BY Jenn Q. Goddu

The winner of 85 Jeff awards also boasts the largest subscriber base (they actually had to cut it off at 40,000) of any musical theatre in the country.

Marriott’s subscribers, says Andy Hite, Marriott’s associate artistic director “know what we’re about; and we know what they want.”

What they want most is quality, says Aaron Thielen, Marriott’s lead associate artistic director. “If you put a good product up there, people are going to want to come back.

“We don’t have the same kind of subscribers as the Steppenwolf, or the Goodman, or Lyric Opera. That’s a different demographic. I think people like to be seen at those theatres. Which is great, they do great work. But our subscribers are more middle class...they come because they love musical theatre and it’s a night out.”

The artistic team at Marriott feels confident their audience trusts them to produce something worth seeing, even if it isn’t always a show they are initially keen to see, James says. “Maybe they haven’t heard of something we might be doing, but they know it will be of a certain quality and they are willing to give it a try.”

It affords the theatre a certain luxury, but it’s also a Catch-22, James says. “It’s a great freedom having that strong of a base, but it’s a responsibility to maintain that base. You certainly can’t take it for granted because it can all disappear in one year.”

The theatre is never dark. One show closes on a Sunday and the next of the five in the season opens the following Wednesday. In addition, the theatre stages three shows for young audiences. Bringing in an audience of roughly 330,000 people to the evening musicals and 110,000 to the kids’ shows, the theatre works with an annual operating budget in excess of $10 million.

Thielen, who first acted at the theatre in 1995, credits the Marriott’s solid reputation with audiences to two things: storytelling and its commitment to reworking shows.

“We don’t just do a standard musical just to do it,” Thielen says. “We really focus on the storytelling and we do shows specifically for a reason. There’s a story we want to tell, or a journey we want to take our audiences on.

“The other thing is re-conceiving shows and finding new ways to tell stories that perhaps we’ve already heard a thousand times, taking shows that are complicated and difficult and making them unique and different, he says.

Sometimes re-conceiving the show is necessitated by the theatre’s in-the-round stage.

In the case of the 2004 Andrew Lloyd Webber show, Sunset Boulevard, the Marriott recognized it couldn’t deliver a flying grand staircase, so instead used a series of eight 15-foot tall movie screens throughout the play to tell the story.

Miss Saigon, Thielen’s favorite, presents another example of the theatre putting its own stamp on the material.

“We don’t have the ability to deliver a helicopter,” Hite says. “Because we can’t concentrate on the production [values], we have to concentrate even more on the storytelling, which I think delivers 10 fold more than a flying helicopter.”

For Miss Saigon, the team planted sub-woofers all over the theatre, so that the audience members felt the vibration of the helicopter taking off. Visually, they highlighted the faces of the people who were being left behind.

“We had a lot of meetings on that one,” says James. “What we really did was to utilize the audience’s imagination—it felt like the helicopter was landing on the theatre.”

“We’ve been able to do shows that most people would say are impossible to do in the round and we’ve made them work,” Thielen adds.

James can’t point to a single favorite production. He singles out a set (Oliver), an effect (Miss Saigon’s helicopter replacement), or a performance (Alene Robertson in Gypsy) before saying, “You have to find something that excites you about every show that you do because every show isn’t your favorite show.”

It helps that the Marriott divided its artistic responsibilities between Thielen and Hite in 2005.

Hite is the rookie, having been with Marriott only three years. “I came to Marriott because I was an actor and I was just looking for more and something different,” he says. He joined as an assistant to the former artistic director Rick Boynton.

It’s been a constant learning experience, Hite says. “You have to have a huge learning curve to survive, especially when you’re talking about a theatre the size of the Marriott with the reputation that the Marriott has. You’re forced to step up to the challenge quickly.”

James is the “big picture” guy, overseeing the theatre’s artistic vision and acting as a liaison with the corporate owners. James describes Marriott as “very supportive,” adding, “I always joke that when they first opened this theatre I think there were maybe two dozen hotels. Now there are 3,000 hotels and still only one theatre so it’s their way of making us feel special.”

Thielen credits James with being more than a typical producer. “I know a lot of producers who are geniuses with money and really good business people and don’t know a lick about art and don’t care,” Thielen says. “[James] really puts his stamp artistically on the theatre.”

Hite and Thielen, meanwhile, trade off responsibilities overseeing the day-to-day work on the individual productions. “I don’t know of another theatre that goes 52 weeks a year,” Hite says. “It’s a lot for one person to juggle; frankly, it’s a lot for two people to juggle.”

Yet it helps to continuously rotate the role of overseeing a production. It gives each associate artistic director a different set of eyes to turn to and also insures someone is constantly fresh. “So there’s no opportunity, in theory at least, to become burned out and worn down,” Hite says.

It’s very much a team effort where everyone is involved, says James. Splitting the associate artistic director position helps the theatre be always ready. “We only rehearse for two weeks, you don’t have the luxury of anything other than hit the ground running.”

The Marriott Theatre has presented more than 170 productions since it was founded in 1975. Presenting classics, new works, seldom-seen works, and reworked musicals non-stop throughout the year, the Marriott produces “a little bit of something for everybody,” James says. It’s often the first stop for productions coming off Broadway into the regional market, such as Cats or Beauty and the Beast or its current production, Thoroughly Modern Millie.

All three staffers separately pointed to Les Miserables as a property they’d like to bring to the Marriott in the near future. James says it’s about time for the well-known musical to make its way to Marriott’s arena stage. “It’s a good way to look at a show in a new way because a big set can’t get in the way here.”

Hite says the show would represent a “fun, great, epic challenge for us and our theatre.”

He’d also like to see more new work in the upcoming seasons. James points to shows such as Titanic and City of Angels that he hopes to one day realize at Marriott, although acknowledging they haven’t come up yet with a way to stage those musicals in the round.

But beyond specific shows on the artistic staff’s wish lists, the goals for the future are simple: staying true to the same principle that has helped Marriott’s longevity. As Hite characterizes it: “Truly just striving to reinvent ourselves and be the best that we can be.”

Yet while the Marriott has come a long way from what it was in 1982 when James first appeared on the Marriott stage as an actor in Fiddler on the Roof,  the ongoing reinvention hasn’t transformed the theatre so much as to be unrecognizable, James says. “In some ways it hasn’t changed at all.”

Thoroughly Modern Millie opened Feb. 15 and runs through April 23. Tickets are $42 – 45. To reserve tickets call 847/634-0200 or visit www.marriotttheatre.com.