Shadowbox Live announces 2024 season in Columbus
Shadowbox Live, buoyed by more sold-out performances this year, will focus on offering new works and a few old favorites in 2024.
The country’s largest resident-ensemble troupe, which creates and performs original productions nearly year-round in its Brewery District space, will present eight productions during its 36th season.
“We’re being pretty bold in our selections, with a nice variety,” CEO Stacie Boord said.
“With every year that passes, we have more clarity and ability to execute artistically more true to our hearts. I think that’s making a difference,” Boord said.
How much variety will 2024 offer?
The 2024 season will include a new dance-oriented “metamedia” piece, revivals of three audience favorites and four original sketch-comedy-and-music shows.
With a greater focus on more-recent popular songs to sing, the comedy-and-music shows are attracting “new and younger” audiences, Boord said.
Shadowbox Live also is offering more family-oriented shows.
“We’ve really made a shift over the last few years, especially since we reopened after the pandemic. I wouldn’t call any of our productions’ ‘kids' shows,’ but more-adult shows OK for younger people to experience,” Boord said.
“Not So Silent Night,” a holiday musical currently running along with the latest edition of “Holiday Hoopla,” fits the troupe’s recent “multigenerational programming” focus, she said.
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Unlike evening-only “Hoopla” performances, holiday musicals offer family-friendly weekend matinees, said Katy Psenicka, Shadowbox’s chief operations officer.
“Patrons often say they want shows they can share with their families. Our holiday shows allow us to expand the audience to almost all ages from 8 to 80,” Psenicka said.
What shows will launch next season?
Shadowbox Live will present all 2024 shows at 503 S. Front St. Here are the first five opening productions next season:
• “Pillow Talk” (7:30 p.m. Jan. 4, 7:30 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays through April 13): The annual “best of” show will highlight songs and sketch comedies from 2023, plus new material and prior-season favorites.
• “The Dream and Beyond” (7:30 p.m. Thursdays, 2 p.m. Sundays from Jan. 25 through May 12): First staged in 2018, and updated with three new songs, the inspirational drama will celebrate the stories and champions of the modern civil-rights era.
• “Behind Closed Doors” (7:30 p.m. April 18, 7:30 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays through Aug. 10): The new comedy-and-music show will highlight fun-and-sexy themes of spring and summer.
• “Evolutionaries Remastered: The Stories and Music of David Bowie and Prince” (7:30 p.m. May 16, 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, 2 p.m. Sundays through Sept 5): First staged in 2017, the enhanced tribute will explore two iconic artists who influenced music, fashion and pop culture.
• “Wild Things” (7:30 p.m. Aug. 15, 7:30 p.m. Fridays, Saturdays through Nov. 16): The new comedy-and-music show will celebrate the “sin-sational” fall/Halloween season.
What inspires “metamedia” adaptations?
• “Sleepy Hollow: The American Ghost Story” (7:30 p.m. Sept. 12, 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, 2 p.m. Sundays through Nov. 14): The company-created world premiere will blend music, dance and theater into a “metamedia” production based on Washington Irving’s classic 1820 short story about twilight superstitions, sinister spirits, bewitched hearts and a headless horseman.
“When we look at adapting stories, we’re drawn to well-known pieces of literature that provide us with stories we can interpret through dance,” said Psenicka, the choreographer.
“A ghost story, mystery and romance with a revenge twist, ‘Sleepy Hollow’ has come up time and again as a show letting us go into that dark and spooky place tied to the Halloween season,” she said.
“Sleepy Hollow” follows other classics-inspired dance-oriented pieces, such as “Broken Whispers” (based on “The Great Gatsby”), “Madness and Lust” (“Wuthering Heights”) and most recently, the 2022 premiere of “No Return: The Deadly Dance of Bonnie and Clyde.”
“One goal for me, as choreographer,” Psenicka said, “is to fill in plot holes to dramatize what really happened in our interpretations.”
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What holiday favorites will end the 2024 season?
• “Holiday Hoopla 2024: Same Holiday. New Hoopla” (7:30 p.m. Nov. 16, various 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays through Dec. 22): The updated edition of the troupe’s bestselling comedy-and-music show, a Columbus favorite for 32 years, will celebrate the season’s hustle, bustle, fun and dysfunction.
“The holidays can be beautiful for some but difficult for some families... We have a different take that’s ripe for entertainment and humor,” Boord said.
“Like families going to ‘Nutcracker,’ there’s a sense of tradition and yet it’s nontraditional because ‘Hoopla’ is different every year,” she said.
• “Not So Silent Night” (7:30 p.m. Nov. 27, 2 p.m. Saturdays, 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays through Dec. 22): The holiday musical, first staged in 2021, will feature music by Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, Mariah Carey and more in a story about a DJ taking requests and tributes from listeners during a winter storm.
All shows and times are subject to change. Single tickets cost $40 to $70.
How have 2023 productions fared?
The company’s 2023 season, meanwhile, is exceeding expectations.
“Like other arts groups, we’re still clawing our way back from the pandemic, but we’ve been humbled and inspired by our sold-out or nearly-sold-out houses and enthusiastic audiences,” Psenicka said.
“Thunder & Lightning,” the video-enhanced revival of Shadowbox’s 2019 tribute to Led Zeppelin and Queen, nearly sold out its two-month-plus fall run.
“We took a risk with that extended run because we wanted to see how it would hold up... It held up wonderfully,” Boord said.
“Vinyl: A Very 80s Musical,”about a record-store owner and the woman who broke her heart, set records as Shadowbox’s highest-grossing summer musical.
“We took a chance on ‘Vinyl,’ because you don’t really premiere new musicals in summer,” said Boord, who played the lead role.
“Not until opening night did we understand the impact of this beautiful love story between two women,” she said.
So many grateful people came up to us, especially women from the lesbian community.”
How’s Shadowbox doing overall?
Next year, Shadowbox Live will operate six days a week running two theater spaces, the kitchen, bar and restaurant with 49 staff members (including seven part-timers).
The 2024 budget will be $3.46 million, up slightly from $3.38 million in 2023.
“We’re not quite back to where we were in 2019, but we’re doing significantly better than last year,” Boord said.
Regarding overall income, including ticket and food sales, the company is still 20 percent below its 2019 level, but that’s an improvement from 35 percent below 2019 last year, she said.
Shadowbox has been pursuing a “long-game strategy of recovery," Boord said, reflecting a roughly 50 percent reduction in the number of performances to reduce staff burn-out, a post-pandemic continuing reduction in seat capacity and a switch from single-seat to table sales to enhance patrons’ comfort and privacy.
Given all the changes during and since the pandemic, Psenicka said she’s “shocked” at how well the troupe has been doing.
“That doesn’t mean we don’t have our struggles, but it bolsters our confidence we’re doing something right,” she said.
The company has cut back slightly on the number of new shows it produces annually in order to devote more energy to creating and polishing them.
“We’re very protective of allowing ourselves enough time and space to be creative. Don’t forget our sketch shows are world premieres, too," Boord said. "Creative minds can’t just go, go, go. You’ve got to have time to think; we also want to push artistic boundaries.”
@mgrossberg1
At a glance
Shadowbox Live’ “Not So Silent Night” continues through Dec. 17 and “Holiday Hoopla” through Dec. 23 at 503 S. Front St. (614-416-7625, www.shadowboxlive.org.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Here's what audiences can expect in the 2024 Shadowbox season
