Jim Fischer with CAPA On Broadway Season

Hear from Jim Fischer about Theatre and what to look forward to at CAPA including Broadway Across America. 

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome back, guys. Mindy ison the road. Just had to win
for Lady Buckeye Softball in Madison,Wisconsin. She will join us again if
her phone battery comes to life again. I don't know if it will.
It doesn't matter because I know we'regoing to have a fantastic conversation with Jim
Fisher with Kappa works in communications withthem. Jim, this is my first
time meeting you. So hello.Hello. Yes, thirty seconds ago we

(00:22):
said hello for the very first firsttime as he ran up the stairs to
meet me. You have an excellentradio voice. Oh, thank you very
much. Is there is there abackground in that for you? Uh no,
wow, No, just a verygood speaking very I did music so
okay. I was an instrumentalist,but they made us learn a whole bunch
of vocal stuff too, So itprobably has something to do with that.

(00:43):
Yeah. That, and I havea kid. I mean, she'd grown
now, but you know, Ihave plenty of yelling when I was.
I know that I'm in the middleof it right now. I have an
eleven and the thirteen. Yeah Igotchayh yeah, yeah, my daughters.
No, she's twenty six. Stoppedyelling at her a long time ago.
Now, she yells at me,are you from Columbus? No, I
grew up in Pittsburgh. I loveit. I was just there not too

(01:07):
long ago. Over spring break westopped there. What a great city.
It's awesome city. I still loveit. I mean, Columbus has been
home for almost thirty years and Ilove it here. But yeah, just
something about you know where you're from, and Pittsburgh's a great city. I
love it. We're Steelers fans atmy house. I mean yeah, we
have some everything Pittsburgh except for thePenguins. We're blue Jackets. Yes,

(01:27):
we're Blue Jackets fans like this personalready Mandy joined us again. We have
bonded over being a Steelers fan andit's going well. Mandy. So there
you go with Jim Fisher and fromKapa. I don't care about the Steelers
today. I am so glad thatyou two finally got me. Really,

(01:51):
I can't believe your paths haven't crossedthe fore. It's really funny that,
yeah, haven't been around for awhile. I mean, I you know,
you guys were famous. I justwas watched you on. But we
do. We do make our waysaround town though, so, yeah,
the fact that we haven't met inperson is pretty crazy. Mindy and I've
been talking about this. There isso much more to Kappa than what all

(02:14):
of us might feel like we know. And so I want to talk about
Broadway across America, but I don'tknow if I want to start there,
if I want to start with somethingelse. You tell me, Yeah,
to your point, it is veryinteresting and we actually talk about this,
and so it's a little shop andmaybe this is a little dry for your
listeners, but it is something thatcomes up a lot in conversation. Is

(02:36):
you know what is Ohio or whatis what is Kappa? Is it the
Ohio Theater? Is it the Broadway? It's sort of whatever. People is
the home of the Columbus Symphony,Right, So people have their sort of
touch points for Kapa, but there'sa lot of them, and so hopefully
someone is out there finding one ofthose points to Kappa. And if not,
then maybe over the next few minutesthey will do Are you still there?

(03:00):
Yeah, I'm still there. Iwas just going to say, you
guys didn't know where to go orhow to begin. And I want to
say one thing. Jim, myhusband and I were at Clue the other
night. It was one of thebest productions I've seen. And it's nothing
really flashy. You know, youthink a Broadway, you think of a
lot of musical a lot of dancing, a lot of singing. This had

(03:20):
no intermission. It was like anhour and a half of pure fun entertainment.
Well done. I loved it.I'm so glad you guys brought Clue
the Board Game. It came tolife in downtown Columbus. It was so
fun to see. Yeah, justa really, really funny show. We
enjoyed having it. Of course thereprobably finished up with the last show right

(03:43):
about now, so they'll be movingon. But we've been excited to have
them in Columbus at the Ohio Theaterfor the last week current season. They
go next Yeah, oh yeah,but I don't know. You have to
ask the tour people for that.I know what's coming here next? Well,
what's coming here next? There's stillyes, I could have I could
have made it up that is correct, and then any all of your call

(04:06):
all your listeners out there with theirphones, it'd be like, he's wrong,
what is he talking about? SoTina Turner and the Lion King,
though, are still to come thisseason? Are there tickets available? And
how do people get ahold of that? Both of those shows just go to
Kappa dot com, Broadway in Columbusdot com. Either one of those will
link you took place to get tickets, and both of those shows are just

(04:28):
fantastic. Obviously, Lion King,I don't really need to say anything about
that. Everybody knows what that is, and it's just marvelous. I think
my family and I have seen itevery time it's been here in uh in
Columbus, and I've never worked forKappa in any of the previous times,
so I was just like all therest of you, having to figure out
to scrounge and all that kind ofstuff. But yeah, it's great,
great experience. But Tina the TinaTurner Musical, it's obviously the story of

(04:53):
Tina Turner. Everybody knows sort ofroughly, you know, not only did
she make great music, but shehad great personal story as well. But
you're gonna get to see a lotof that told on stage during this show.
Plus there's segments of the show thatare almost just like a rock and
roll concert, just like Tina isup there on stage and it's not Tina
obviously, but like Crowd Mary andYeah, absolutely, you're gonna hear all

(05:17):
your favorite songs, simply the best. I mean, you know, it's
it's it's just absolutely gonna it's gonnabe a great experience. If you like
the if you like the bi biographicalmusical shows, this is a great story.
You're gonna love it. You're gonnawant to see it. To tell
me a little bit more about whatyou have going on the education and engagement

(05:39):
side, I'm a I'm a personwho loves poetry, so when I saw
this portion of what you wanted totalk about, I was really intrigued.
Yep. We have a couple ofthings coming up, uh in the education
side, and again this these arethings that maybe people don't know as much
about as some of the things thathappen at the Eye of the Right.

(06:00):
But Kappa is involved in bringing thesethings as well. So there's a couple
of things further out. Next month. On Saturday, May eleventh, we're
doing a thing called Schooled on Poetry. There's a local poet has been working
with high school students throughout the schoolyear and this is sort of the wrap
up of it. So Schooled onpoetry, will have high school poets doing

(06:21):
slam style reading in addition to severallocal poets and a couple of national poets
will also be doing readings during thisprogram. Absolutely fantastic. Honeyf Abdura Kieb
and Cynthia Amoa are the local poets. Hopefully those are names that people are
familiar with, and if not,you're going to want to be They're just

(06:43):
fantastic. But anyway, I don'thave the full list of schools, but
there are five or six high schoolsthat have been part of this program,
and so students from all those schoolswill be participating in this event. Before
that, we have Lda DilOS Ninos, which is a family pro Graham h
Latino themed We'll have dancing, we'llhave demonstrations, we'll have art and culture,

(07:08):
we'll have It concludes with a freeproduction of a show called Havannah Hop,
a family friendly show that is onthe fourteenth. So that's coming up
real real soon. And then ohno, that's today. Today is today
is the fourteenth. Yeah, we'veprobably missed it. Anyway, mindy,

(07:31):
there is so much that is goingon at Kappa. Well, you know
what, I just missed the lastcouple of minutes because we're saying goodbye to
the team. They're loading on thebus, they're going to the airport.
Take good bye. Go go bye, guys, Go bye guys. The
one education thing that a lot ofpeople maybe are familiar with is the Marquee
Awards. We're doing that in earlyJune this year. High schools can sign

(07:57):
up there. Uh. We havea panel of judges who will go around
to their musical productions, will judgeactor actress, supporting actors, supporting actress.
We end up having a thing that'sbasically like a mini Tony Awards on
the stage at the Ohio Theater featuringlocal high school actors. How cool is
that? So you're saying that there'sas many young people getting interested in theater

(08:18):
as there was let's say, tenyears ago. I absolutely do. And
Columbus is a rich, rich talenttrove for singers, dancers, actors.
It's just absolutely fantastic. You've gotto come see the Marquee Awards. Yeah,
that sounds cool. And you knowMikayla's boys, that'd be perfect,
you know when they get a littleolder. Mikayla Christian especially, he's a
little showbo Oh my gosh, SoI haven't even told you, Mindy.

(08:41):
I got an email this weekend thatsaid he was selected for the Ohio Choral
Associations Trouble on the Fire, andhe's like, Mom, did you did
you sign me up for this?I said, no, Christian, your
music teacher must have done it.Like some of this stuff would be really
couraging and supportive of young actors andsingers. Jim, indeed, And that's

(09:03):
a lot of what that program isthere to support. Well, it's kind
of like having an athlete involved insports, having someone involved in theater.
Whatever you do like that, yougain a skill and you gain confidence through
anything that you go through in life. If you're able to go up on
stage and sing and dance or staylines and memorize those lines, you can't

(09:24):
tell me that doesn't help your selfesteem and your confidence. Absolutely, it's
uh. Yeah. My daughter didtheater when she was in high school.
And I mean when I was inhigh school, I played in the pit
orchestra. That was the closest thingto stage they would let me do.
Yeah, I had a perfect facefor the pit. Hey, that's what

(09:48):
MICHAELA and I are saying. Now, Yeah, for the radio. You
also have a summer movie series comingup, which has to be popular.
Okay, so it's like eighty degreesoutside today, so people are if you're
thinking summer, right, then Iwant you to tell you that only about
a month away, we'll be announcingwhat's on our summer movie series. And

(10:09):
that is sort of one of Kappa'ssignature events, one of our signature series.
We've been doing that for fifty somesixty some years. I should have
my notes, but I don't havemy notes. But we've been doing that
a long time, and it's somethingthat a lot of people are very familiar
with. One of the things Ithink people think of when they think of
Kappa as the summer movies. Wehave the movie screen at the Ohio Theater,
which course began its life as amovie theater way back one hundred years

(10:35):
almost one hundred years ago, andso it's really exciting experience. The organ
plays, right, there's a theaterorgan there. We have introduction and intermission
music on the theater organ, andwe're showing a classic film and what people
used to think of as classic filmsright now are sometimes films from our childhood,

(10:58):
right, Yeah, So that's goodand bad right because now we have
touch points for some of these classicfilms, but so you don't have.
But it does make you feel alittle bit old to think of you know,
you know what would you guys justannounced the new season for next year,
and the one that really intrigues meis the Michael Jackson What is it
just MJ or what's that one?Coming to the correct MJ is again it's

(11:18):
another bio sort of somebody made upthe term jukebox musicals, and I think
that dismisses the storytelling aspect of theseshows a little bit. It's it's,
of course, the story of MichaelJackson told with all of his songs,
all you know, your favorite MichaelJackson songs. But anyway, so yeah,

(11:39):
that's the thing that we announced waswe've got two more shows this Broadway
season and Michela talked about those alittle while ago. We've got Tina and
then over the summer we've got LionKing and then our next season begins in
the fall with MJ. And it'sjust an absolutely fantastic show. We got
to see a little bit of itand you can see like they have screeners
on YouTube and trailer or some stuffon YouTube. You can go see the

(12:01):
talent, just people doing dance movesthat really almost accurately mimic Michael Jackson's dance
moves. He's and he's got signaturemoves and everybody knows. And so I
mean imagine the stress and actor isunder it to be like, well,
I got to get Michael Jackson rightkind of thing. But anyway, it's

(12:22):
going to be terrific. And yeah, that opens our next Broadway season.
We recently announced that. So that'sanother exciting thing that's going on AGAP.
So we're up against a break wherecan people go to learn about all of
this. There's a couple of thingswe still didn't even hit on the list,
So we'll try to get to allthese things right, But Kappa dot
com is sort of the easy onestop shop. You can link from there

(12:43):
to all of the education programs,to the Broadway program So just go to
Kapa dot com. Awesome. I'mso glad you came in studio, Jim,
and I'm so glad you too finallygot to meet Yeah, Mindy getting
that car. We'll get back onwith you here in a few minutes.
Jim, thank you for giving usa snapshot of all that you guys have
going on. It's gonna be agreat season coming up. My pleasure.

(13:03):
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