[Music]
Curtain Up is an absolutely phenomenal celebration
of the opening of the theatre season in the city of Buffalo.
It’s been done for thirty five years and it has been tremendously successful and usually
all of the theaters in downtown Buffalo sell out.
[Music]
We have three acts.
The first act is where we have a cocktail hour and people get to have a wonderful gourmet dinner.
This year it’s on the beautiful Shea Stage.
And then after that everybody rushes out to get to one of the theatre performances that night.
And then afterwards, we invite everybody back downtown for a free street party, which is
full of entertainment and fun and excitement.
[Music]
I think that Curtain Up has been successful in Buffalo for two reasons.
One; we’ve earned it.
And two; we need it.
That it came to this city at a time when we were at rock bottom and needed a sense of ourselves.
There was a strong awareness that this once great city, this city at the end of a canal, had seen better days.
[1940s Jazz Music]
[Radio Announcer] It may be off the Great White Way,
but word spreads fast that Main Street Buffalo is becoming a new theatrical address.
I came to the very first Curtain Up.
In those days, downtown was desolate, it was quite bombed out
and the city had gotten a grant to build a subway line.
This subway that was supposed to revitalize the city, had the opposite effect.
While it was being constructed, it killed every business along its path.
And so downtown, the theatres were in a panic.
What to do?
No one was coming downtown, Buffalo was losing population.
And so Michael Pietek was the managing director of Studio Arena Theatre
suggested, well, why don’t we do what we do best, an event?
Let’s have a party and invite people downtown to have a party and to remind them that the
theatres are still opening and operating.
It was very modest.
Snow fence, little hand-written signs on cardboard, balloons that had been blown up by hand;
and that was Curtain Up.
It started off outside, under tents,
and then weather, of course, was always something to be concerned about.
I can remember sitting in a tent with water up to my ankles
and saying, "I'm never coming to this event again." [Laughs]
It was held in the center of the theatre district which is actually a giant fountain
and they would drain the fountain and put a tent over it and they would hold the formal dinner there.
The problem was you could never depend on the weather so one of the theatres suggested
that we consider doing the formal dinner on the stage at Shea.
[Music]
Of course that meant that we could not present an event that night.
But for us, because we’re in the Broadway touring business, generally speaking,
there is not a lot of product available in early September anyway.
We thought about it and felt that might be our best contribution.
I think something like five hundred people
will be seated for dinner tomorrow night.
And at the beginning of the theatre season, I love the idea that we come together and
raise a glass and we kick off the season.
Everybody is preparing their production and
readying it for an opening for an audience.
But they’re all doing it in collaboration with each other and marketing symbiotically
and working together so that we’re opening our individual productions, and we’re trying
obviously to market it and to get a box office.
But there’s also a bigger picture where the community comes together, and as well
as marketing their own show, we’re marketing the whole concept of Curtain Up and a thriving,
vibrant theatre community.
Buffalo’s a special place.
Here, the theaters support one another.
Twenty two theaters that all do something different, so no one theater’s going to
step on another theater’s toes.
So if you can help me, I can help you.
Because in most cases, a patron will only go to see a show once.
But now you have twenty one other theaters to see.
[Music]
[Chatter]
In a way, it’s very practical.
If MusicalFare out in Amherst wants to put on In the Heights, their usual cast,
their usual troop, really might not be great for that show.
But if they collaborate with [a particular] theater, they’re going to find the right
cast for In the Heights.
If that theatre production is in Amherst, some of the folks who like [that theater]
are coming to a different community, but also the folks in Amherst who are going to MusicalFare
are getting exposed to a while different art form.
I know a lot of times, even in this city,
years ago people would look at Shea’s and say we’re the eight hundred pound gorilla
and we don’t really care about the small theatre companies and what they do; we present
Broadway and that draws huge audiences so what do we care about the other theaters?
I’ve worked very hard to make sure that, number one, my staff and the people here at
Shea’s, whether it be staff or board, understand the importance of all the theaters in town,
regardless of size.
We all are a community and I think the most important thing is that we understand that.
We can look at each other as competitors; you can accomplish a heck of a lot more when
everybody’s working together.
This theatre season we have about twenty theatre companies
and they range from anything from doing dramas to classical work, musicals,
cabarets, we have comedy sports.
And that’s the other thing that is wonderful.
If you are a theater-goer, you’re going to find something that you like.
[Music]
[Chatter]
We’re opening at Irish Classical Theatre
with Sweet Bird of Youth.
Usually we open with an American classic.
I think the opening show each season has strong title identity ‘cause that’s kind of the
hook that pulls the audience in and then hopefully, they’ll buy a subscription to the rest of the season.
[Chatter]
What I love about Buffalo theatre is its diversity,
in so many senses of the word.
Every once and a while, you’ll get a funder or you’ll get an elected official who may
not be as in tune with what our cultural sector is offering and they’ll say, wait a minute,
twenty theaters, twenty five theaters?
That’s too many theaters.
I mean, aren’t they all the same?
No, they’re not all the same.
In fact, no two of them are the same.
[Singing and chatter]
It’s very easy for me to choose which play
I’m going to see on Curtain Up night.
My husband is a producer and so I go to his play.
And the reason I go to his and not someone else’s is one; I’m not going to review it
and that’s good because the Curtain Up audience is unpredictable.
It’s like New Year’s Eve; a lot of people who don’t go to the theater ordinarily will
go on Curtain Up night.
And they will have been to dinner and they will have had cocktails, so it can be a very
rowdy opening night audience.
Which, when you are a critic, can be distracting.
So Curtain Up is for the fun.
The work will resume for me the next day.
I’m going to Gentlemen Prefer Divas.
A lot of friends are in that, not only actors who are part of that but a variety of community
members so it’s fun to see people become part of that event.
[Singing]
[Chatter]
We came to see Sweet Bird of Youth and we thought it was just fabulous.
Our favorite was when Miss Lucy came out.
I agree.
I thought she was so sexy and sassy and she made the part.
And I saw it in New York; I think they did a wonderful job here.
I think we’re very lucky in Buffalo.
Everyone loves theatre.
Look at the buzz!
[Music]
Looking through the crowd, I see the crowd
very differently from the way another person might, because I see the theatre people mixed
in with the civilians.
So I recognize the cast of Urinetown over there and the people from Gypsy over here
and for a lot of people, this is their introduction to the theatre community.
Coming down here and meeting lots of people; you can meet anybody you want from directors
to the mayor tonight.
[Music]
This party here is something very special,
something very unique because we support the arts more than any community that I’ve ever
been in in my life and I’m actually from Chicago.
There’s seven times the amount of theaters in Chicago but nothing like the experience
you’ll get here.
[Music]
The impact of having Curtain Up and a vibrant
theatre district in the city of Buffalo has been tens of millions of dollars of investment
in the city.
And during my tenure as mayor in this theater, in arts and cultural institutions, community
centers, we have invested over forty million dollars.
The economic impact of Curtain Up and the theatre district, to downtown Buffalo and
the city of Buffalo has been quite significant.
[Music]
We know the economic impact of Shea’s to
the downtown Buffalo region is in the neighborhood of sixty five million dollars a year.
When we bring people downtown, whether it be Shea’s or 710 or any of the other theatres;
when we bring people downtown, they eat dinner, they park their cars, if they come from outside
the area, they stay at hotels so the economic impact is pretty powerful.
[Music]
The first time I came to Curtain Up, I just
did the street party.
I was a little bit younger and just wanted to be part of the scene.
And then eventually started going to the plays and now I do the whole thing.
And that’s really a cool, unique thing about this event, is that by midnight, you’ve got
people in tuxes and suits and then t-shirts and jeans all having a good time together
celebrating.
[Music]
Buffalo is coming into a new place and I think
the arts community for a long time has been part of that.
Because artists, God bless us, we always see the positive, we always see the possibilities,
we always find the energy to see something beautiful or the potential in something.
[Music]
Art in the best sense can be a reflection
of the times; and it can also be a distraction from the times.
At times when we were economically disadvantaged, our cultural organizations and our theaters
kept going and kept producing meaningful work and also kept producing entertaining work.
And really brought people through it.
I think if there’s anything that other cities
could learn from Curtain Up in Buffalo, it would be the importance of celebrating community
itself.
To take a moment to celebrate the things that are good about the place where you are is
critically important.
We learned that by accident here and it’s been a terrific thing.
I hope it continues forever.
[Music]