BWW Blog: Broadway Tours - Bring Them Home!

National tours are a beautiful, wonderful thing. They bring Broadway plays and musicals around North America so those who cannot afford to visit New York City or missed the show before it closed have a chance to live through Broadway magic. In Canada, the only regions that have touring productions visit on a regular basis are Vancouver, Montreal, Ottawa, Ontario and Edmonton. The rest of CanAda May have productions stop by every so often, but it isn't enough!

I am from Halifax, Nova Scotia. For those unfamiliar with Halifax, it is the capital city in Nova Scotia with a population of 390,095. Halifax is the home of Neptune Theatre; the largest regional theatre in the Maritime provinces (New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia) that seats up to five hundred patrons. We also have the new Broadway Atlantic that premiered last year with their charming production of "The Sound of Music".We have a venue that has been newly renovated called the Scotiabank Centre which is primarily used for hockey, basketball and ice skating shows. It is the only venue in the area that is capable of holding a large scale Broadway Across Canada production because of its large size.

Though I love that my home has theatre opportunities for professional actors and fans, I would like to see more touring productions visit this area.

Halifax draws many visitors from all across Nova Scotia and our neighboring provinces: New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland. From my experiences, theatre is well-loved as I have observed from theatre-going in the area and theatre students. If I had a dollar for every time someone has said to me "How come productions do not visit Halifax?", my five year degree would be paid off. There are many families I know who cannot afford a trip to New York, but would buy tickets to a nearby touring show without hesitation because they are not paying the exchange rate, hotel, plane tickets, all that jazz. That being said, I know right off the bat that a touring show would be successful because there is a large audience.

In the past fifteen years, these are the shows that have visited the Scotiabank Centre: CATS, Fiddler on the Roof, Spamalot, Hairspray, Mamma Mia! and Beauty and the Beast. The number of shows that have visited Halifax would make up one season (one year) in a city such as Ottawa. Sad, eh?

As stated previously, Scotiabank Centre is a sporting venue; however, it can be converted for concerts and stage shows. It is not best suited for these events since it's not a proscenium, but it does a fine job. Perhaps an organization such as Broadway Across Canada dislikes this venue because it may be more work for the stage crew to set up a show. I tried to contact the Scotiabank Centre so I could ask questions about the process of preparing for musicals in the past though they never responded.

This leads me to another question: How is it determined where Broadway shows tour and which theatre? Some cities have multiple venues which are capable of touring productions. How do marketing agents, etc figure out if a certain show would be successful in an area?

In my opinion, I strongly feel that Broadway tours would be wonderful to have in Halifax, Nova Scotia because there is a market for it, and we could use the magic of Broadway in our beautiful province!