Live Theater Is Having a Wonderful Resurgence – Wait Till You Hear About Its Next Act!
On a recent episode of The Debbie Nigro Show, I caught up with longtime pal, producer and innovator Paul Lambert about an exciting new chapter in entertainment: iStage.
What makes iStage so unique? It’s the first community-first approach to building musicals—blending digital engagement with the magic of live performance.
Instead of starting with a script and hoping people show up, iStage builds a community around a topic first, then creates a show the audience already cares about.
“Why produce a musical no one asked for? Build the audience first. Then give them the show they want.” – Paul Lambert
iStage taps into existing passion groups—like fans of American Bandstand, environmental causes, or baseball—and invites them to participate, vote, and even own a piece of the show they’re helping bring to life.
“For the price of a Broadway ticket, people might actually own a small part of a musical. That’s never been done before.” – Paul Lambert
At the heart of this new model is a blend of heart and data. iStage’s Digital Business Futurist, MJ Witt, helps lead the charge by using gamified platforms to build and engage vibrant online communities. The data these fans share guides creative decisions, making sure the show reflects what the audience wants to see.
“Some call it the democratization of theater. We call it smart.” – Paul Lambert
Even better? iStage spreads investment across multiple musicals, so producers and partners aren’t betting on just one show—they’re backing a diversified portfolio with global appeal.
“We don’t pick a topic that only plays in New York or LA—we pick big, universal stories that resonate around the world,” said Lambert.
From AI and angels to iconic music and movement-building, iStage is not only creating musicals—it’s building meaningful, lasting cultural experiences that start with the audience, thrive through connection, and grow with purpose.
So whether you’re a Broadway lover, investor, or future fan, stay tuned—iStage is setting the stage for something extraordinary.
Enjoy this podcast of my live conversation about iStage with Producer Paul Lambert on The Debbie Nigro Show. If you’d rather read than listen the transcript of the audio is below. If you’d like to connect with Paul Lambert to learn more you can email him at plambert25@mac.com.
AUDIO TRANSCRIPT:
0:00:00
(Speaker 2)
And now, back to the Debbie Nigro Show! Okay, there’s always something fresh coming around the corner if you keep your eyes open. Hi everybody, I’m Debbie Nigro. I couldn’t help but notice that live theater is booming and you know I’m always one for innovation.. So fresh off a really big Broadway Tony Award season and lots of shows making money and people are in
0:00:52
(Speaker 2)
seats and wow it seems to be something kind of exciting going on with the theater world. I wanted to introduce to you something that’s been in my world for a while and somebody who’s been in my world for a while Paul Lambert he’s a producer and iStage is what we’re going to talk about right now and basically tip you off to something that’s gone on behind the scenes for quite some time basically reverse engineering live entertainment what is she talking about well think about this instead of
0:01:24
(Speaker 2)
producing a show and then trying to find an audience, what if you went and gathered an audience first and built a community around that? So iStage. Think iPhone, iPad, iStage, blending digital with live entertainment. Hello Paul, let’s talk
0:01:39
(Speaker 1)
about this. Well, hello there. I’m fanning myself just thinking how hot you are, knowing here in beautiful Northern California, in San Francisco, it is cool and beautiful.
0:01:51
(Speaker 2)
Oh boy, I’ll tell you, you’re making me nervous because I should have been there and now I’m over here and you’re over there. Anyway, you and I have, we live in different parts of the country, but we have stayed connected pretty much for a lot of days in the last, I don’t know, couple of decades, Paul Lambert. And we share the love of innovation. You have a very different background than mine, but yet somehow we are connected. And I think that you and I are connected by what we’re about to talk about here, which is we still crave meaningful experiences.
0:02:26
(Speaker 2)
We love to see what’s possible that maybe someone hadn’t thought of before and then go figure out how to do it. So why don’t you explain iStage because it totally plays into what’s happening right at this moment in time with the world of entertainment.
0:02:41
(Speaker 1)
Well, you know, your background in broadcasting it has just been brilliant over the years and mine is in marketing and advertising before I got into producing but the key to our success no matter which of those categories we were experts in was the audience. It is the consumers that decide what is successful or not successful and I have to tell you for years and years and years and years, and while as a child, I had the magic of theater
0:03:08
(Speaker 1)
and Broadway in me, I loved it. Went to theater in Fresno, California, Sacramento, California, and watched The Wizard of Oz, just like all the other kids. But I love theater, and the way theater is normally done, as you just pointed out, is you get together a group and you’re going to
0:03:27
(Speaker 1)
produce a show. I’ll give you an example. Hey, I got this idea. Boy Meets Girl under a willow tree and Lake Texoma. And then you know, wow, it’s country western. Let’s go see if we can get Shania Twain to star in it. And maybe Willie Nilsen will do the music and you start producing a show and raising money. Wait a minute, does anybody care about a boy meets a girl at Lake
0:03:51
(Speaker 1)
Texoma? Has anyone checked the audiences to see if this is a show that appeals to them? I’m sorry, what?
0:03:59
(Speaker 2)
Well, you know, you’re bringing a visual of the kids in the middle of nowhere, you know, who were, you’re asking can they relate. Do you think this is why more Broadway and more shows in general fail financially than when is because no one’s thinking about that? They’re thinking about the show versus thinking about the audience?
0:04:19
(Speaker 1)
Well, the data is the data. I can’t necessarily interpret all the reasons why, but you know, a lot of shows don’t make it. They say only 20 or 30 percent break even. And I believe that in our case, a lot of parts of the entertainment world are struggling right now. But there are others that are soaring and live entertainment done properly, where you have a community built around a project, a personality, or a production, those are the ones that are soaring.
0:04:50
(Speaker 1)
So those of us that have learned through digital platforms of today to build a community around a topic, I’ll give you a couple examples. Let’s say the environmentalist who loves the climate and they’re just active and want to do things about climate control. Or how about people that love American Bandstand, that remember American Bandstand. We’ve even been contacted by
0:05:13
(Speaker 1)
Major League Baseball. Think how many millions of people there are in Major League Baseball. They have an idea for a musical that is promoting baseball. So if you can plug in to these huge, large audiences that are already there, involve them also in what you’re developing, you have a real chance. We went out and actually have contacted MJ Witt, which is a digital business futurist.
0:05:42
(Speaker 1)
I call her a DBF, a digital business futurist. I call her a DM, a DBF, a digital business futurist, who is an expert at building these digital platforms around projects. So we have at Ice Age six musicals that we have ideas for, concepts for, that are very, very topical with huge audiences that are built in. You plug into that audience, you learn from that audience, you build them first without the musical even being mentioned. We get a half a million, a million, a million point five
0:06:14
(Speaker 1)
audience members around a community site where they get to interact, it’s called gamified, they interact and participate, they have fun, they get to know one another, and all of a sudden we say, by the way, we’re going to produce a musical on this topic that you love, and click here, we want you to hear more about it. They click here, they go over here, and all of a sudden they’re engaged. And some
0:06:39
(Speaker 1)
people like to use the term today, the democratization of audiences. And that’s what we’re all about. They become a part of it. And in our case, they even can, down the road, if they participated and really love what we’re doing and what they’re getting involved with in this topic, they can own a piece of that musical as well.
0:07:00
(Speaker 1)
Where in the world, the little boy from Modesto that I am, did I ever think I could see or be a part of these big musicals that I love so much, let alone could I for the price of a Broadway ticket own a little piece of a musical?
0:07:15
(Speaker 2)
What a dream come true. Yeah, totally. That wasn’t even available as an option. You had to be a high net worth investor of course to be able to play in Broadway. So this is the part of it I think is going to appeal to a lot of people. The democratization of being able to own, touch, feel, participate in something
0:07:36
(Speaker 2)
that turns you on, right? So for a lot of people the whole live musical theater thing is a turn on. But the most interesting part of this whole thing is the blending of digital with live entertainment. And I think that’s kind of where you and I always see eye to eye and have for many, many years, right? We went back, let’s go back to the days
0:07:58
(Speaker 2)
of First Wives Club, right? We together were part of that. And it was all about like, hey, let’s get the audience first. Let’s build a world for these women online and then that’ll be your marketing arm for when the show is ready and that’s exactly what happened. So for people who are interested in playing in the Broadway arena, Paul, you’re saying
0:08:19
(Speaker 2)
you’re actually going to introduce a studio of sorts that’s going to do multiple projects at once.
0:08:24
(Speaker 1)
Am I getting that correct? Absolutely. You need to spread the risk of investors money not in one show but over several shows. So anyone that’s a partner with us financially, you’re a partner in six shows not one show. And these shows like Mamma Mia and Jersey Boys and Cats and Lion King, I mean, they do billions of dollars. People don’t realize they do more money than most movies.
0:08:54
(Speaker 1)
These successful Broadway shows that go global do billions and billions of dollars. And now we’re allowing people to come in and be a part of that one or two that might go to that level of popularity and also be a part of the other four or five that are good shows.
0:09:12
(Speaker 1)
I’ll give you an example. A good friend of mine invested in the Temptations musical, Ain’t Too Proud. He’s a fantastic executive at NBC right now, but he loves theater and he invested in Ain’t Too Proud, the temptation show. That show has done two or three hundred millions of dollars. It’s not Lion King, but it still did two or three hundred million dollars,
0:09:36
(Speaker 1)
is still going strong, is playing around the world, and I gotta tell you, these shows are like an annuity. They have a return for years and years and years and years to come. But what you’re pointing out, Debbie, not only is the digital side a new addition to what we’re doing in a very big way, but that digital side is also monetized. So there are ways that revenue is generated on the digital platform as well as the musical.
0:10:06
(Speaker 2)
Yeah, it sounds great. Why do you, the whole big roar now of the success of all these shows and the names like George Clooney and Denzel Washington, who are doing, you know, big bucks and then next year they’ve already announced what Gene Smart, you told me, hacks and designing women and Neil Patrick Harris and Keanu Reeves is going to be doing Broadway Did you tell me that? Yes, he is. Yes, he is. I mean crazy
0:10:30
(Speaker 2)
So what what is the big why all of a sudden is this? burgeoning and rising while some of the other things are not I
0:10:38
(Speaker 1)
think people Who are looking into their cell phones all day long? Working on their computers all day long, and seeing streaming projects they like, they want to get out. I mean, why was Taylor Swift
0:10:51
(Speaker 1)
so tremendously exciting and successful? These big live concerts are attracting people. Theater is attracting people. You know, Broadway’s only 15, 20, 25 percent of the revenue of the National Theater Group in America. People in St. Louis, people in Sacramento, people in Minneapolis are all going to the theater. And the theater is doing great, especially
0:11:18
(Speaker 1)
shows that for years and years and years have proved to be the perennial winners. And so we want to create shows that have a life of years and years and years have proved to be the perennial winners. And so we want to create shows that have a life of years and years and years, play the entire, in fact, we don’t pick a topic that doesn’t appeal globally. We don’t pick a topic that only New York and LA and London would be interested in. We’re into big topics. We have great empathy for things that are going on today that people are struggling with. Should we be afraid of robots and AI? I mean, is that something
0:11:49
(Speaker 1)
that we should do a musical about? The answer is yes. How about good and evil? Is angels and demons still in our world today? Are people going through something in, you know, one of the biblical principles is, fear not, because God is with us. And that is a topic that is huge today. So we’re picking topics, building communities around that topic, then developing a music, interacting with our audience that supports. Let’s go to American Bandstand. You like American
0:12:21
(Speaker 2)
Bandstand. Oh my gosh, that’s how I learned how to dance. Are you telling me? My job was to iron on Saturdays and I was so freaking bored with the whole thing I would just put on the TV and hope to pray for American Bandstand and I would learn the moves and that’s how I became the world’s greatest dancer Paul.
0:12:38
(Speaker 1)
This community site that I’m talking about that is our American Bandstand site. And we said to you, of the five favorite songs that you remember from American Bandstand, what were they? Or here’s a list of 30, pick your favorite three. And we poll the audience, and da, da, da, and we get the data from the audience. And then guess what is in the musical?
0:13:00
(Speaker 1)
The very things the audience wants.
0:13:03
(Speaker 2)
Well, the whole AI platform integration into knowing what an audience wants based on all the data that’s collected and available can’t hurt to add to the pie here. So that I imagine that’ll be part of the future of iStage as well, collecting as much data as possible. That’s correct. Yeah.
0:13:24
(Speaker 1)
That’s correct. And that’s where our DBF, remember, our Digital Business Futurist, MJ Witt, is in charge of all of that.
0:13:31
(Speaker 2)
Yo, MJ, you go girl. Okay, well, you know, this is the first time we’re talking about this publicly. This is something that’s been privately going on for a long time and there are a lot of really interesting people involved with this vision, if you will, MJ being one of them. We won’t go naming everybody’s names, but best in class in each of their classes of talents that is behind the scenes on this. Paul, I want to give you a lot of credit for attracting such big brains and big hearts
0:14:01
(Speaker 2)
because there’s a lot of heart involved here too. Without great heart, good business really doesn’t get done. So it’s all about bringing good people together who feel, you know, good about working together and creating something that other people can enjoy and then everybody wins too. And do good for the world, right? We always say and make sure you do good for the world. All right. Thank you so much for stopping by. All right, stay cool, stay cool.
0:14:29
(Speaker 2)
Go forward with iStage and everybody will be hearing more about that. Digital with live entertainment and the audience get to be a part of the whole thing. Nice community innovation platform coming in the future, very near future here, about reverse engineering some of the live entertainment musicals you get to see now. Only you’re going to see something new coming coming so have a great rest of your day Only you’re going to see something new coming coming so have a great rest of your day
0:14:48
(Speaker 2)
more to come on the Debbie Nigro Show
