The question “What’s on tap at Music Circus?” could not be more appropriate than it is this year. The 2024 season of the beloved musical theater-in-the-round, a more than 70-year-old Sacramento tradition, kicks off June 11 with “42nd Street,” a vintage favorite and a veritable vehicle for tap dancing.

“Our audience has an affinity for tap dancing, so that’s how we wanted to start the season,” says Scott Klier, president and CEO of Broadway Sacramento, a title he assumed last July when the company’s longtime leader, Richard Lewis, retired. Though he’s only been top dog a short while, Klier — who held practically every position on the Music Circus masthead, from student intern to producing artistic director, while rising up the ranks — has long been in charge of choosing each season’s titles as well as its casts, spending a month in New York each year for that purpose. 

Klier’s spacious office in the Broadway Sacramento suite on J Street has a big picture window facing Memorial Auditorium — an appropriate spot for a guy making big-picture decisions. But there are also a zillion logistical considerations when launching a summer-long season of musical theater, and Klier, given his long history in the trenches, has likely encountered them all. 

Case in point: The decision to place “42nd Street” at the start of the season had only partly to do with the show’s popularity, Klier says. Production challenges were also a factor. “The show has one huge production number after another, so it needed to be in the front of the season because we’re able to devote more rehearsal time to it,” Klier says. Once the six-show season gets underway, he explains, there’s only a week between shows to prepare for the next one.

Looking at this year’s lineup, which ranges from classics to modern fare such as “Waitress,” one wonders what kind of balance Klier and his team are trying to strike when concocting each summer’s cocktail of shows — a mix that will, if things go right, keep the old-timers happy as well as the young and the hip.

For the 2024 season, that mix includes four Music Circus premieres — “The SpongeBob Musical” (June 25-30), “Sunset Boulevard” (July 23-28), “Waitress” (August 6-11) and “Jersey Boys” (August 20-September 1) — and two oldies but goodies, “42nd Street” (June 11-16) and “Fiddler on the Roof” (July 9-14). But Klier says the formula used to be just the opposite, with the emphasis on old familiar shows rather than new ones.

“Back in my early days with Music Circus, there would typically be four classics and only a couple of premieres,” he says. “But the feedback from the audience was that they wanted new shows, so that’s our new focus,” he says. ‘New’ doesn’t necessarily mean the shows themselves are new, he explains; it just means they’re new to Music Circus. “Sunset Boulevard,” for example, debuted on Broadway 20 years ago. 

Variety is also a huge consideration, Klier says, as well as show content, casting needs and technical needs, which in the case of a theater-in-the-round like Music Circus can be especially tricky business. “It’s a complicated process to come up with these titles,” he says. 

Equally complicated is the casting process, which every year draws a sea of headshots from hopeful performers. This year, the number of submissions swelled to 27,000, according to Klier. “The demand to work here is overwhelming,” he says. “I think the best in this industry want to be here because they feel appreciated. It’s not just the experience this company provides; it’s the performing experience that our audience provides. The energy in that room is unlike any other place.”

Each and every submission is considered, Klier says, before whittling the crop down to the couple thousand who will actually audition. Most of the casting is done in New York, and some in Los Angeles and Sacramento. While Klier is not at liberty to name names at this juncture, this season’s casts will include some locals as well as Sacramento natives who are now based elsewhere, he says.

Klier, a Sacramento native himself, was also based elsewhere for a while. He was only 23 when he moved to New York, where he built a career as a stage manager on Broadway. “I went there thinking I’d stay three months, and three months turned into 10 years,” he says. When “Sunset Boulevard” makes its Music Circus premiere this July, it will mark a bit of a full circle moment for Klier, who worked on the original 1994 Broadway production starring Glenn Close. 

As heady as that was, Klier still smiles when describing his humble beginnings with Music Circus as a 19-year-old intern, slogging away in what’s now nostalgically referred to as “the tent” — the canvas structure that served as the theater’s home until 2003, when the new, fully modern (and blessedly air-conditioned) venue at 15th and H streets opened.

The tent was where it all began in 1951, when Russell Lewis (former CEO Richard’s father) and partner Howard Young debuted Music Circus as the first professional musical theater-in-the-round west of the Mississippi. Today, Broadway Sacramento is the city’s oldest professional performing arts organization and the largest nonprofit musical theater company in California, entertaining an estimated 250,000+ patrons every year, 

Though it all falls under one umbrella, Broadway Sacramento encompasses two distinctly different operations: Broadway at Music Circus and Broadway on Tour. While Music Circus shows are uniquely created and produced only in Sacramento, Broadway on Tour shows, which happen in the off-season, are just what they sound like: Touring Broadway productions. Importantly, they also inhabit different venues, with Broadway on Tour shows produced at SAFE Credit Union Performing Arts Center at 13th and L Streets and Music Circus at the UC Davis Health Pavilion at 15th and H.

The capacity of the two venues is roughly the same — just under 2,200 seats. But that is where the similarity ends, as Klier points out. “The theatergoing experience is great in both places, but very different between them,” he says. 

It’s the intimacy of the theater-in-the-round, with a seating configuration that brings the audience closer to the stage, that makes the Music Circus experience so extraordinary, Klier says. “The theater-in-the-round really gets to the core of what we do,” he says. While there are technical limitations — it’s hard to create “A Chorus Line” in the round, as Klier says, or a show with big scenic effects — the advantages, he says, more than compensate. “You can use all kinds of jaw-dropping technical devices and effects,” Klier says. “But in the end, what it all boils down to is the actors and the material and their relationship with the audience. And that’s what the UC Davis Health Pavilion does better than any other venue I’ve known.”

The audience seems to agree. Not only does Music Circus continue to draw generation upon generation of loyal patrons, but it survived the COVID-19 pandemic despite going dark for two seasons in 2020 and 2021. 

It took a while for people to feel comfortable coming back to the theater. But things rebounded strongly in 2023, Klier says, with Music Circus attendance just shy of 90 percent. “Last year felt like the Music Circus of old,” he says. Klier is optimistic, he says, that business will be equally robust for the 2024 season.

“It’s a lot of good news, and it has to stay that way — otherwise, we will be in trouble,” Klier says. With an annual operating budget in the ballpark of $20 million, Broadway Sacramento, he says, is “a thriving business. But we could sell every seat in the house and still lose money. We’re a nonprofit for a reason.”

They’re also in it for a reason. 

“Nobody gets in this business to make a lot of money,” Klier says. “We do it for a love of the artform and a love of our community. And that’s what we have in abundance here.”

For more information about Music Circus and Broadway Sacramento, visit https://www.broadwaysacramento.com.

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