In the producer's office: Gigi Pritzker and Jamie Forshaw on their mission-based philosophy of producing for Broadway

In this Q&A, the Madison Wells Live leaders discusses their unique multi-media strategy, upcoming projects like "Swept Away" and "The Thing About Jellyfish" and more.

(L-R) Gigi Pritzker and Jamie Forshaw (Credit: Courtesy of RRR Creative)

According to its website, Madison Wells is a production company "with a strong bias towards stories for, by and about badass women and people who push boundaries" — individuals not unlike the company's founder, Gigi Pritzker.

Pritzker began her career producing for the screen. In 2010, Pritzker waded into Broadway territory, lead producing "Million Dollar Quartet" under the banner Relevant Theatricals. The musical earned three Tony nominations, including one for Best Musical. In 2017, she launched her company, Madison Wells. But it wasn't until April 2019 that Madison Wells officially established its live (i.e., theater) division, led by producer Jamie Forshaw; and not until the COVID-19 shutdown did Madison Wells refocus and declare the aforementioned mission statement.

For the past five years, Forshaw has been tasked with establishing Madison Wells Live by 1) finding stories to develop into theatrical productions and 2) co-producing Broadway shows that stood for their principles, included artists that the company wants to collaborate with or projects that aesthetically match the style Madison Wells wants to be known for.

That co-producer funding was budgeted with a five-year timeline, and Forshaw chose to invest in "Hadestown," "The Inheritance," "Company," "Pass Over," "Mike Birbiglia: The Old Man & the Pool" and "Shucked." The company's first lead producing credit on the Main Stem was the fall 2023 comedy "Jaja's African Hair Braiding" with Manhattan Theatre Club. "If anything encompasses the North star of what Madison Wells is, what Gigi stands for and what we all stand for it is 'Jaja's," Forshaw told Broadway News. "It is raising voices, attention to cultures and people that don't have that vocal or visual platform."

On the development side, Madison Wells has been shepherding the Broadway-aimed musical “Swept Away” since its first workshop; the new play “The Thing About Jellyfish” by Keith Bunn, based on the novel by Ali Benjamin; original comedy “Locker Room Talk” by Meghan Kennedy; the musical “Jenkins” directed by Whitney White; “We Live in Cairo” by Daniel and Patrick Lazour; and “The Ocean at the End of the Lane” by Neil Gaiman and Joel Horwood, which the company co-produced for London’s National Theatre and will lead produce for its hoped-for Broadway run.

Here, Pritzker and Forshaw dissect what it means to be a mission-driven commercial producer, their strategy in simultaneously developing a story for the screen and stage and their thoughts on the theatrical ecosystem.

Broadway News: In terms of your mission, did you launch with this focus on producing specific types of artists and stories, or did you reflect back and realize a theme in your work? Gigi Pritzker: Madison Wells was born, honestly, out of thinking, “What do I care about?” And there was a team of people, Jamie included, during the pandemic who really pushed me, in particular, to hone in on what we do. What do you want to do? Why are you doing this? As a producer, you're like, “It’s collaborative. We are all in this.” The pressure on me to articulate what it is that I want, I found very difficult and not [a match for] my personality. The result is an evolution of my career to this point. The idea that we’re making stories for, by and about badass women and people pushing boundaries makes perfect sense.

Broadway News often announces the establishment of production companies. I have seen more of these say: Our mission is to uplift unheard voices. Sometimes it’s BIPOC voices, sometimes LGBTQ+. Sometimes it’s any underrepresented voice. How do you distinguish Madison Wells? Do you need to?

Pritzker: Because we do film and theater and TV, I think that’s unique. A lot of people do all those things, too, now [but] we’ve been doing it for a really long time, and it is core to how we work as a team.

Right. Jamie runs the live group and Rachel Shane heads film and television. Pritzker: For instance, “The Thing About Jellyfish” was something [Rachel] found on the film side. Jamie and Rachel work closely together and go back and forth with material. And last night we had a screening of a film. We wanted Jamie to come to that and give notes. There’s a real porousness between the teams that actually is built on purpose. So I think that is one thing that does distinguish us. And I think it’s great, more people doing similar things. I’m all in for people who want to share that vision.

Jamie Forshaw: I don’t think we’re sitting here saying, “We’re special, we’re unique.” We are just doing the things that match our mission. These are the attributes that we like to abide by when we’re choosing projects, reading materials, working with collaborators, partners. It’s our guiding light. But it is a guide. So we’re not saying it’s purely BIPOC. It’s purely LGBTQ. It is about the stories. It’s about the creatives. It’s about the people that we are hopefully raising to another platform.

That can make it easier to decide what to work on.

Forshaw: It’s almost like a nonprofit or a small company. It’s not about, is this piece commercial? Can we make money on this? It’s like, this story is important. This is going to touch people. This is going to make people have these questions. We are commercial producers, but it’s not about beingcommercial. It’s about, how can you make it commercial? The story has to be the fundamental thing that guides you all the time.

Pritzker: Two things I would add: One is the audience; two is our collaborators. We want to raise up voices of the other producers we’re involved with, but also audiences. “Jaja’s” proved that to us. You look at that audience and think, why can’t more shows have an audience that looks like this and feels like this?

I want to talk about some of your upcoming projects. You are looking at a regional theater for “The Thing About Jellyfish” in the 2024-2025 season. It’s a story about a preteen girl whose friend passes away. Is “Jellyfish” being simultaneously developed as a film? Pritzker: Yes.

Tell me how that works and what your mentality is around developing one property in two different ways. That sounds unique.

Pritzker: It is. And it was interesting that the agents had a real challenge understanding that, and I get it.

Because it's not just usually done that way.

Pritzker: To their credit, they listened and then understood. We bought the rights to that book, I don't know, five years ago. I said to them, "God willing, we have an issue where it's like, 'Is this going to cannibalize that?'" But the reality is this stuff takes so long. "Jellyfish" is so unique in that it has a young female protagonist. You have to find a talented, capable young woman both on the film side and the theater side. It's got challenges, which means they're not going to happen that close together. Why not start developing that story in two different mediums and see how things evolve?

As you said, it's porous for a reason, but they are being developed as two separate entities simultaneously. Rachel and Jamie can have dialogue across what's working in the film and what's working in the play.

Pritzker: And they can help influence each other. Rachel's here [for the "Jellyfish" reading] to help give notes to Jamie, but also to go, "I wonder if we did that, if that solves a problem on the film side that we're having with the script."

Fascinating.

Pritzker: There are fundamental differences between the two, but there are also a lot of similarities. The basis of all of it is story, and how do you develop the story? It's interesting to watch a book go in two directions and what you need to emphasize and highlight on one side and work and tweak on the other.

From an audience perspective, whether they're released in the same year or five years apart, how do you think audiences will react to that? What is your philosophy on the audience reception of one story in two mediums?

Pritzker: The reality is we all love theater dearly, but we all know that the audience is infinitesimal. And so I would never be worried about something in theater cannibalizing a film because a film or streamer [nets] a much bigger audience.

Could this work for other projects?

Pritzker: We have another project that we bought. Jim Rash, who co-directed "The Way Way Back," which was a movie I did years ago, wrote basically a two-hander. I said to him, "We'll develop this film and purchase the rights, but I want the theater rights [too] because it's a perfect theater piece."

My idea before the [2023 Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA] strikes that changed everything was: If we shot it in the summer, and then we did a short [live] run of it — it's got two big stars— while we were editing the movie, then try to go to Sundance with the movie. That all made perfect sense because, honestly, the play version would be terrific marketing for a distributor to understand that there's an audience for this. I think our job as producers is to make things safe and easy for distributors or for audiences to be able to want to come and see the stuff. So I think that helps it. I don't think it hurts it.

Do you think the opposite is true? That if the movie is first it also buoys theater audiences? Pritzker: Yes. I think if people recognize a title or a thing, then they're going to be more likely to make the investment in a ticket to come see a show. We live in a world that's just all marketing now.

I think of "Swept Away" (with a score of Avett Brothers songs) as very mainstream, at least in sound. How does that fit within the Madison Wells Live philosophy?

Forshaw: I joined "Swept Away" as the very first thing I did when I got to the company. It is a very artistic piece of theater. It's not a musical in the sense of your 11-o'clock number and you're singing and dancing. These are guys in a boat. [It's] a setting that normally I don't think would work on paper. I chose this show because artistically, at its heart, it is telling a new tale in the medium of a musical.

That's what Madison Wells is about: untold stories that should be told. And also stories that make you discuss, and this is very much about your own mortality. What do you do when faced with decisions that challenge you, your morals and what's right and wrong, and what you should and shouldn't do, and how far you go to protect the ones you love?

You have a lot more you're working on.

Forshaw: The shows we are having a proper hand in to develop in and create, they have to stand by what we stand by. "Jenkins" is a true story. Reverend Daniel Jenkins, African American, he's a freed slave. He moved to Charleston, South Carolina. He saw many Black children orphaned in the streets and created the first Black orphanage. He hears some of the kids coughing and realizes they contracted [tuberculosis]. He realized he has to help build the strength of their lungs to keep them alive. So he said, they're going to learn how to play wind instruments. He created the Jenkins Orphanage Band; Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington both credit Jenkins Orphanage Band in their cradle of jazz. If they hadn't heard that music, they would not have created the music that we credit them with. "Locker Room Talk" takes on body positivity, body-shaming, how women communicate with each other. It's about female community in a safe space. We did a reading [with] Sara Bareilles, Cecily Strong, Bonnie Milligan and Donna Murphy.

In terms of putting your creative teams together, based on what you've previously produced, the identities of creators don't always match the identities of the protagonists Does a woman's story need to be told by a woman? Does a man's story need to be told by a man? How are you thinking about all of this and the current demand for authenticity?

Pritzker: Yeah. I push back on that. The creative arts got us to where we are today, starting with Shakespeare, because people didn't think that way. I think that's a hard world to live in, that only a white woman can tell a white woman's story and only a Black woman can tell a Black woman's story. What happened to universality and what happened to the fact that certain human conditions are human conditions? There are certain things that are so specific to a certain [identity, like] "Jaja's." I just think we can't be so beholden to definitives and binaries and those kinds of rules. Some things, yes; others, I don't know. I think you have to trust your curatorial gut and your morality gut, and you hope that good people are making good work and good choices. What else are you thinking about when it comes to theater?

Pritzker: The other thing I think a lot about, being a Chicagoan, is the health and well-being of the theater ecosystem. The need for not-for-profits, experimental stuff, for all different facets of theater. The health of the theater ecosystem is something we all should be focused on right now. And part of that is the audience. We have to make sure we take care of the audience and that audiences want to come see our [work]. It's really important.