Steve Kazee and Cristin Milioti in the Broadway production of Once.

Director John Tiffany and Adapter Enda Walsh share how they kept the fragile spirit of a musical alive on Broadway

Yorkshire director John Tiffany is clearly passionate about Once—but when his agent first mentioned the project, Tiffany was unfamiliar with the film. Fortunately, a friend of his had seen it. “He got very excited when the title, Once, was mentioned. He knew the music, and said, ‘You’re going to love it.’ So I went home that evening and downloaded the music, and absolutely adored it. The next day, I watched the film, and adored it. As soon as I saw it, I got very excited about turning it into a piece of theatre.”

Your theatre can't just process tickets...

Ticket systems need to do more—without costing more

Patrons need to be so much more than patrons now, don’t they? They need to be advertisements, they need to be philanthropic support, they need to be consistent attendees. We are exiting the era of the ticketing system. The dawn of the “customer relationship management” system or CRM, is upon us.

A comparison matrix of some of the features of popular CRM packages.

As part of Clayton Lord's article on CRM software packages for theaters in the May issue of SD, we didn't have room to include this comparison chart in the print issue. But thanks to the infinite power of the web, we can print it here! Enjoy!

Liviu Ciulei

Learning to see through another designer's eyes can make even mundane frontlight extraordinary

On October 24, 2011 the theatre world lost an amazing visionary when Liviu Ciulei passed away in Munich at the age of 88. Former artistic director of the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis he spent much of his later life as an educator working with the graduate students at New York University. That was where I met him in 2003 when I lit a production of Horvath’s Caroline and Kasimir for the NYU Grad Acting department.

Sorry if you're seeing this! I'll have the video portion of the June Ed  Note posted here in just a couple days, so check back soon to watch!

SD Editor Jacob Coakley

Stage Directions offers a lot more than just the print version...

I got a homemade blue ribbon when I read my first book by myself. (The Spooky Old Tree, by Stan and Jan Berenstein, as I recall…) When I first read Twitter all I got was a look of incomprehension. What the heck was this?

The periaktoi units in one apartment configuration, surrounding a bookshelf…

The designers for The Real Thing went Greek to simulate '80s London

A lot has been written about cutting-edge stage technology and how stagecraft today is different from yesteryears’—but sometimes the classics are exactly what you need. For a recent production of Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing, a semi-autobiographical play about theatre and the theatre scene in early 1980s London, the creative team at the Salem Theater Company in Salem, Mass., used ancient technology to make the 15-foot-square stage accommodate the numerous locations that this script requires with smoothly choreographed scene changes.

Dave Stewart and Glen Ballard made their names in the rock ‘n’ roll world, but have worked on the score for Ghost the Musical for six years. It wasn’t that big a stretch for them, either. Ballard has past experience with films, and Stewart was weaned on show tunes thanks to his father's musical obsession. (The latter also scored, no joke, the 2004 Austrian musical version of Barbarella.) Here’s more from their interview that we didn’t have room for in print.

Every actor plays their own instrument in Once—which meant a lot more wireless mics in play on the stage.

Clive Goodwin keeps the aural balance for this unconventional movie-turned-musical

Yes, Once is another movie being made into a Broadway musical, but unlike most film-to-stage transfers, the Oscar-winning film was a cult hit rather than a blockbuster. Featuring songs (including the Academy Award-winning “Falling Slowly”) by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, Once shares the story of a Czech immigrant who encourages an Irish busker to pursue his artistic dreams and to collaborate with her. The Broadway production of Once shines with outstanding leads (Cristin Milioti as Girl and Steve Kazee as Guy) and an ensemble cast of 12 that acts, sings and plays their instruments in a pub setting. It really feels more like a play with songs rather than a musical.

New chairs from Bertolini Inc. sit on platforms from Staging Concepts in the Black Box Theatre at Indiana Wesleyan University.

There’s a few common themes when it comes to upgrading a theatre’s seats

You know that old saying that you spend a third of your life in bed, sleeping? Well your audience spends most of their time in your theatre sitting—so it behooves you to pay attention to the seats those butts are sitting in.