I will never develop a new musical without doing serious market research first.

Stick with me . . . because what happened when we did this for Somewhere in Time ended up on the front page of the New York Times. And not the Arts section.

The. Front. Page.

Let me back up.

Somewhere in Time was a musical I wrote in 2012 and produced based on the classic film. We were in the thick of development, premiering in Portland, and if you know anything about developing a new musical, you know that this is the phase where you need information the most. 

You’ve probably heard the old cliché . . . the one that if you hang around by the restrooms during intermission or after the show, you could eavesdrop on audiences’ comments as they file in and out. 

But I’ve always believed we should look beyond our own industry for smarter ways to do things. So I asked myself: what do the big dogs do?

The film industry.

They don’t just guess. They test. They run focus groups, they screen for audiences, they iterate. So for Somewhere in Time, I went one step further and hired dial testers.

You know dial testing. You’ve seen it on TV during presidential debates. 

Audience members turn a dial in real time, registering exactly when they love something and exactly when something isn’t landing. The data streams live. You see the peaks. You see the valleys. You see the precise moment the audience checks out or leans in.

We applied that technology to a new musical premiering out of town. For the first time ever.

And we learned more from those sessions than we ever could have learned from a traditional focus group. Not just general impressions but granular, scene-by-scene, moment-by-moment data. The kind of information that tells you not just what isn’t working but exactly when it stops working.

Here’s where the story gets good.

A reporter named Pat Healy, now a big-time political journalist at the Times, but back then covering theater, got wind of what we were doing. (He had previously written about our Godspell crowdfunding campaign, which had also landed on the front page, so Pat knew us.) 

He came out to watch the dial testing in action. We let him in. Because I’ve always believed in opening up the process – transparency isn’t just good PR, it’s good for the art form.

A few weeks later, I’m mid-workout at the Equinox on 50th Street and my phone rings.

Pat.

He said, “Ken. You’re not going to believe this. I think we’re going to get A1 again.”

A1. As in, page one. As in, the front page of the New York Times.

I said, “You’re kidding me.”

He wasn’t.

And sure enough – there it was. The dial testing story, on the front page, alongside everything else happening in the world that day. A Broadway producer using political debate technology to develop a musical. It was something that had genuinely never been done before, and the Times treated it that way.

Now, full disclosure: not everyone was thrilled about it. Good reporters always get contrarian voices, and this article was no exception. A couple of industry folks were quoted saying they would never do this, that it feels like you’re letting the audience write the show for you.

I hear that. I do.

But here’s my answer: market research doesn’t mean you surrender the wheel. It means you drive with your eyes open. You don’t have to take the data as gospel. But you have to do the research. You have to know what your audience is experiencing . . . not what you think they’re experiencing, not what the people in your creative bubble are telling you, but what the actual humans sitting in those seats are feeling in real time.

That’s the job, folks.

I’ve gotten flack for this position before and I’ll probably get it again. But I’ll keep saying it: research is one of the most important tools in developing new theater. The film industry figured this out decades ago. We’re catching up.

So here’s my question for you: when you’re developing your next show, what’s your system for actually knowing what your audience thinks? Are you hanging by the restrooms . . . or are you getting the data?

Because there’s a difference. And that difference might just land you on the front page.

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