Carl Pasbjerg and Frank Scardino, veteran Broadway general managers, discuss their careers starting as performers and the full scope of GM work: insurance, ticket sales, staffing, artistic coordination. Scardino's first Broadway credit was Pippin in 1974, followed by Chicago with Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon. They describe the satisfaction of opening night and the emotional weight of shows that don't work.
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What do you get when you have a Broadway professional and a camera crew? Long story short, you get a lot of cool info when you get Showbiz U Luminaries. Today we speak with general managers Carl Paspberg and Frank Scardino. Combined, they've GM'd over 40 shows on Broadway. They share how it all began and why they keep coming back.
Started out years and years ago as a performer. As Frank did as well, and then at a certain point was offered a job on the management side of theatrical production and really found that I had some acumen into that side of the business and kind of never looked back.
Frank? Again, long protracted. I have 20 years on Carl, so I get a few more minutes to tell you all that I've done, but it started, I think, like many, as a performer. I was in high school when we did the high school musicals And I was fortunate right out of high school to work at a summer stock Equity theater, Star System, and which this was in the '60s, and it was very prominent around the country. You know, actors could get a lot of professional jobs, much more so than today. And so I did my Equity performing, but I still had a father who wanted me to get a college degree, you know, same classic story. Ultimately, I finished college. I went on and got a master's degree in, in business, of all things, but then came to New York. I kind of broached over to the management side, and I was out on tour with Florence Henderson in a production of Annie Get Your Gun way back, and her husband Ira Bernstein was a very prominent general manager and producer of the day with his partner Joe Harris. And after that tour, I asked if I could come in and apprentice in their office, you know, like a 25-year-old apprentice with an MBA. And after a while, you know, we found a relationship and I stayed with them. And that's kind of really the trajectory that got me into managing and producing.
Obviously you face a lot of strife and hard work, but there have to be moments that you just say it was worth it all.
I always talk about how the business has changed enormously from the time that I started. The first show I ever worked on on Broadway— it wasn't from the beginning, I came in during the run— was Pippin in 1974 over at the Imperial Theatre. And, you know, there was an excitement about it. The first show I ever worked on from beginning to end was Chicago, which Bob Fosse directed and choreographed. And I'm— let's see, that was '75, so I'm 27 turning 28 at the time. And I'm getting to work with Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon and Chita Rivera and Jerry Orbach and a list of designers that are Tony winners, and on and on and on and on. So I'm in my glory. I can't believe that I have this opportunity. And it was a wonderful experience and thrilling. And every time you were in the theater, it was thrilling. Even when people were yelling at each other and screaming and things weren't going right and people weren't happy with what was ending up on stage, and there were changes and you go through the whole process, there was still an excitement at the end of the day. I will admit that that has waned for me over, you know, almost 40 years now, coming up on 40 years since that first experience with Pippin. But there's still even— and I think it's more so when I go as an audience member as opposed to working on a show sometimes— and I sit there and you really get drawn in or thoroughly involved and entertained by what's up on stage. There is nothing like it. I know it's a cliché, People talk about, "Oh, it's not like anything else," but if it's good, if it's really good, it gives you an emotion that you don't get off of a flat screen, whether it's television, whether it's IMAX. You still don't get that same vibe, because there is a little chemistry.
Why did we all get involved in this in the first place is because there's the magic of theater. That there are moments that are transcendent that you can reach within this art form. And when you have those moments, again, like Frank said, there's nothing like it. And I have to say, on a personal, just kind of work level too, what we do, we get involved in pretty much every aspect of a production. Everything that happens artistically, non-artistically, Anything from, you know, who are we going to have provide the insurance coverage for the show, up to the ticket sales, to the hiring of all the staff and the performers and the artists, everybody involved. We're involved in every step of that. So we're painting— there's a lot of people who do very specific artistic work who are specialists at that. We get involved in everything that happens and paint on a very broad canvas. And so, for me, every time I get to an opening night of a show and I'm standing at the back of the theater, 'cause a lot of times I don't sit through the show, I stand at the back of the theater, and I see that everything came together and it came together just how I planned it, there's a lot of satisfaction in that. So to me, that just out of the work that we do, that's— that to me is the most satisfying moment, is that it did happen. All of this came together. It, you know, we're constantly like, you know, driving a wagon and all that's got a million wheels and they're all falling off and we're trying to hammer them back on so that we can get to the finish line, you know. But when we get there, that's a great moment.
I have to interject right here that it isn't always wonderful. No, no, nobody ever calls us and says, "Hey, I have great news." They always say, "Here's today's problem, fix it." But I'm talking about like opening nights or when you work on a show that you did the show and it didn't turn out the way you thought it was going to be. And there's a reason you stand in the back and you don't sit because if it Isn't that good? You can get out the door. And it wouldn't be the first time on a show that I didn't see Act 2. I was down the street. I won't say what saloon, but I was down the street for Act 2 because it wasn't really going that well. It has nothing to do with Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel and the producers. That kind of thing really does happen. They were celebrating it not being good, but we've had our occasions where we just had to go, I'll be back when the show is over, but I need something to sustain me until that moment.
