APA’s Craig Newman On Booking Performing Arts

As a newly minted booking agent in the early 2000s, Newman didn’t wait for opportunity to knock on his door.  Newman has spent several years developing and booking the kind of entertainment that plays at performing arts venues.  A slightly different animal than your typical country music, pop or rock concerts, these shows might have originated on television, Broadway, or, perhaps, in Newman’s imagination.

Now the VP/Head of Performing Arts at APA, Newman talked with Pollstar about the business of fine arts and described how an idea might turn into a concept and a concept might become a tour that plays your local performing arts center.

How do you describe your work?

My position is kind of a dual position.  On one hand I’m one of the VPs in the concerts department, which is more than a broad term.  Then, with the focus as the head of the performing arts department,  That segment of our job really focuses on North American performing arts centers, which is really a class of venue.  A lot of these performing arts centers will have what they call a ‘season.’  It almost runs in parallel to a school year.  It will kick off in either late August or September and run all the way through to May or June.  And the summer, because of all the festivals, etc., will be off.  When we’re booking a performing arts series, typically, they’re looking at the following fall and spring.  Right now, our department is focused on selling our artists to performing arts centers for the fall of 2015 and the spring of 2016.

What led you to where you are today?

I’m an East Coast guy.  I actually studied medicine at Penn State University.  I was going to be a doctor like the rest of my family.  But I had been a performing musician since I was a young kid.  I started playing piano when I was 5 or 6 years old.  Right around Bar Mitzvah age, the rabbi and cantor in my temple said, “You know, you can sing.” So I said, “Then I better learn how to play the guitar.”  So I started singing and playing the guitar and by the time I was a teenager I was playing shows.  By the time I was in college I was playing shows around Penn State.  Even though I was studying science and medicine I was always a musician.

When I graduated, I decided I was either going to move to New York or Los Angeles and be an entertainer.  I chose L.A. for the weather.  I had a few friends living out here who could introduce me to the inner circles.  I started playing music around town … thought I would be a touring musician. 

Keep in mind that I’m six-foot, seven, and a bit of a claustrophobe.  In the back of my mind it was like, “You’re not going to be able to be on a tour bus.  Those bunks are tiny.”

While that was going on, I met a gentleman who knew I was a musician and said, “You really ought to learn the business, too.”  I said, “Can you help me do that?”  And he said, “I can get you an interview at the William Morris Agency” [now William Morris Endeavor or WME].  That was in the year 2000.  In March of 2000 I went to work at William Morris [in the mail room].  Again, I thought all along that I was going to be a performing musician or entertainer, but the more I learned about the business side of touring, the more I became intrigued.  At William Morris I got the chance to work with Don Fischel, the agent for Ray Charles.  For me, a life-long music fan, being able to work with Ray Charles, Peter Frampton, Jethro Tull and all these artists whom I grew up listening to, I just said, “Wow.  That’s really cool.” 

I started to realize, also, that my own personality traits and skillset were actually really favorable to the agent’s side.  Being able to have a strong phone presence [or] when I met someone in a meeting or was introduced to somebody – just my general personality in being able to connect with [people].  I guess I had this business acumen that I didn’t know about.

I worked at William Morris for a year. In 2001 I came over to APA.  At that point … the whole idea of being a touring musician started to fade away.  In August of 2001 I started at APA right at the time that they were developing their contemporary music department.  I went to work for Josh Humiston, who was one of the pioneers developing contemporary artists. … He instantly got me involved.

Here I was with a decent mailroom/assistant background and Josh put me right into the mix.  I started booking shows.  It was like, “This is a great job.  You get to bring entertainment to the masses.  You get to make people happy. If I’m bringing a show to 500 people or to 5,000 people, I feel like I can be a part of it by having sold that show.”

APA was developing this contemporary department and I got to work with artists like Something Corporate and Flogging Molly when they were still early on in their careers, eventually Fall Out Boy and then I was able to sign and work with Plain White T’s.  It was the first time I got to be a responsible agent for an artist and develop them from a club act all the way up to playing large venues.

When did performing arts series first enter the picture?

One of the things I love about this agency is you have to be able to sell from all ends of the business. … When I started at APA there was only a handful of music agents. We had to be able to sell contemporary rock, classic rock, jazz, you name it.  That gave me a 360-degree view of the concert booking world.  By the time I had moved through the years and business, I had a good knowledge of how to sell to casinos, how to sell to fairs, how to sell to festivals, how to sell to Canada – I had all the different experiences.

Around 2009 I started shifting from contemporary music to what I like to call “adult contemporary/special attractions.”  I thought I needed a niche that there aren’t a lot of people currently in. … Everybody in our business was booking music, but around 2008, 2009, I said, “APA is a full-service agency. We have talent agents, we have literary agents.  What if I could work with some of their clients?  What if it’s an actor that you love from the movies or somebody you love from TV, somebody you love from the Food Network, somebody you love from another aspect?  Would people pay to see them if there was an actual live show?”

One of the first examples of that, which eventually led to me becoming the performing arts head, was developing a live show for Chef Robert Irvine from the Food Network.  Robert was signed to APA for television.  I reached out to the TV agent and said, “Does Robert have any interest in doing live appearances?”  And he did. 

So we sat down and started putting together a live show.  In the meantime I booked him on some cooking demos, maybe a tent at a festival where people were out in the sun all day watching music.   They wanted to go under a tent and cool down. Boom! You’d see Robert Irvine in there doing a cooking demo.  “Oh, I love him from TV.”  That kind of thing.

Was Irvine already accustomed to performing in front of live audiences rather than performing in front of TV cameras and audiences?

He was extremely comfortable on both ends of it.  It wasn’t too hard to say to him, “Instead of being in front of a camera, you’re going to be on a stage in front of 1,000 people.”  For him it was, “Bring it on.”  He loved that challenge.  That’s Robert’s whole demeanor.

With that in mind, I said, “What if we were to put together a show with you on stage that brings all the best elements together of what you do on your TV shows?  On TV, you are the guy who is always challenged with an impossible task.  What if we figured out a way to challenge you on stage in front of a live audience?”

We got some more people involved and actually sat down and wrote a show.  Which, by the way, over the years has developed, and developed and developed into what you would see if you went to see it now.  That show is called “Robert Irvine Live.”  Even with a busy guy like Robert who travels over 300 days a year, we’re still able to do between 40 and 60 tour dates a year.  We’ll go out and do a week or go out and do a fly date or play two or three in a weekend.  This was a show that didn’t exist before Robert, myself and a few others sat down and created it.  I got to be a part of the creative side. For an agent, that’s a pretty cool thing.

When you began working with Robert Irvine, you said you and others sat down to write the show.  Was there an actual script or were you blocking out what he might do?

When we first sat down to do it, I did put a “script” together, but that was more so we had a guideline.  The initial idea was if we did a 90-minute show, what would the elements be?  It wasn’t just Robert improvising on a stage.  What would his props be?  What would you physically see on the stage?  What would be the multi-media?  Is it just a guy on stage cooking?  No.  Robert wanted more than that.  We decided that Robert, at certain points in the show, would pull audience members up onto the stage to help him with the challenges. 

I will say that on the early versions of the show, when we first launched it … in April 2012, there was a lot more improvisation for Robert.  Then, as we saw the ability to fill that time with more planned activity, we did.  The version you’ll see now, there is definitely more of a script.  He knows the beats, he knows when they’re going to show a video of him in Afghanistan feeding the troops.  He knows when there is going to be an audience challenge.  But what he still never knows to this very day, he is always surprised by the challenges and he is always surprised by the food elements.  He doesn’t know what actual ingredients will be on stage.  That’s how we keep Robert in this impossible chef world.

When formulating a performing arts series tour, does that process involve other creatives signed with APA?

Sure. I like to think my door is open if somebody in the APA family of talent has an idea.  Some of them happen and some of them don’t.  I’ve had well-known television and movie personalities come down to my office and say, “What do you think if we were to create a show around me?”

Here’s another example, and this didn’t wind up in turning into anything, but it’s good to know.  We signed tennis legend Jimmy Connors.  Jimmy was about to release a tell-all autobiography.  I met with Jimmy and said, “Here are my ideas – speaking engagements, lectures, corporate events.”  Then I said to him, “Would you let me write an original stage show for you?”  And he said, “Sure.”

I came up with an idea, it never took off, but it was called “Verbal Tennis.”  The idea was to take Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe, put them on a stage, and it was almost like, instead of battling on a tennis court, they were battling on stage.  It was going to be questions back and forth in that Jim-John way where they … go at each other.  There was actually going to be an umpire’s chair with an ump who was sort of a moderator.  The audience was going to have ping-pong paddles with one side for John and one for Jimmy and they would award points based on the answers to the moderator’s questions.  It was a brand-new concept that took a neat thing from sports and carried it over to the stage.

How much time did you spend on “Verbal Tennis” before you realized it wasn’t going to happen?

For me, I can sit down and put a show idea together in a couple of hours.  I have an assistant who’s great with graphic design. … We definitely got promoter interest but we weren’t able to get that off the ground.

But I could use that format for another show.  Maybe it’s not “Verbal Tennis,” but it might, perhaps, be in the political sphere [with] two politicians.  The idea that you can create a show and then book it, it’s real.  You can do that.  I don’t want to take away from the fact that with performing arts, there is a heavy music element.  I have music artists on my roster.  I’m still heavily involved in booking APA concerts across the board.  The special attractions idea is one leg of what we do.

Another thing I did, in around 2008, was to go to different [APA] departments and offer to pitch their artists for lecture series.  I wound up doing lectures for Betty White.  I did one for Burt Reynolds.  I also represent Jerry Lewis and helped book his “Jerry Lewis Live” [show], which is a retrospective of his life.  It’s not really a straight lecture.  He tells stories, jokes, he shows film clips in front of a theatre crowd.  I’ve had the chance to work with some pretty neat people on that side of things, too.

What do you think makes for a great performing arts series?

I think it is a combination of a wide variety of various genres.  I always look and see if a performing arts series has 20 or 30 events.  There’s a really cool ballet or dance show, but then a week later they’re doing Jackson Browne. Then, a week later they have “Masters Of Illusion” … and Boom! There’s a lecture series with a really prominent politician or a musician.  So I think variety is key.  I also think risk-taking [is key].  That’s going to be a subjective concept but a lot of the shows and artists that I pitch have either never done a stage show before.  When I pitched Robert Irvine before the first 2012 tour, nobody had ever had him do that show before.  But I was able to get however many shows we did in year one, solely based on the presenters and buyers believing what we had pitched them.

What do you actually present to potential buyers? Do you have footage you can show them, a mock show or presentation?

In the beginning we didn’t have much of anything.  We were able to take Robert’s television clips and send them out.  Then it was up to the agent pitching the show to do a good enough job to explain what it was.  Nowadays, we have an electronic press kit. We can show a 30-second or 60-second edit of different moments of Robert on stage doing “Robert Irvine Live.”  Another good thing is calling up a presenter or buyer who did really well with the show and having them give you a testimonial. We go to a lot of conferences.  We just got back from the APAP Conference [Global Performing Arts Conference and Marketplace] in New York where we pitched our shows. Perhaps you have a buyer you can pull into a meeting and say, “Listen.  He had Robert back in April and he can tell you how great it was.”  Of course, ticket sales and box-office numbers are important to have. 

When I go out and pitch a show, I’m constantly editing – a paragraph about the show, a document that says what the different beats of the show are, a rider, a video link, as well as information about what Robert Irvine, or whoever the client, is up to.  And I have these kind of pitches and bios on all my artists.

Sounds as if you’re always prepared for whatever that next phone call may bring.

I think it’s important, and I’m glad you said “phone call.” Because it’s very important, no matter what you do by email, it’s very important to do work by phone – to get to know the buyers and have them know you.  You can send whatever you want in an email, and if it looks really pretty it’s going to get a look.  But if you want to sell a show, I don’t care if it’s music, comedy, whatever, you have to get on the phone and develop a rapport with that promoter.

I have a roster of, let’s say about 20 artists that I’m personally responsible for and I’ve got the ability to send out something on any of those.  Who are they?  What have they done?  What are their accolades?  I represent a singer, Mary Bridget Davies. She’s Tony nominated for her lead role in “A Night With Janis Joplin.”  If I’m pitching Mary Bridget to a performing arts center or to a performing arts series, you can bet one of the first things I’m going to mention is “Tony nominated for ‘A Night With Janis Joplin’” because a lot of performing arts centers have Broadway series.  So they know who she is.  And that’s a leg-up for me.

How did you come to work with Lightwire Theater?  Was it the group’s  performances on “America’s Got Talent” or did you know about the act previously?

I like to call “America’s Got Talent” my “homework.”  Whenever that show is on, I’m watching.  I want to see which artists and acts would make sense to tour.  Lightwire Theater was an artist on “America’s Got Talent.” I watched the whole season and they got really far.  When all was said and done, it was an act I wanted to represent.  I felt we could tour it and do a lot of neat things with it.  So we started working together and it’s been successful.

Every season I watch [“America’s Got Talent”].  Sometimes I’ll reach out to an artist and it won’t work out but I, typically, will reach out to one or two artists every season.

Are you constantly coming up with ideas for live shows?

Being an agent, especially getting to be involved in a lot of different areas … there’s never 100 percent retention.  Sometimes it will be an idea I have, I may lose it and then a couple of months later something sparks it and I sit down with a team and come up with something.  That’s not always [about] creating a show.  Also how do you service your client?  You may have a client like Lightwire Theater that traditionally lives in a performing arts center or theater.  But who’s to say you couldn’t take Lightwire Theater and create an event for them at a festival?  When you see Lightwire Theater in a show, there’s no talking, but there’s a wonderful bed of music throughout the show.  And that music changes.  Sometimes it’s pop music, sometimes it’s electronic dance music.  In an idea I shared with Lightwire Theater’s manager, was why couldn’t Lightwire Theater go to an electronic dance music/EDM festival and perform while a DJ is spinning?  Now you’ve got, maybe a younger audience out there, you’ve got a DJ on stage who’s doing this amazing electronic dance music and you’ve got Lightwire Theater, who created an original piece, and is performing that in front of this brand new audience.

A lot of ideas I come up with are how to take something out of its normal environment and introduce it to a new environment and a new audience.

It sounds as if anything might stimulate an idea that can be developed into a show.

Let me put the exclamation point on that sentence and that is “television, television, television.”  A lot of what I do is paralleled with television.  It’s either an artist who has previously been on television or it’s an artist who will soon be on television and use TV to help promote the concert dates.

I’ll give you a couple of examples.  We already talked about Lightwire Theater having been on “America’s Got Talent.” So they started on TV, used that popularity and are now able to tour.  By the way they went back on TV in late 2014 on a [competition] on True TV. Lightwire went on and won the show. So they’ve been on TV twice.

I represent the Fab Four: The Ultimate Beatles Tribute.  The Fab Four, a few years ago, filmed a TV special.  Now, over the years, we’ve been able to service that special to the PBS stations in various cities throughout the U.S., and we use that as a platform to help sell tickets.  Because when you do a deal with PBS, they pledge the show.  Let’s say we have a show in the month of May. That prior March they’ll air the Fab Four special x number of times and they’ll have a stock of tickets the promoter and the theatre have given them that they’re able to use for their pledge.  Now people are tuning into PBS, they’re seeing the Fab Four and the promoter, the venue and the artist are getting promotion. …That drives traffic, that drives ticket sales.

Another one of my artists is Under The Streetlamp, four cast members from the touring Broadway production of “Jersey Boys.”  We like to say “It’s a walk down the American radio song book.” All the popular artists of the ’50s and ’60s, Beach Boys, Beatles, Frankie Valli, James Brown, Roy Orbison, etc, etc. … Under The Streetlamp performs their music with an incredible backing band.  They have two PBS specials. So [that’s] another example of being able to use television to help sell tickets.  You can tell, just from those examples, what an important parallel TV and live have become to one another.

One of my newest signings is a show called “One Man Breaking Bad – The Unauthorized Parody.”  Here is a parody based on one of the most popular television shows of the last decade.  The idea an actor doing a one-man show who is taking the audience on a fun and funny ride through the five seasons of “Breaking Bad.”  Now, it’s an unauthorized parody.  It’s not officially tied into the television series. … [The series] is in syndication and on Netflix but that [it’s] not making new episodes.  Fans of that show, I feel, will want to go out and see this and relive what they loved about  “Breaking Bad.”  It’s never played the U.S. before.  In late May and early June we’re going to do a few dates just to sort of introduce the country to it on the West Coast. Then, in the fall, we’re planning on touring it for a whole month.

What could you tell a college student who wants to do what you’re doing?

The first piece of advice I would give is to be open to everything.  In other words, don’t just come in and think, “I’m going to work in hip hop and that’s all I’m going to do.”  Even if you do wind up being the biggest hip hop agent of all time, having a background in classic rock R&B, jazz, is going to help you, ultimately, with your end goal of being that hip hop agent.  So my first piece of advice is learn as much you can about as much as you can.  I don’t book country music, that’s booked out of our Nashville office.  But I have booked country music.  If Nashville calls me up and needs my help, I’m comfortable to do that.

We’re fortunate at APA in that we’re not just a music agency. We’re music, comedy, Broadway, Nashville, TV, lit, you name it. If you’re coming into our agency as an intern, I wouldn’t even say learn all about music.  I’d say learn all about the company.

When I do something with Robert Irvine, that is a client who is represented across the board at APA. So I’m working with APA’s talent department, APA’s alternative television department, APA’s branding department. I’m getting to know a little bit about their worlds and they’re getting to know about mine. … Therefore I have a better, broader knowledge of what the agency does as a whole.  So that would always be my first piece of advice.

I think that being an agent, the agency business really is the most fun and the best piece of the overall music business.  We get to book concert tours.  We get to be a part of the artist and the touring life.  We get to help them bring their music to the people and we get to make people happy. 

If someone is interested in the music side and they’re interested in the agency side, I would say jump in with both feet and start making relationships.  … You need to know how to talk to people, you need to know how to relate to people.

Do you have a dream show or concept you would love to execute but it just hasn’t made itself available?

There are a couple of television shows I really like.  One is [Sundance Channel’s]“Iconoclasts”  With “Iconoclasts,” the idea is that two prominent people who have two totally different fields, can interview one another.  Whenever I’m talking with someone who’s a celebrity in their field, I always think to myself, “Here’s a very prominent athlete and here’s a very prominent film actor.  Ultimately, how fun would it be to see them interview each other?”  They’re so different but throughout the interview you realize there are a lot of similarities between their fields.

The other one … is [VH1’s] “Storytelling.”  Seeing U2 in concert is a once-in-a-lifetime event.  Or seeing Paul McCartney or seeing The Rolling Stones.  But how often can a person say they got to sit there and listen to Mick and Keith in a two-man show play stripped-down versions of the songs and tell you what was going on in their lives when they wrote those songs?  To be able to have that big field of talent and to get them on stage to do either the “Iconoclasts” idea or the “Storytellers” idea, for me, that would be the ultimate culmination of everything I love.

This is the latest in a series of interviews with concert industry professionals. For more encounters with the people behind your favorite acts, please visit Pollstar’s interview with Maroon 5 manager Jordan Feldstein, a conversation with booking agent Adam Brill from APA and interviews with agents Tim Borror, Peter Schwartz and Joshua Dick and Dave Shapiro, all with The Agency Group.