#9727 by
Craig Maxim
Tue Jun 26, 2007 4:27 am
Unless it is a small venue, piano bar style, I think it is a tough sell. Stevie Wonder is a legend, but sticking only to HIS music for an entire evening, is a tough sell for a larger venue. With a small piano bar type atmosphere you could make it a small show, where you go through his musical history from childhood to now, and you tell humorous or interesting stories about certain of his songs before you play them. Things people wouldn't ordinarily know and they would find interesting. You can find anecdotes and trivia about him easily enough on the internet.
But you would have to make it a circuit unless it was a tourist area, cause the same show gets boring quickly.
What about thinking bigger?
What about creating an entire musical about his life, with you as musical director and performer, and you get local singing actors to play him throughout his life, and you could pitch it to dinner theaters. Dinner Theaters will rent out their venues for single events, and you could find sponsors to advertise and pay for it. With your cut of tickets, you could possibly turn a nice profit, if you put the work into it.
Or if you think REALLY big, maybe a traveling play for performance venues.
Who knows if you couldn't develop it to the level of off-broadway?
Some other ideas, on a bar level, might be to find out who has redone some of his songs, and try doing a few of the songs in that artists version, to change things up a little.
This would go over best either on a large scale as I suggested, or something small and intimate, where you tell stories. With a lot of audience participation, you make it more fun and interesting. You could have a trivia question for example, where you ask the audience what song they think Stevie had the biggest hit with, and they throw out suggestions, and you say "Nope. Sorry. Nice try though. Maybe you'll remember this one...." and you play it. Talk to them about his musical style has changed over the years, how he wrote certain songs for certain parts of his life. Maybe he was writing certain kinds of songs because of record label pressure, but after a certain point he came out with this album, and the songs were more.... whatever you research about him.
Have a lot of facts and humourous anecdotes about his life, or things others have said about Stevie.
I don't know. Just throwing you some ideas.
Good luck!
