In this interview, Bob Klein recounts his shift from a successful marketing career in film and television to co-founding and marketing the Festival of New American Musicals, modeled after New York’s Encores! program. He describes the early challenges of finding fresh material for revivals, the growing demand for new works, and pivotal moments that signaled a renaissance in American musical theater—such as Audra McDonald’s concert featuring songs by emerging composers and a Hollywood Bowl performance of Adam Guettel’s unfinished A Light in the Piazza. Klein details how he leveraged industry connections, securing Stephen Schwartz as honorary co‑chairman, and how the festival’s launch coincided with the cultural impact of Wicked, Disney’s high‑school musical projects, and the TV series Glee. He emphasizes the importance of opening doors for young composers, offering his contact (bob@lafestival.org) and encouraging aspiring writers to pursue musical theater over other musical paths.
Chapters
I was in the marketing business, had a company very successfully marketing movies, television networks, television programs, then cable networks, then the internet. It was exactly 17 years ago that I got a call from a friend saying, "Hey, how'd you like to do here what Encores! does in New York?" And for the audience, I guess you just say that Encores was an effort at New York City Center to do revivals of great musicals that weren't getting revived by anybody. She said, "We want to do that here." And I said, "Yeah, but what do I do? I don't know upstage from downstage. I love musical theater, but I don't." And she said, "Well, marketing. You do marketing. We could use marketing." And so I went to the meeting and I met Marcia Seligson, whose idea it was and was going to be the artistic director. And I signed on, became the first board member, and for 10 years ran the marketing. 10 years in, I got a call one day from Marcia and she says, "Bob, we're in trouble." And I said, "What's the problem?" She said, We're running out of material. And I said, could you give me 5 minutes? I got a list of 40 I'll give you. And she said, that's not the problem. I said, well, what is the problem? She said, we're too successful. Please explain. And she says, look, from the point of view of the Broadway producers, encores and reprises have become the same thing. Ooh, revivals are a good business. And they— and she says they have bought up options on everything in sight. Her line was, go try to do Pal Joey today, you can't get the rights. Somebody was telling me something, and the first message came the night we drove down to Irvine to their new theater on campus where a very talented young singer-actress from Broadway was doing her first West Coast concert. And she had just released her first album, and the first album was full of songs by people you'd never heard of. People you'd never heard of, like people with 3 names. Jason Robert Brown, Ricky Ian Gordon, Michael John Lockhughes, names like that. And of course, I had heard the album and loved it a lot. And of course, it was Audra McDonald. And we went, and I kept nudging Marcia and saying, "Look at the audience. They're all 20 years younger than ours. They're not dying." And the other thing was that the whole audience knew the Vamps. They were singing along to the Vamps songs. So we said, "Ooh, what's going on here?" And then it can't have been 2 weeks later that I went to the Hollywood Bowl on a Saturday night and John LoCeri was in charge at that time, and he would occasionally do a Broadway night, and he was doing a Broadway night that night I went, and in the middle of the evening, turns to the audience, he chats, right? John chats, and he said, "Now, I wanna play you music from a new musical that isn't even completed yet. The lyrics haven't even been finished yet, but I've been mentoring this young man since he was 7 years old," And he is an amazing talent. So ladies and gentlemen, for the first time anywhere, music from A Light in the Piazza by Adam Guettel. 85-piece symphony orchestra, arrangements made for that performance, never heard since. I just cried the whole time. There's nothing so beautiful. And things like that kept happening. And I finally said to Marcia, I said, I think there's a fucking Renaissance brewing in new musical theater in this country, and I think we have I have to get on it no matter what the board says. At the point where we were able to verbalize it, we were doing a production of Pippin at Ripley's. So here is the lunch table. The lunch table is Stephen Schwartz, who's come down from San Francisco to rewrite the ending, because he's always rewriting the ending, because it's never been right, and Marsha, and Michael Kirker, who runs musical theater for ASCAP. And he was elbowing me and saying, "Tell Stephen the idea, tell him the idea." So I went through this whole pitch, and he listened. He's such a nice man, Stephen. And at the end of the pitch, he's saying, "Well, I like this idea. I'd like to be part of it." And so Stephen Schwartz became the first honorary co-chairman of the Festival of New American Musicals. He honored us after we finished Pippin by going back to San Francisco, where he was trying out his new little musical. Wicked, which was the ignition for the whole Renaissance beginning, right?
Yeah.
So our timing was— we might, I might not go upstage from downstage, but I can fall into the most amazing pieces of timing. And the timing there was Wicked came immediately after we announced the festival. After that, of course, Disney got the idea and did the 3 High School Musicals and then Glee, and it's been ever since. and we just spent a lot of time riding the Bronco, you know, because it has happened.
What's some advice you give to these young composers, book writers that they want to tell their story?
Then they should.
How do you—
We are trying to open more doors for them right now, and bob@lafestival.org, you know, I want to hear from anybody. And so many of them have talent that I'm willing to take, always to take the chance, you know, because the more the word gets out, the more kids say, hey, I don't have to start my rock group, I can write my musical, the better off we'll all be.
