groups or individuals with common interests. You seek out those who share the same goals, and it’s a win-win arrangement. Like any solid partnership, it takes time to mature, and a lot of patience.
DN: You brought a bit of China back to Broadway. How did you become involved in The Dream of the Red Chamber and Soul of Shaolin? Can you tell us a little about those shows?
RN: This began as a mutual interest between ourselves and the different Chinese partners that we have. There’s a genuine interest in China and Chinese culture here in the United States. [People want to understand China and make connections.] What better way to bridge that gap than through cultural performances?
DN: It seems to this casual onlooker that you were born to Broadway, even if you’re taking Broadway half way around the world. But you didn’t study theater or arts management, did you? Your University of Michigan degrees are in economics and computer science, then law, and you practiced law for a while. I gather you also enjoy football. Still, you’ve become part of and expanded the family business. How do you blend your interests?
RN: I practiced law for several years here in New York City. Then I thought there were some interesting opportunities working in the family business and taking advantage of my education and legal skill set. I use it quite often. Everything we do is contract based. What a contract means is a bit different in China than here, and my legal background allows me to be a more effective negotiator.
DN: I bet I missed something important. Please answer a question I didn’t think to ask.
RN: I’m asked quite a bit ‘Why China?’ and perhaps today there’s an obvious answer. It’s one of the fastest growing economies in the world with tremendous opportunities. It wasn’t as obvious ten years ago when I started this. I was fortunate enough to have been introduced to the opportunity back then.
We’ve had a tremendous response to 42nd Street and Aida. We have Fame, which will open at the end of the year. We co-produced a Chinese language version of Fame last year with Beijing Central Academy of Drama [but] there’s a preference for authenticity in China and having Western actors performing the show in English is something people are willing to pay the premium necessary to support the high cost of touring.
Aside from the distance, I always enjoy going there.
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