Learning the business of show business, by degree
Adam Blanshay, whose productions include ‘Moulin Rouge! The Musical’ © Charlie Bibby/FTAs a theatre producer, Adam Blanshay is more used to treading the boards than knocking on boardroom doors. He also has a “very challenging history with academia”. And he is managing the rigours of an executive MBA — where “half the things we are covering are completely new to me” — alongside his work and a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
Yet, last month, he marked the halfway point of a two-year EMBA at Oxford university’s Saïd Business School and, far from feeling like an outsider, he is more at home than ever.
Blanshay is from Montreal, Canada. It was his uncle who gave him his first taste of theatre when he returned from a trip to London with a Phantom of the Opera cassette. “I sat in front of the stereo the entire weekend, listening to this incredible piece of art that I just fell in love with.”
It was by chance that Blanshay landed in production. In 2004, he moved to New York to take up the role of assistant director on A Woman of Will, starring Amanda McBroom. The show opened in 2005 but closed after a week, and Blanshay moved on to an internship with its producer.
He spent his twenties in New York experimenting with roles. “It was a sequence of going from job to job and trying different things,” he says. Production won out: “a wonderful marriage of artistic development and management, with business, admin, finance and anything that goes with running a company and being an entrepreneur”.
In 2017, Blanshay founded a production company that has worked on a range of projects, including Moulin Rouge! The Musical in London and, on Broadway, the UK touring production of Kinky Boots.
Blanshay has been involved with many award-winning shows, but admits producing can be “taxing”. “It is not always opening night, when you get to celebrate,” he says. “As a producer — like in any executive position — there is a tremendous amount of pressure on you . . . Many a day, all you are [doing] is financing, paying for things and putting out fires.”
This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Kate Hodge
