In this episode of the Legacy Lounge, Chelsea Stavis sits down with Dan Knechtges, Artistic Director of Theatre Under The Stars. Knechtges is a Tony nominee for his choreography of Xanadu, and his Broadway credits include The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, 110 in the Shade, Sondheim on Sondheim, and Lysistrata Jones, which he directed and choreographed. He came to Houston from New York by way of Cleveland, arrived on the day Hurricane Harvey made landfall, spent his first three weeks in a hotel because the apartment he was meant to move into had flooded, and stayed.

His argument starts with a history lesson. American musical theatre, he says, was invented on the Lower East Side of Manhattan by people who had nothing in common and no choice but to live next to each other. Irish jigs beside gospel, Eastern European operetta beside street tap. The form came out of the collision. Knechtges then makes the obvious move that almost nobody makes: Houston is now the most diverse city in the country, which means the conditions that produced the American musical exist here in greater concentration than they exist anywhere. He is not interested in importing the next Mamma Mia!. He wants to know how Houston writes the next Hamilton and exports it.

He is clear about the economics, and he does not soften them. A Chorus Line, Rent, and Hamilton were all developed at nonprofit theatres, and all of them lost money at those theatres before touring and licensing sent revenue back the other way. Knechtges calls what he wants to build in the Ion District the room where that becomes possible in Houston, with stages small enough that a new work can fail without being killed. He quotes Mike Nichols on the subject of certainty: run from anyone who promises a sure thing, and follow the person with a good hunch. Chelsea, who grew up in Houston, trained as a theatre kid, and now helps run a wealth management firm, presses him on why any of this matters to someone who will never set foot on a stage. His answer has to do with problem solving, empathy, and what a room of strangers breathing the same air can still do that a screen cannot. Watch the full episode of the Legacy Lounge now.