The little town in the Bible Belt turns 100 this year and is drawing a lot of wattage in the process
Last year at this time we looked back at the recovery of Nashville’s staging industry from a devastating flood that swept through the city in May, 2010. This month, we’re looking at another entertainment event success story that had its own brush with meteorological disaster earlier this year and has come out of it just as robustly.The tornado that clipped Branson, Missouri on Leap Day this year did some damage — several of the town’s 50 theaters and their 64,000-plus seats (more than on Broadway) had to close for a few days. But they were back on line in short order, putting shows on for the 8 million-plus visitors the town gets a year, over 80 percent of whom come for the shows rather than the shopping and water sports that also serve as regional attractions. So it’s fitting that on Branson’s 100th anniversary — the city was formally incorporated in 1912 — we take a look at what makes this such a draw for live performances.
Serious Firepower
Branson’s theaters have some pretty serious firepower when it comes lighting and video. For instance, the Mansion Theater has Christie rear projection for its 66-by-24-foot back screen and two 16-by-16-foot front-projection side screens lit by Samsung projectors all fed by Martin Maxedia media servers. Production manager Justin Chandler counts off 24 Vari*Lite VL2202 spot luminaires and 40 VL2402 spot luminaires. At their sister venue, the Oak Ridge Boys Theater, a 36-panel Martin video wall runs off a Maxedia Broadcast server and the stage is lit with 74 Martin MAC 700 Washes and Profiles, 24 MAC 2000s, 12 MAC 250 Kryptons and six MAC 250 Entours run from a Martin Maxxyz console.
Over at the White House Theater, 900 patrons see a large stage lit by a pair of Barco 5000 lumen projectors, ETC Sensor dimmers and nearly 70 moving light fixtures and run by a pair of Wholehog consoles.
Not every house on Branson’s strip is quite as well outfitted, but the overall effect is one of a Midwestern Broadway that’s ready for more. This is a town built by country music artists and MOR stars who haven’t lit up the radio dials since the second Reagan administration, but one that’s continued to attract capital investment and technical talent, most of whom have been on the road for years and look at Branson as a place not so much to settle down into as one to focus their energies on.
“I’ve been here since 1996, and we’re watching the audiences get younger,” says Chris Wainscott, lighting director at the White House Theater, which was acquired by a Beijing-based performance company that purchased the iconic venue for $3.5 million, renovated it and launched the Legend of Kung Fu stage show last year. The show has a rotating cast of Chinese martial artists, actors, singers and drummers who have managed to integrate themselves nicely into this quintessentially middle American culture. (And bring more Chinese lighting brands to American stages — some of the moving lights are FineArt 700 fixtures from Guangzhou Lighting.) “They put on quite a show, but the staging and the lights and video play a huge part in it,” says Wainscott, who spent time on the road with artists from Mel Tillis to Limp Bizkit and Metallica. “There’s enormous potential to do more here.”
The Next Level
The question is, can Branson reinvent itself once again, in the process becoming a technical Mecca for staging? Could a Branson 2.0 deliver the kind of over-the-top live entertainment that American audiences want, from flying Spidermen to Blue Man drummer franchises? The technical infrastructure seems to be there. One connection that might help that along would be the arrival of casino gambling to Missouri, which has long avoided it as incongruent with the state’s simpler values.
“That’s been a touchy subject,” says Wainscott, who points out the casinos in St. Louis, MO and Natchez, MS are just a few hours’ drive from Branson. But it’s been on the town’s radars fro a while — Wainscott says that when Tillis built his theater in Branson in 1995, he not only put in the second-largest Vari-Lite rig in the U.S. at the time but also had the lobby wired for several hundred slot machines, in the event the state opted for legalized gambling in the future.
Justin Chandler at the Oak Ridge Boys and Mansion Theaters says the infrastructure is already in place, and that Branson’s geography and affordability argue for it becoming a bigger live entertainment presence in the future, particularly as Baby Boomers age up and want to keep more of their travel domestic. Nashville, 350 miles away, is less of a competitor than a resource, offering access to equipment and technical talent, though Branson has historically had plenty of the latter as LDs and other staging professionals look at the town the way many of the artists they worked for have done — as a haven towards the end of a long and successful career. Direct air service between Nashville and Branson just started up in March of this year, linking suppliers and theaters.
King of the World?
Branson is 100 years old. — it incorporated the same year that the Titanic sank. If one were inclined to look for omens, that might seem like a less-than-fortuitous one. However, Titanic has managed to become an entertainment hit with few peers, including movies, live shows and tourist attractions, including one of the bigger ones in Branson itself. As the live entertainment industry goes into evolutionary overdrive, Branson looks like it might become one of the bigger wheels in that machinery.
