Interview: Executive Director Eric Olmscheid Dishes on Wharton Center's 2024-25 Broadway Series

Wharton Center has officially announced their 2024-2025 Broadway series! It kicks off in October with Les Misérables, followed by new musicals Shucked and MJ in January and February respectively, then rounded out with Life of Pi and Chicago in March and April respectively. Add-on shows include two smash Broadway successes: Hamilton in May and The Book of Mormon in June.

BroadwayWorld Michigan had the pleasure of speaking with Wharton Center's Executive Director Eric Olmscheid about their upcoming Broadway series and all things Wharton Center. Read our conversation below! 

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BWW Michigan: This upcoming season has classics like Les Miserables and Chicago, recent hits Hamilton and The Book of Mormon, and some recent breakout productions like MJ, Life of Pi and Shucked. To start off, can you tell me a little bit about the the process of developing your Broadway season?

Eric Olmscheid: For me, at Wharton Center, I am looking at the touring projects that are representing the best of Broadway and how we can represent a bit of the whole scope of the current Broadway landscape by bringing it to East Lansing. I’m most interested in projects that, from my standpoint, have a high artistic merit but also a great level of audience interest. 

I’m [also] thinking about what shows are in the season ticket package as it relates to the arc of the whole experience. We offer a five-show season ticket package for our Broadway series, and I’m really interested in thinking about the journey of that season as I look at those five shows. I want those shows to compliment and support each other and not feel like they are too similar or too dissimilar. 

As you rightfully said, there’s a bit of new stuff - of the five shows, three of them are brand new for us here at Wharton Center - Shucked, MJ and Life of Pi, two of which are Michigan premieres (we’re the first city in Michigan to have Shucked and Life of Pi). Those both came off of Broadway from last season, and they are both really high-level, high-quality shows. Shucked, a musical comedy, is brand new, something fun and delightful and wholly original, [which] is really exciting and attractive to me.

To me, Life of Pi is also brand new and very original [with] beautiful puppetry. [Life of Pi is] about a 16-year-old boy stranded on a lifeboat with four animals. It’s told through amazing puppetry of these animals. Also, Life of Pi is a play. I like to think about adding a play into our Broadway season as much as possible. Not every year a play tours, but we’re grateful to have two back-to-back years – last year with To Kill a Mockingbird, and now Life of Pi. 

[Then] MJ, of course, is the big spectacle, the amazing catalog of Michael Jackson music. Rounding that out is Chicago and Les Mis – classics and favorites that are more well known, but it’s been a number of years since they were here. Having them back on the package makes sense for us. 

As a Metro Detroiter, I’m curious – are you in contact with Broadway in Detroit and/or Grand Rapids throughout the year? Further, does your schedule influence theirs or vice versa? 

We have a healthy relationship with both Broadway in Grand Rapids and Broadway in Detroit. We all support one another and really look at the benefit of having all three of us in our market. We don’t do a ton of calendar back-and-forth detail, but we talk about the direction we’re going with the season as we plan them. 

I think the idea that we’re against each other…we really want to be supportive of one another because the success of both Grand Rapids and Detroit is helpful for us. 

I think all three of you guys get audience members from all over Michigan, not just audience members in that specific market. 

Yeah, and it really depends on calendars and interests and timing. I just spoke to a ticket holder that said, “I wasn’t able to see Funny Girl when it was in Detroit, so I saw it in East Lansing.” That’s a great win for us. 

This year, what are you most looking forward to bringing to this special community (the university, the capital, etc.)?

That’s a really hard one to answer because being the primary curator of the season, we want to be making careful decisions that make sense for our community, our campus community and the Mid-Michigan region. For me, I can justify why I’m excited for every single one of the seven that we’re announcing. I think the two that are really exciting for me are the two Michigan premieres (Shucked and Life of Pi), because that will be their first time here in Michigan. Shucked is really an amazing, wholly original musical comedy, [which] we haven’t seen a lot in recent years. It represents a new moment and hopefully an indication of the creation of original work. And Life of Pi, because of the beautiful storytelling and the nature of the book and the film, is just really special. The human connection is really deep, and I’m really, really looking forward to connecting that to the campus community. I’ll also say Shucked and Life of Pi resonate with a wide multi-generational audience, but also have a great appeal for young people. 

Post-COVID, have you noticed any significant changes in season ticket numbers? How do today’s numbers compare to pre-2020?

We’re still working to recover and rebound [back to] our pre-pandemic sales. That is a slow recovery process because I think we’re now far enough past post-COVID that there’s no going back. We have seen that audiences for the most part have returned, meaning the people that used to attend are attending again, but what we’ve noticed is that the frequency with which they attend is less. Having a season ticket package is really important for us because it builds in the frequency of the whole season for our consumers and allows them to plan ahead. 

We are really focused on building back our season ticket numbers because that’s the important element for the success of the quality of the programming that we’re able to bring. 

I’ve talked with several actors from a lot of different tours over the years who have all been excited about coming to East Lansing and housing their show at Wharton Center. What do you think makes this theatre and this community so beloved by actors and crew all around the country? 

I think Wharton Center has extremely gracious and appreciative audiences. They are generous in their response and they have a genuine love for the arts. I think the specialness that Wharton Center is – the continental-style seating, all one big section, is like a warm hug. There’s a lot of energy that comes off the audience onto the stage. We are always hearing the energy and gratitude from performers, which is really beautiful. 

Last year, [Public Relations Manager] Bob Hoffman told me that he was going to New York to see some shows to help decide what you guys would bring to Wharton Center. Is that something you do – visit New York, pick what shows you’re interested in and try to hook that up?

I’m in New York every other month and I try to see every new show on Broadway. I also vote for the annual Tony Awards, so I see all of the shows as part of that requirement as a Tony voter. I am also a member of the Broadway League, which is the trade association of the touring Broadway industry. 

Right now, we’re in the 2023-2024 season of shows on Broadway, which is really the starting conversation of what the 2025-2026 season will look like on the road. As we’re seeing it in New York in this current season, we’re thinking two years from now for the touring shows. Honestly, while we’re announcing 2024-2025, we’re in conversations for 2025-2026, and even doing some light thinking around 2026-2027. 

Is there anything you’d like to share with the greater Michigan community and BroadwayWorld readers about your upcoming Broadway season, etc.?

For us, understanding that Wharton Center is unique being in a community of our size (a relatively small capital community). [The fact that] we are able to bring full first national touring Broadway shows [to East Lansing] is really special and something that many of our community members take for granted or assume that every community is able to support. It’s because of the support of our local community that we’re able to do that, and our ticket holders and our season ticket holders are the key to that. 

The second thing I would say is that we are a nonprofit organization affiliated with Michigan State University. We really take that to heart when it comes to our education programs. We do a huge amount of education programs [both on-campus and off-campus] every year serving 20,000 people of all ages, but specifically we do a lot around Broadway and musical theatre. There’s a fair amount of education programs that we’ve built and we connect to as many of the touring shows as possible. Recently we did a masterclass with Funny Girl, we did stuff with Wicked when they were here, we did stuff with Hairspray when they were here in the fall. It’s an interesting anecdote that most people are not aware of.

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Season tickets for Wharton Center's 2024-2025 Broadway Series are on sale now at whartoncenter.com / whartonseason.com. Contact the Ticket Office with any questions by phone at (517) 432-2000, or email wharton@msu.edu.

Note: This interview has been edited for clarity.

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