The showman: Meet Tim Sauers, who helps bring Broadway to Madison

“You’re looking at it,” he replied. “I watch shows.”

Sauers, chief artistic experiences officer for the Overture Center for the Arts, was only half-kidding. In December, he saw 10 shows in New York; in January, 13.

There are shows he sees at presenter conferences, performing arts festivals and more.

“And then I see our own shows (at Overture), the Jerry (Award high school) shows, and other shows inside the venue,” he said.

Sauers came to Madison from Chicago in 2008 to serve as Overture’s director of education. Almost 15 years later, with the retirement of former chief operating officer Jacquie Goetz last summer, he became the longest-serving member of Overture’s leadership team.

“Hamilton,” “Hadestown,” “Dear Evan Hansen” — if you’ve seen a Broadway hit or a touring “Overture Presents” show in the past decade, Sauers probably was instrumental in bringing it to Madison.

‘Demystification’ of Broadway

Though he grew up on a farm in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, these days Sauers is more likely to be visiting London or Vegas to see the latest musical theater hits, or negotiating with theatrical agents to bring a hot musical act or dance company to an Overture stage.

Wearing his signature pullover sweater or button-down vest, Sauers works out of his second-floor office at Overture, with a stunning view of the Orpheum Theatre sign just across State Street.

Posters from favorite shows like “A Chorus Line,” “Noises Off” and “Sunday in the Park with George” line his office walls. A giant playbill for the Jerry Awards, the annual celebration of regional high school musical theater that Sauers helped found, stands in the corner, covered with autographs from students who got their turn in the Overture spotlight.

Sauers is one of the most visible staff members at Overture, the region’s largest performing arts venue, at 201 State St. Until Overture’s “Rising Stars” show was put on hiatus because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Sauers emceed the local talent competition. His voice rings out on the PA at some Overture shows before curtain, reminding visitors to turn off their cellphones and enjoy the show.

And Sauers is co-host, along with Overture staff member Karra Beach, of “Cocktails with Tim and Karra,” an event for hardcore “Broadway Club” subscribers that includes a behind-the-scenes preview of each Broadway tour coming to Madison. Although they feature guest speakers and a slideshow, CWTK sessions are more like a party than a lecture series, with free popcorn and a cash bar.

Sauers came up with the “Cocktails” idea many years back, when he realized that most Madison audiences didn’t understand how Broadway tours work, but were eager to learn.

“It’s sort of the demystification of it,” he said. “People want to know about how something works.”

“I don’t think they do this anywhere else, in this format,” said Beach, Overture’s director of Broadway engagement programs. Because of the uniqueness of CWTK, Sauers “has done talks about it and presented at conferences,” she said.

As for working day-to-day with Sauers, her boss, “There is no similar day,” Beach said.

“We used to joke that we wished it would be boring around work for just a little bit. But every now and then, Tim will bop out and say, ‘OK, I have this idea ...’ And that’s usually the start of things. There’s never a dull moment — and that’s not a bad thing. He keeps us forward-thinking, about how else can we do it, and how can we do it well and make it sustainable?”

The acting bug

“Broadway Club” subscribers, who number close to 5,000 and come from across southern Wisconsin, also get a “bonus” show each season. This year, by request, Sauers did a one-man show filled with stories from his own life.

“When I was developing the show, I didn’t realize it was going to be about my father, and the role he played that was pivotal for me,” Sauers recalled.

“I grew up on a farm in a small town in central Pennsylvania. My family was generations of farmers, and I was this shy kid.” But in second grade, Sauers had an “amazing teacher” who read to the class every day. At the end of the school year, students voted on their favorite book to turn into a play, which was “Mr. Popper’s Penguins.”

“And she cast me as Mr. Popper,” Sauers recalled. “I was scared and shy about it, but I loved rehearsing and doing it, I loved it. And when it was over, I told my parents, ‘I’m going to be an actor.’

“I actually grew up at a time when the arts were so strong in our little elementary school,” he said. “At that time, the elementary teachers had to have a certification in piano, so every classroom had its own piano, and all the teachers played the piano. So there was that element of it going on all the time. And we would put on a play every year.”

Turning points

In fifth grade, Sauers had the same teacher, who wanted to do a play based on Walter Cronkite’s historical educational TV series “You Are There.”

She asked Sauers to write it.

“I always wondered what she did for everybody else, what she saw in someone to bring out” their talents, he said. “She changed my life.”

When it came time for college, Sauers wanted to pursue theater, but his high school guidance counselor refused to sign off on his applications, he said.

“He said you can’t major in theater because you can’t make any money at it,” Sauers recalled.

But when Sauers’ father heard that, he marched into the school “and told the guidance counselor, ‘Don’t tell my kid what he can or cannot do. Sign those applications,’” Sauers said. “That really was a changing point.”

When he was in college and appeared in plays, his parents would always come see them — after his mother had studied the Cliff’s Notes and researched the work itself.

“And I’ve thought — what was it about them, when (theater) was so far outside of their knowledge and their zone,” said Sauers. Having “the supportive parent through everything was really great.”

Off to New York

Sauers earned a bachelor’s degree in theater at Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, which was close enough to New York City that he and his friends could drive there for a weekend to see as many Broadway shows they could get discount tickets for. They’d also make a stop at Colony Records, at 49th Street and Broadway, and at the Drama Book Shop, where they’d each buy an album or a book to read and then swap with their friends.

Sauers went on to earn a master’s degree in theater at Michigan State and a master’s in Interdisciplinary Arts at Columbia College Chicago. In Chicago, he worked with Gateway for Education, through which he met Susan Crofton, vice president of Overture Center at the time.

“She said, ‘We need your expertise’ in Madison,” Sauers recalled. “I said I’d come for an interview, but I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to move to Madison. Then I walked into this (Overture) building, and I had some visions. One of the things they wanted me to do at the time was to engage the community in the building, because it was looked at as this elite powerhouse. What I liked when I came here is that there were just so many things to think about, and directions to go.”

Sauers took the job in Madison — “a great move for me,” he recalls — and started working on outreach efforts to make Overture feel more open and accessible to the broader public.

One early event was a local ballroom dance competition in the lobby. “By the end of the day, the lobby was just packed with people wanting to see what was going on,” he said.

Challenging time

Sauers started working at Overture just before the 2008 stock market plunge and recession, which created a perilous situation for the $205 million arts center, then operated by the Madison Cultural Arts District. After years of restructuring, the private nonprofit Overture Center Foundation became the center’s sole operator in 2012.

In 2021, the arts center adopted an “executive shared leadership” model with five directors, including Sauers, equally guiding the venue’s future.

That arrangement has been working “great,” Sauers said, because the directors have jointly set clear goals and are not dependent on the leadership of just one person.

From a programming standpoint, one of the Overture Center’s most pivotal periods was the 2009-10 season, he said. Up to that point, most Broadway tours stopped in Madison to perform a few shows, not a full-week run.

“It wasn’t until that 2009-10 season when ‘The Lion King’ came that the (box office) database just quadrupled because of people coming to see that show,” he said. “Broadway has grown so much” since then, he said, with top-selling shows like “Hadestown” and the return of “The Lion King” this season.

The lineup for 2023-24 will be announced in an in-person and livestream event on April 20.

With the “Cocktails” series, Sauers has also grown a close-knit group of Broadway fans, said Melody Bakken, who has taken theater-oriented trips led by Sauers to cities like Chicago, New York, London and Las Vegas.

“He’s just a really nice guy with a quirky sense of humor. And he’s got so many stories to tell,” she said. “We all just really like each other and have a good time together. We all got together for Tim’s 60th birthday last year and had dinner together.”

“He’s warm and friendly, and you can talk to him about anything,” agreed Cathey LaHaye, who with her husband, David, has gone on some of Sauer’s musical theater tours.

“If you didn’t like a show, you can tell him,” said LaHaye. “At Cocktails, we don’t just talk about the upcoming show. We talk about other shows we’ve seen, and he takes the feedback. He makes everyone feel welcome.”

Always singing

When Beach gets a musical-theater tune stuck in her head at work, it’s usually because of Sauers, she said.

“He’s always singing,” she said. “I’ll be thinking of a song and think, ‘Where did I hear that?’ It’s usually because Tim’s been whistling it in the office.”

Sauers lives just a 15-minute walk from Overture, in a rented apartment near James Madison Park. He never bought a place because, he says, his two cats — former strays he found at his family’s farm — love the setting, especially the screened-in porch where they head like clockwork every morning to check out the day.

When he’s not working, he’s — what else? — seeing shows, sometimes at local Café Coda or The Sylvie. Sauers’ favorite entertainment experience ever, though, was a Lady Gaga show in Las Vegas. And his “favorite place on earth” is the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, held each August in Edinburgh, Scotland.

“I’ve been there twice now,” said Sauers, who intends to return in 2023.

“It’s such an extremely warm and inviting environment. People are all there talking about the shows and the artwork they’ve seen. They draw you into conversation. Every worker I’ve come across — people selling tickets, security — everyone is just so kind.”

Last year, Sauers saw 38 shows at Edinburgh, he said, “and you still feel like you haven’t seen enough.”

At the Festival Fringe, on Broadway or in Overture Hall, “For me, after all these years, I’ll sit down to watch a show, and I’m ready for a great show,” he said.

“I don’t sit down jaded. I am ready to go — and I want you to either take me somewhere, or make me feel something or think about something. And that’s what I think about when I leave the show — did you do that for me?”