THE BUSINESS OF SHOW BUSINESS

Australia is about as far away from Broadway as you can get. But it turns out we’re a key market for Disney’s stage shows.

Ron Kollen, the senior vice-president of International Disney Theatrical Productions, is a regular visitor to our shores. He says the skills of our crews and actors make up for the long distance.

“Nothing is easy, but the teams we have built up and that frankly the industry has built up over the years make it very accommodating for producers like us to do our shows there,” he says.

“Some of the best costumes we have for Aladdin are in Australia. It makes everybody’s job a lot easier when you have that core group of people who know their business.”

Aladdin is one of Disney’s fastest growing stage shows yet, with six productions currently playing around the globe.

“To have six productions within four years (of the Broadway opening) was frankly faster than I thought it would be,” he says.

“I knew Australia would love it because it’s comedy and fun and spectacle and that’s what everybody appreciates there.”

So what will be the next show heading our way?

“It’s been a very long time since we’ve had Beauty and The Beast there,” Kollen says. “That is something we’ll be looking at one day, and of course we’ll look at Frozen and see what happens after we open (on Broadway). We have never done The Little Mermaid there; we haven’t done Newsies there; it’s an open book if we can get it right. We’re trying to get to a point where we always have one show in Australia at all times.”