Producing Honcho Thomas Schumacher on Disney Theatrical—Past, Present and Future—on Show People with Paul Wontorek

As President of Disney Theatrical Productions and Chairman of the Broadway League, Thomas Schumacher is bespectacled Broadway royalty. Disney Theatrical is celebrating its 25th year of making magic on the Great White Way. Productions like Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, Frozen, Aladdin and more have transformed the way audiences experience these beloved stories and theatergoing in general. Schumacher stopped by Show People with Paul Wontorek to discuss the milestone, his own theatrical background and what's coming up for Disney on Broadway.

1. HE SAW FROZEN AS A STAGE MUSICAL INSTANTLY
“Frozen was crazy because I had nothing to do with the movie. My friends at animation said, ‘You should see this.’ So at midnight, we screened it in a Disney screening room while I was working on Aladdin in Toronto. I was so captivated immediately that it was a stage musical. That’s really because of the way [composers] Bobby [Lopez] and Kristen [Anderson-Lopez] shaped the music. I literally from the theater called California and said, ‘When do we start?’”

2. AN AIDA REVIVAL IS COMING
“I love Aida. We’re in the middle of developing Aida. We are going to do a reading very soon. David Henry Hwang is doing some stuff with the script. The director is Schele Williams, who was Nehebka in the original production. We’ve been meeting over the years about lots of things; she’s spectacular. I’ve been talking to [designer] Bob Crowley a lot because we want to keep the essence of what he had created originally, but, of course, for today. These things are all in the cooker.”

3. HE CONSIDERS HIMSELF TO BE DISNEY'S "GRANDPA"
“We know there’s no formula to creating anything. There just isn’t. The recipe for success is the formula for failure. I don’t see these milestones as mine; I see them as ours. It is this collective experience, and that is the part that makes me emotional. I’ve become grandpa. I cry at telephone commercials, things like that, and I cry when I see the gang all together because I believe in them so much. This isn’t a singular art form; it’s a collective art form. Everyone brings something to it, and I remember it: who did what, who said what. It’s little bits by everybody.”

Other must-read highlights:

ON THE BEAUTY AND THE BEAST REVIVAL
“It’s been 25 years since Beauty and the Beast opened on Broadway—we obviously weren’t the first people to do a family musical. Certain generations would say, ‘Oh, the first musical I saw was The King and I’ or ‘The Sound of Music’ or ‘Annie.’ Beauty and the Beast brought a very different audience than what people were expecting on Broadway. It was both a date night show and a kids' show. We’re working on a revival of it with the entire original team but with a completely new design for every element: new dance arrangements, whole new staging ideas. It’s really fun for that team to be able to dive back in.”

ON NOT ALWAYS GETTING IT RIGHT
“Fortunately, we’ve only had two shows that—by our definition—were a swing and a miss. Those were Tarzan and The Little Mermaid. Mind you, each one ran for over a year, but in our sense of the world, they didn’t really land. Something that we did about putting it together didn’t work right. But in both of those cases, because of our international reach, we reinvented. Just this fall, I was in Germany closing the 10-year run of Tarzan. Creatively, getting a second chance at it and trying to figure out what the connection is to make it right is enormously gratifying.”

ON HIS FAVORITE PART OF HIS JOB
“My favorite part of my job is the period of creation. In our business—different from other parts of the entertainment industry—we get to be together. If you make a movie, you’re separated into your process. But we’re all in the room together. That to me is so thrilling. It’s the people.”

ON THE PRINCESS BRIDE MUSICAL
“Working with David Yazbek and Bob Martin and Rick Elice on The Princess Bride is so unbelievably thrilling. The other day, we were reading through the first act of the show, and David pulled out his guitar and started playing a song. Everyone at the table was weeping. It was so beautiful.”

ON BRINGING HERCULES TO THE STAGE
“Lear DeBessonet is such a gifted, gifted director. She went to see Alan Menken at his studio upstate, and she said, ‘What are you doing with Hercules?’ Then she took it to Oskar Eustis. We all came and met, and the Public said, ‘We would like to do this.’ We’ve done a couple of readings of it. Alan Menken and David Zippel, who did the songs for the original, have come back and written new material. It’s very fun, and it’s very emotional to be in the room with the music and see these glorious actors do it.”

Watch the full episode of Show People with Paul Wontorek below!

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