The year was 1990 and Peter Sagal, keynote speaker at this year’s Performing Arts Managers Conference, was at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles for a special celebratory screening of Singin’ In The Rain.

“The music was by the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra and Doc Severinsen,” recalled the noted radio host, author and humorist. “Wouldn’t you know at the end of the screening Debbie Reynolds and Gene Kelly and a bunch of other stars from the movie came out on stage. We were all there, me and 16,000 other people. I’ve got that. I have that memory in addition to having seen the film on TV a thousand times, which is awesome. That doesn’t happen alone on the screen. It happens when you get yourself out and go to some venue and you see a performance.”

Sagal gets charged up when talking about his love for performing arts, not just his past memories, but for what the future holds for the industry. In an era when it is easier to stay at home and connect with others via a computer device, Sagal believes there will always — repeat, always — be the need for people to congregate to venues for live performances. It is the spirit of community and the need for socialization, among other things. And it can be literally any event that draws the masses.

“Years ago I was at Universal Studios in Hollywood,” Sagal said in calling up another memory. “I went to some ridiculous show. It was like Conan the Barbarian live. It had a stunt man and dragons, fire and sword fights and was ridiculous. It was the silliest thing in the world. But it was really fun and more to the point there were thousands of people sitting in this auditorium who wanted to see the show that day.”

Sagal acknowledges the aforementioned distractions that were not necessarily available to previous generations that compete for discretionary dollars.

“There’s more competition that distracts people from those presenting live performances … there’s just a tremendous amount of competition,” he said. “There are so many reasons and distractions to keep people at home but to me that just means that the performing arts and Broadway are just going to have to work harder to attract that audience and up their game.”

The good news is that those games are in fact being upped.

“I go to the theater a lot, which is my particular thing,” Sagal said. “I see people much younger than I am putting on plays or musicals. Let’s take Hamilton as an example. Hamilton is the most exciting thing to happen to theater in years. The reason that has happened is because it’s so good. I mean, really excellent. Not only is it excellent by the standards of musical theater but it’s excellent by the standards of hip hop and contemporary music. It’s a modern kind of sensibility which demands basically more content for the dollar.”

Compare that to musicals from bygone eras, which Sagal does.

“Counter that with something like Once Upon A Mattress, which was 60 years ago,” he said. “At that time you could do a musical with 10 songs and a really simple story and a couple of jokes and people would flock to it. Now you have to be something like Hamilton in order to get that kind of excitement. But if you can get something like Hamilton, people will come.

“I’m sure a lot of people in your business are like, why can’t we just have a concert? Why do we have to have fireworks? There will always probably be in your world room for somebody to come out and just play music. One of the best concerts I’ve ever seen was Elvis Costello just playing his own songs on a guitar. It was amazing.”

May 2017 will bring the end of “The Greatest Show On Earth” when the Ringling Bros. Circus will close forever.

“Feld has been a terrific partner, offering great events and a diverse line-up of quality shows for many years,” said Brad Mayne, CFE, IAVM’s President & CEO. “The Feld family is to be commended for working to keep the circus alive as long as they have.  This is a sad time, but we need to be looking forward to a great future with a great partner who has brought us so many years of quality entertainment.”

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The Nashville Convention Center Authority voted unanimously to approve a $19.9 million construction budget to build a new food and beverage outlet and expand the Exhibit Hall and Davidson Ballroom concourse space at the Music City Center. The expansion will add 5,000 square feet of additional concourse space and 4,350 square feet of retail and kitchen space on the Exhibit Hall level as well as 2,000 square feet of additional pre-function space outside the Davidson Ballroom.

The new food and beverage outlet, which will be operated by the Music City Center’s culinary team, will be located on the third level of the Music City Center and accessible from inside the building as well as from Demonbreun and 8^th Avenue. The concourse space adjacent to the new market will be expanded to allow for a registration area on the Exhibit Hall level. The Davidson Ballroom concourse will also be extended to accommodate registration and receptions. Construction will begin immediately and is slated for completion by the end of year.

“We are thrilled that the Authority agrees we should continue to invest in and enhance the Music City Center,” said Charles Starks, President/CEO of the Music City Center. “As we have listened to our meeting planners’ feedback over the last three years, we’ve identified these as areas we can expand upon to better the customer experience. With the new hotels and development on 8^th Avenue, we feel this is the right time and the right place to make these improvements.”

The Convention Center Authority also voted to join Tennessee Thrives, a coalition of businesses committed to a thriving Tennessee that welcomes all. The Music City Center joins over 200 businesses statewide that believe equal treatment of all residents and visitors is essential to Tennessee’s success.

San Antonio is investing $50 million into its 65,000-seat Alamodome. Set in historic downtown and connected to the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center by a walking path, the Alamodome places meeting and event attendees in the heart of historic San Antonio. Within walking distance is the beautiful River Walk, Alamo, thousands of hotel rooms and numerous shops, restaurants and attractions.

“The Alamodome will undergo the most significant capital improvement program in its 22-year history,” said Mike Sawaya, director of Convention & Sports Facilities for the City of San Antonio. “Improvements to the world-renowned Alamodome will modernize the venue to be even more comparable and competitive with other multi-use and sports stadiums in the U.S.”

Scheduled for completion in November 2017, the Alamodome is designed for flexibility with football, basketball, soccer, boxing, tradeshow, theater and stadium concert capabilities. Renovations will include:

• Transformation of northern plaza – more contiguous event space added to outdoor plaza
• 18,600-square-foot east/west concourse expansion with upgraded concessions areas and new terrace club
• New technology including two new LED video walls and ribbon boards
• New 24,000-square-foot multi-use space
• New visiting team locker room

“Aside from benefiting San Antonio’s overall meetings package, Alamodome enhancements are vital to maintaining and growing San Antonio’s ability to host sporting events such as the Valero Alamo Bowl and U.S. Army All American Bowl,” said San Antonio Convention & Visitors Bureau Director Casandra Matej. “One of the first events to utilize the revitalized Alamodome will be the NCAA Final Four in 2018.”

Consistently noted as one of the nation’s leading destinations for meetings and events, San Antonio continues to reinvest in its infrastructure. Aside from coming Alamodome renovations, the city has recently expanded its historic River Walk and debuted a transformed Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in January 2016.

When Peter Sagal delivers his featured keynote presentation at the upcoming Performing Arts Managers Conference in Chicago (http://www.iavm.org/pama/pamc-home), he will do so from a position of authority about the subject matter.

As the host of National Public Radio’s Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!, Sagal is heard by more than three million people every week, broadcast on 450 public radio stations nationwide and via a popular podcast. Sagal is a renowned radio host, author, humorist, and commentator on current events, yet will never forget his early youth roots spent in the world of theater.

“I was one of those theater kids in high school,” Sagal said about his upbringing in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey. “We all had cliques and mine was down by the drama classroom that Mr. Schneider taught. In my era the drama class people and those in plays … we were the misfits. We were the geeky kids, the smart kids. We weren’t good in sports and frankly we weren’t very good in anything that high school required ranging from dressing correctly to talking to girls. Or talking to a boy, if you were a girl. I would hang out with my friends and my peers, the other strange people who enjoyed performing and plays.”

Sagal’s self-deprecating humor belies the fact that he wears the arts on his sleeve like a badge of honor. His love for plays and the performing arts helped developed who he is and the visible forum he gets to share today with his listeners.

Sagal attended Harvard University, and has worked as a literary manager for a regional theater, a stage director, an actor, an extra in a Michael Jackson video (Remember the Time), travel writer, an essayist, a ghostwriter for a former adult film impresario and a staff writer for a motorcycle magazine. He is the author of numerous plays that have been performed in large and small theaters around the country and abroad. He has also written a number of screenplays, including an original screenplay that became, without his knowledge, the basis for Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights.

As they say, he knows of whence he speaks.

“I used to talk about this 20 years ago, but I was a playwright long before the Internet culture,” he said. “And I said the same thing then that I say now which is that what we are starved for as a culture of people is an actual experience. One of the reasons people love sports so much is that it’s happening right there in front of you. You don’t know what the ending is going to be, which is more than you can say for these TV shows these days.

“Why do people come out to high school football games or anything? The answer is that you have to be there. It’s happening right in front of you. That is an experience that as people we were starved for 20 years ago and are more so now. All this time we spend just staring at our screens and artificial, curated stuff, stuff that was created for us as just observers.

“I have seen some incredible performances and plays in my time and have perpetrated some of them. But I will still say that the best times I have had in the theater matched up against any other moment in my life.”

The interview with Peter Sagal continues next week with his thoughts on the future of live entertainment and specifically in the world of performing arts.