[NEohioPAL]Berko: Spotlight on Sean Cercone (Carousel Dinner Theatre)

[Roy Berko]

Spotlight on Sean Cercone, Carousel Dinner Theatre
Artistic Director

Roy Berko

(Member, American Theatre Critics Association)

--THE TIMES NEWSPAPERS--

Lorain County Times--Westlaker Times--Lakewood News
Times--Olmsted-Fairview Times

---------------
This is one of the installments in my Spotlight Series
intended to highlight the views and attitudes of one
of the area's theatre or dance leaders.
---------------

Usually when one thinks of the Artistic Director of a
theatre with a more than two million dollar budget one
envisions an older, seasoned person with years of
theatrical experience in producing, selecting plays,
casting and choosing directors and technical staff. 
This is definitely not the case with Sean Cercone, the
Artistic Director at Carousel Dinner Theatre.  

Cercone is young, and a relative newcomer to the
theatrical scene.  His background includes only one
administrative theatrical position, founder of the
West Virginia Shakespeare Festival.  He has a Master
of Fine Arts in acting from West Virginia University,
not in either theatre or arts management.

So, why would a venue, which invests between $300,000
to $500,000 on each production, place their fate in
the hands of such a neophyte?  And how was he
selected?  In a word, the New York born and raised
Cercone has “chutspah” (the Yiddish word for “nerve”).
 

He saw an ad for the Carousel position on a website. 
Most people with his background would not see “newbie”
and “Artistic Director of one of the major dinner
theatres in the country” as being synonymous.  This,
of course, was not Cercone’s view.  He saw the job as
an opportunity to parallel his outgoing personality,
self-avowed “awesome self-confidence,” desire to
educate audiences, develop an image for the dinner
show industry, and create a positive national portrait
for the theatre.   He perceived it as “a challenge, an
opportunity.” He obviously was able to convince the
new owners of the facility that he was the right
person for the job as they turned over to him, the
entire artistic operation of the theatre.

Cercone set for himself the task of learning
everything he could about the business.   He believed
that there needed to be a change in the financial and
artistic structure.  He set budgets for each play
where there had not been financial accountability in
the past.  He developed job descriptions for
employees.  He set in motion a philosophy that each
season should have a set purpose.  He envisioned
changing the demographics of the audience to lower the
average age of the attenders, while not ignoring the
venue’s base which includes bus and senior tours (25%
of the attenders), as well as subscribers (one-third
of the audience).  The remainder are individual ticket
purchasers.    He set out to eliminate the attitude
that dinner theatres are often regarded as the trailer
park of the theatre world by casting shows with
professionals, many of whom are selected in New York
tryouts, but not overlooking local area equity
performers, while hiring top quality professional
directors and choreographers.   

Cercone, because of his involvement with the National
Alliance of Musical Theatre’s New Works Committee, a
national group which seeks out new scripts, envisions
Carousel as a player in the creation of musicals.  The
first step in this process came to fruition when early
this season ‘JOHN DOE’ received a staged reading at
the theatre.   The show’s creators were present, as
were producers from various theatres around the
country and theatrical agents.  The staging of ‘JOHN
DOE’ cost Carousel $16,000, with little financial
income from the invitation-only event.  However, the
theatre received much publicity for the staging and
all future productions of the show will masthead that
the first staging was done at Carousel Dinner Theatre
in Akron, Ohio.  The “JOHN DOE” staging was also part
of Cercone’s “subscriber appreciation days” which have
the purpose of teaching audience members about the
facility and how plays are developed and staged.

Cercone went out on a limb with his selection of
‘URINETOWN’ for this season.  It is a departure from
the safe musicals of the past.  He chose the script
because he “has a responsibility to stretch the
audience and hopefully, can aid them to develop new
attitudes toward theatre.”

Considering that the audience tends to be conservative
and gasp at any swear word or sexual connotation,
‘URINETOWN” should be a challenge.  Interestingly, the
musical, which is about corporate greed and is
basically a love story, doesn’t have the “yuck”
factor, but the title may be enough to keep those with
“red state” attitudes away.  Only box office receipts
will tell the tale.

Carousel productions are usually mounted in 10
seven-to-ten hour days.  As a comparison, musicals
produced by such theatres as Beck Center, usually have
a five-to-eight week rehearsal period.  The fact that
Carousel’s directors are seasoned professionals and
the performers are equity actors allows for the
“speeding up” process.  Even so, the first week or so
of the productions often illustrate signs of still
being rehearsal periods.  The shows tend to run 10
weeks.  The out-of-the-area performers are housed in
Carousel’s home-away-from home, a residence with 8
apartments.  Actors are provided with cars and gym
memberships.

The future?  Cercone hopes to mount some new scripts
to intertwine with old favorites, further fulfilling
his vision of making Carousel into a major player in
not only the local world of theatre, but expanding its
national image.  If that happens, Carousel is going to
have to fight to keep the young man who is working
hard to become the “wunderkindt” of the dinner theatre
circuit.


Roy Berko's web page can be found at www.royberko.info.  His theatre and dance reviews appear on NeOHIOpal, an on-line source.   To subscribe to this free service via the World Wide Web, visit http://lists.fredsternfeld.com/mailman/listinfo/neohiopal.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com