In this interview excerpt, Tara Smith (Speaker B) recounts the early production hurdles of the Broadway musical Xanadu. She describes how the project began as an Off‑Broadway ambition with a modest $250,000 fundraising goal, but the inability to secure an appropriate Off‑Broadway venue led the Helen Hayes Theatre to invite the show to Broadway. This shift caused the budget to balloon by an additional zero, creating a daunting fundraising challenge for Smith, who had never raised such a large sum before. She reflects on the emotional difficulty of asking for money, feeling “sheepish” and responsible, while Speaker A acknowledges the weight of that responsibility. The passage highlights the financial, logistical, and personal obstacles faced when scaling a theatrical production from a modest vision to a full Broadway run.
It definitely wasn't an easy journey in any way. No, it wasn't. And you dealt with a number of different aspects of just one, getting recognition and then dealing with injuries. Let's just take that show where you just went.
It was a daily thing. It really, it started— well, here's the thing. I saw a reading of the show. I didn't know that it was based on the worst movie musical of all time. When I, when I went into it, I didn't know what we were up against. And originally when I first signed on to the project, I thought we were going to go Off-Broadway. And it seemed like, well, this is the natural progression in my career where I could say, yeah, I can raise— you know, at that time it was like $250,000, which seemed like a huge amount. And I thought, well, this is the next step from where I am, so that seems like a good goal to have. And then we couldn't find a theater Off-Broadway that it made financial sense to move into. And so the Helen Hayes wanted us and was so excited to have us, and we were like, okay, I guess we're going to Broadway, which then of course made the budgets go up and that $250,000 turned into, you know— Another zero added on to the end. Yeah, it just went up. But I mean, that was probably the first challenge to wrap my head around was how am I ever going to raise this money because I had never raised anything like that. It's— in the beginning was very scary and still can be scary asking people for money, at least for me. Some people have no problem at all. I felt a little sheepish about it.
Well, I know why. It's because you feel really responsible.
Yeah, no, I do. I feel very responsible for— and that's the thing, you never know with these shows. You get— you just don't know what is going to— no matter how good it is, you still don't know. And I think that was one of the lessons I learned on Xanadu as well. But that was the first challenge. Then it just became a rolling thing. It was like, oh, okay, you first-time producers, we're gonna throw you every test possible. You know, we had Jane Krakowski attached, then Jane Krakowski had to drop out. Then we had Riedel saying there's no way you can produce this show without Jane Krakowski. Then Cheyenne Jackson, who was originally attached, had to drop out. Then we had to recast. Then our creative team decided, "Hey guys, maybe we should go out of town or do something else before coming straight into Broadway." Then we had to have this huge meeting where I had to convince Chris Ashley, our director, "Oh no, we have the money. We are totally capable of doing this." And the next day we owed the theater a deposit for the theater and we still didn't have that money. So it was like every day was just I'd go to bed at night thinking like, okay, we made it, and then we'd shoot up the next morning and the anxiety would start again and be like, alright, we gotta face this again. And then, and then, you know, we finally get to this place where we have this amazing cast and we're in rehearsal and everyone's such a happy family and we get to previews and everything on the creative side always went really smoothly. There was never a problem with the writing or saying this didn't work. I mean, that part of it always worked, and the collaboration between the creative team was always spectacular. And then you get into previews and you're about to freeze the show and critics are about to come, you know, in 3 days, and your star breaks his ankle, and you're just left thinking, how does— how do I even go on? I mean, I watched Andre Ward, who had never— first of all, never thought he was ever going to go into this role, have to go on, and never having had an understudy rehearsal. I mean, his legs on roller skates shaking. I mean, we sat in the back of that audience just barely getting through, and he just— it was amazing. It was an amazing experience. And then, you know, then we had a fire in the theater, and then, you know, and then finally the show opens and you get rave reviews. And you still can't sell tickets to this show. So it was, it was a year and a half of just pushing this like a boulder up the hill, and it never, it never let up except for like the last 6 weeks when we had Whoopi Goldberg. And like, we're like, yes! But you know, replacing a star then became the next challenge, right? So I mean, you can tell from— it's— it was an exhausting totally fulfilling, but I mean, I can't pick one challenge. It was all a challenge.
