Origin Stories
When a box of lemons and toilet paper is the only thing you have...
Hi hello, I’m Jess Ryan, founder of Broadway Unlocked. I write about theatre, technology, live broadcast and digital audiences every other Tuesday.
In 2020 and 2021, Broadway Unlocked was streaming an average of 5 shows a month - big ones, with thousands of people - all delivering to digital audiences around the world. This week, I intended to write about what we learned with the benefit of iteration and constant feedback. But as I started in, I was reminded there is a far less glamorous “before” that I was simply glossing over. We’ll get to building a million dollar business in eleven months and what we learned next, but for today, I want to take a moment to share something more personal first - the chaos of the shutdown and how we made it to doing all those shows. This story reminds me that the digital expertise we held then is still much needed now. And that education has always been a throughline at Broadway Unlocked (alongside the work).
Let’s rewind the clock:
It’s February 2020. We’re about to do our seventh #Giveback Concert, Broadway’s first hybrid in-person and livestreamed concert. I’m also in final interviews to go work for the freaking DALAI LAMA and build his media company (ok, it was actually to go to work for his non-profit but it sounds so much cooler this way).
Then it’s March 10th - I and a gaggle of the smartest, most talented gals I know in the Broadway ecosystem pile into the Amsterdam Theatre for Women’s Day on Broadway. We go for wine and snacks after. Our friend and colleague from China suggests that the advice we’re getting to not worry about masks may be bad advice. It’s the first time I feel anxiety over what’s happening.
March 14th. I’m slated to direct an Equity production of The Producers that will open my alma mater’s new amphitheatre that upcoming summer. I’m in auditions at Ripley Grier. I’m getting spit on while people sing “Keep it Gay” (which in hindsight is hilarious, but was wildly worrisome in the moment). Between auditions, I’m texting my best friend and neighbor - he’s flying home to MO for an indeterminate amount of time. I have two friends up to my apartment for Pi Day that evening and we wonder if this is the last social gathering we’ll have for the foreseeable future.
Spoiler alert, it was. March 17th. The city shuts down. The Dalai Lama deal falls apart. The Producers is cancelled. I desperately call my LA friends and ask them to ship me toilet paper (they sent me lemons from their lemon tree, too - weirdest and best care package I’ve ever received). My checking account dwindles to nothing. My friend and college music director sends me $100 to buy tylenol and a thermometer, just in case. I have to ask my best friend’s mom to send me $500 to keep me afloat as I, like so many of us, figure out what the fuck to do.
And also on that day I publish the Medium article that defines the role Broadway Unlocked will play in the theatre industry for the next 18 months.
On that day, I was truly at a loss for what to do so I went where my brain usually goes - how can I help? So many of my friends in the theatre across the US were struggling. I’d been using technology as part of my artistic practice for so long, I started wondering how that could be of service. I sat down and wrote a Medium article highlighting every piece of technology I’d been using since we started livestreaming concerts - from video hosts like Vimeo, to the cloud-based liveswitching software StageTEN, to interactive participation software like Poll Everywhere, I broke down 20 different pieces of technology I thought theatre folks could use. I even gave it a clever little repeating format:
People start reading.
March 18th. I share the article on Instagram and I get DMs, asking me for help as so many creative people go to work figuring out what they can make while they are locked inside. I turn these requests into an Ideas section - posing a challenge someone came to me with, and a possible solution I cooked up. My friend and colleague Belinda Filippelli of Go Viral Digital sends me the message that really starts everything:
“Jess - make that article a lead gen. Give people a way to give you their email and get on a call with you”.
I distinctly remember cartoonishly slapping my forehead and thinking DUH Jessica. I realize this is so much more than solving the problem of the moment - this is an opportunity to further build the future I’d been architecting since 2013.
I decide to offer 30 minute pay-what-you-can consulting calls.
March 19th. I write a second article on Medium and make a video breaking down how to use Google Meet because I am hearing that Zoom is so hard for people new to it (can you even imagine now?!) I help a theatre in Kansas City set up their OBS livestreaming system. I talk to teachers about how to make arts lesson plans on Zoom feel connected and alive. It’s no Dalai Lama, but I’m cooking, and it’s feeling great to be inspired by so many resilient, committed artists around the country, determined to stay standing as our industry is felled to its knees.
March 20th. My inbox chimes. It’s an email from the Development Director at The Guthrie Theatre. She’s read my article. She knows we’ve been doing the #Giveback Concert for years. She wants to talk. We do. I send her a follow up, via email:
I have a last thought:
In planning a theatre experience going online, I think the guiding principle should always rest on that Ayad Akhtar quote about us all breathing the same breath when we’re at the theatre… it’s just all a question of what we can create that can get closest to that.
xx
Jess
And that takes us to the beginning of the next chapter for Broadway Unlocked. Yes, it’s a moment in time, and feels a bit nostalgic now - but the truth is, that insane month has guided and informed so much of how, why and where we build community, invite audiences and work tirelessly to change the dynamics of streaming theatrical experiences.
As an industry we have to revisit and reinvest in that how, why and where… more on that next time.
P.S. Here’s the full digital performance of Oh, For a Muse of Fire we created with The Guthrie, to be part of their first performance for digital audiences:
It was really interesting to go back into my calendar, emails and Airtable to excavate these dates. When I tell you I was SURE that weeks went by between the world shutting down, me mopping around and then realizing perhaps I could help by writing that article, I mean I was convinced. To find out that I had published that 3 days after we all went inside on 3/14 kind of blew my mind.
We still use so many of those tools I wrote about (and plenty of new ones too). I’m curious - what learnings, experiences and designs from that time are you still using/implementing, as an artist or in your org?
Previously on Broadway Unlocked
If you’re the kind of person who loves to make a data-informed decision, my last Substack is chock full of stats that further prove we’ve gotta build plans to engage audiences digitally, if we want them to eventually join us in-person.
Check out my most recent Substack.
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Next up - July 14th, 2026
I really took for granted that going to the theater was solely about seeing a great show. But in fact, what I learned from creating theatrical experiences in a virtual theater is that a night at the theater is also about the dinner with my friend that I have beforehand.
And it is about having a quick chat with the person seated next to you with the Kansas City Royals hat.
And it’s running into someone you know as you’re joining the 9-mile bathroom line during intermission.
And it’s walking out of those doors into the crush of people, and maybe going to the stage door, or going for a drink, or just standing on the sidewalk talking before you go to the subway.
All those pieces and parts — that’s what makes theater so special…