Features
Mastering Showbiz … Moving to Bigger Productions
CONFESSIONS OF A GLOBAL GYPSY
Dr. Chandana (Chandi) Jayawardena DPhil
President – Chandi J. Associates Inc. Consulting, Canada
Founder & Administrator – Global Hospitality Forum
chandij@sympatico.ca
Action Learning Showbiz
I learned to produce music shows with 1,000+ audiences with help from musicians under contract at Le Galadari Meridien. This spiced up my work as the hotel’s Director of Food and Beverage. Thanks to great team work by the musicians on contract at the hotel, the first three shows I produced in 1987 were ‘Musical Stars of 1986’, ‘A Farewell to Priyanthi & Raja’ and ‘Noeline… a Celebration’. All were very successful in terms of production, audience satisfaction, ticket sales, profits, reviews and publicity.
We commenced all our shows precisely at 7:00 pm as advertised. Given the ‘fashionably late’ culture of some Sri Lankan senior politicians and socialites, it wasn’t easy to achieve that goal. We announced the starting time during ticket sales and closed the doors exactly at 7:00 pm as each show began. Latecomers were asked to stand outside the hall and no excuses were accepted, irrespective of how important they were.
I felt that allowing latecomers to go into the hall in the dark, while musicians were performing was an insult to the performers and a disturbance to the punctual customers. After the choreographed opening act was over, we opened the doors to let the latecomers into the ballroom around 7:20 pm, for five minutes. Soon our customers got used to our strict standard of punctuality.
After making sure the opening act commenced promptly, I handed over the baton to Kenneth Honter, my reliable wingman and efficient Stage Manager in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He was a pleasure to work with and the musicians respected him. Kenneth had the knowledge and ideal personality for that honorary job. After I left Sri Lanka permanently in the early 1994, I found equally capable Stage Managers to team up with me in Guyana and Jamaica.
Over the years, I produced at least two dozen shows at Le Galadari Meridien in Colombo, Hotel Babylon Oberoi in Baghdad, Mount Lavinia Hotel, BMICH – National Convention Centre of Sri Lanka, Guyana Pegasus Hotel and Le Meridien Jamaica Pegasus Hotel. At most of those shows I was able to watch the show in the audience, after removing my ‘Producer’ hat for two and half hours. Empowerment and delegation of duties to capable members of the team is important in any operation or show.
An interesting theme, great line-up of performers, creative promotions, a well-planned cue sheet and a good stage manager are essential ingredients for a successful show. In addition, good choreography, sound, lighting, special effects and seamless set changes, all enhanced the overall quality of the stage productions. I was not an expert in any of that, but surrounded myself with experts. My main contributions were developing a good concept with input from the team of performers and then preparing a detailed cue sheet, in consultation with the stage manager. I also handled the promotions and general coordination with different departments of the hotel.
Gala Balls – for Staff and for Customers
One of the key reasons for some mistakes I made in my career stemmed from being overly-ambitious, over-optimistic and undertaking many concurrent projects. Therefore, although I was eager to produce more shows in 1987, I decided to postpone such projects to 1988. Instead, I focused on organizing two gala balls aiming at breaking some records.
In whatever business one is in, it is essential to keep the internal customer (the employees) happy. I had 230 employees in my division who worked very hard year-round. I wanted to thank them in a different manner. We discussed the possibility of organizing a large-scale formal dinner dance for the employee team and their spouses or partners.
My contribution for the employee dinner dance was a couple of negotiations to start the planning. The hotel bands kindly agreed to perform free for the staff dance. The suppliers of spirits and wines were more than generous in their donations in cash and kind. We were also given a few free airline tickets for overseas destinations, which the committee used as door prizes. I empowered an employee committee who did all the work. The committee wanted to maintain good standards and recommended lounge suit as the dress code.
I then convinced the organizing committee that it is best that we hold the staff dance at another hotel. It was important for discipline. I negotiated very special rates with my counterparts in other five-star international hotels. In 1987, we held the Food and Beverage employee dance at Hotel Ceylon InterContinential and in 1988, we held it at Hotel Taj Samudra. Both events were well-attended with over 500 people per dance, highly enjoyable and broke even. That initiative was a good motivator internally and trend setter externally. Soon our competitors organized similar dances for their employees.
I used the boosted energy and the team spirit of our highly motivated, employee team after their dinner dance, to plan the best three New Year’s Eve dances for customers. We held these at the Bougainville Ballroom, La Palme D’or French Restaurant and Colombo 2000 Night Club. We also arranged for lobby musicians to entertain diners at the La Brasserie Coffee Shop. In addition to selling tickets at the La Patisserie Pastry Shop, we also had the table plan right in the middle of the hotel lobby, with a charming hostess selling ten tickets per table.
Each dance had a permanent band and a compere, but we featured the lead singers from each band on short guest spots in other venues within the hotel. That way, we enhanced the line-up of performers at each dance. The customers liked it. Usually, the New Year’s Eve dinner dances at the ballrooms of five-star international hotels were the largest and most profitable.
“Sri Lankan hotels have never priced a dinner dance at a ballroom at higher than Rs. 900. No one dares to break that Rs. 1,000 barrier”, Sohan Weerasinghe, the leader of our main band told me. When I heard that, I said, “We have the best products in terms of the ballroom, food, service and music. Let’s be the first in Sri Lanka to charge Rs. 1,000!” As Sohan appeared to be nervous, I said that I would double our advertising campaign.
Most hotels had crowded ads with too much information of full menus, free bottles of whisky per table, ticket prizes, list of musicians, compere’s names etc. etc. all in one ad. “These are boring ads with too much detail and too many words! I will work with the ad agency to develop a campaign with a key ad with only one photo and one short slogan”, I told Sohan. When he asked me, “Really? Would it work? Who will be in that one photo?”, I told him, “One photo with our unique selling proposition – you and the other lead singers of different bands!” And that’s exactly what we did.
We sold out all tickets for our expensive New Year’s Eve dinner dance within a week. We broke the Rs. 1,000 barrier, as well as all records for attendance, revenue and profit that night. In the early hours of January 1, my wife and I visited all dinner dances at competitor five-star hotels very briefly to get a snap-shot idea of attendance, themes, and products. That quick competitor research helped in our planning for next year’s New Year’s Eve dinner dances. This is something I practised until 1998 when I left the hotel industry to become a full-time, post-secondary educator.
A nice thing about hoteliering is that in every country I worked, we had a friendly relationship with the competitors. All of them were extremely hospitable to me during my sneaky ‘competitor research’ visits, some evenopening a bottle of champagne to welcome my wife and I to their dinner dances. I always wondered at their rationale for not doing that type of first-hand fact finding, I did at their hotels.
International Musicians
In early 1988, we were fortunate to get some unique opportunities to feature international musicians in our food and beverage outlets and in the ballroom. Le Meridien introduced the concept of Parisian café-théâtre to Colombo. These events were mostly unconventional, ranging from ordinary theatrical presentations to singing tours, jazz concerts and improvisational theatre. My division organized these events with three course menus and matching wines, served before each show commenced. Soon after the dessert, coffee, chocolates/petit fours and Cognac were served, the employees left the ballroom, lights dimmed and the show began.
We initially featured French classical musicians and mini-French plays partly sponsored by Alliance Française de Colombo. Later we expanded these events to feature British pianists sponsored by the British Council and concerts with German musicians sponsored by the German Cultural Institute in Colombo.
For one of our special weeks – New Orleans Food and Jazz Festival, we arranged for a jazz band to arrive all the way from Le Meridien New Orleans, USA. We also featured a Singaporean pop singer and provided exposure to a well-known Maldivian band, at Colombo 2000. With these added attractions, Le Galadari Meridien became the Mecca of international and the western music scene of Colombo, in the late 1980s.
Invitations to Produce Mega Shows
After our success with the three shows in 1987, two big dinner dances and many events with international musicians, Le Galadari Meridien received very useful publicity in the local media. While all hotels liked to get publicity, very few created newsworthy stories. I quickly learnt that the media likes uniqueness and the general public prefers to read fun stories. In early 1988, I received three invitations from three unique showbiz personalities of Sri Lanka for me to lead three large stage productions. Each one called me and then came to the Rendezvous Lobby Bar to have a one-on-one chat over a drink. I went ahead with only one proposal.
Erin De Selfa was a charming lady in her early sixties. I had heard that she was a well-known singer who also acted in a few British movies. During its peak, the Mascarilla Night Club at the Galle Face Hotel was a nightly packed affair with audiences waiting to catch Erin De Selfa’s two daily shows. She was a good conversationalist and I enjoyed listening to her interesting travel stories. She spoke about her singing stint at the famous Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay and her cabaret acts in other key cities in India and other countries.
I felt honoured when Erin De Selfa suggested that I produce a café theatre type show with her as the main performer. She said, “If we do this at Le Galadari Meridien, I can assure you that JR will attend the show” referring to the President of Sri Lanka who was a fan of her. Although we made the initial plan, we never got down to doing it. Erin De Selfa accepted my invitation to do a presentation if I would organize a seminar for younger musicians, something I did after a few months.
Manik Sandrasagra surprised me when he wanted to meet with me. At 41, he was a famous and successful impresario and film director with many other facets and phases to his colourful life full of creativity. I had seen two of his movies, and a decade earlier, also saw his grand version of ‘Sound of Music’ play on BMICH with the greatest film actor of Sri Lanka, Gamini Fonseka as Captain Georg von Trapp.
During our meeting Sandrasagra spoke about many different subjects. He was brilliantly versatile, inspiring and charming. I was confused as to why a person of his calibre wanted to collaborate with a novice to showbiz like me. “I hear very good things about you as an innovative stage producer. Don’t you want to take your new passion to a higher level?” he asked with a big smile. He was encouraging me to produce a mega show which he would present. I felt honoured, but knew that such a large undertaking would affect my principal work at the hotel. Although very tempting, I did not go ahead with that collaboration.
Ivan Alvis was a copywriter of an ad agency and a part-time journalist for the Island Newspaper. His weekly feature column ‘Teen Page’ focused on the western music scene of Sri Lanka and young fans of musicians. As he provided wide publicity for my last two stage shows and increased activities of Colombo 2000, I had developed a good rapport with him. Ivan’s suggestion to me was more aligned with my work for the hotel.
He explained, “Teen page has a small annual awards ceremony for western musicians. I want to take this event to a new level. Can you help us by producing ‘The Island Music Awards 1987 Show’ on a grand scale?” I accepted, went to work on that project immediately and produced a major show within two months. We arranged a consortium band which we called ‘Meridien Pop Orchestra’ which provided backing to over 20 singers including a singer from the USA. We termed it ‘The Show’ which lived up to that promise. I produced Island Music Awards Shows in 1988, 1989, 1991 and 1992.
Collaborating with SLAM
The year 1988 was a very special year for western musicians of Sri Lanka. With some support of Le Galadari Meridien, the musicians formed a professional association – Sri Lanka Association of Musicians (SLAM). Noeline Honter was the first President of SLAM. Within months of the formation of SLAM, I collaborated with them on two key projects and an indirect project.
‘Professional Musician’ Seminar
The first project of SLAM – a full-day seminar, was a big success with over 100 musicians attending it as participants and five senior musicians as expert panellists. I was the only non-musician to be invited to present as a panellist. By then I was treated as one of them. I used my previous experience in running management seminars for hoteliers in planning this seminar.
‘Meridien Music Makers 1’ Original Pop Show
My fifth stage production was an experimental music show. Most western musicians used to perform songs made popular mainly by American, and British pop stars and ABBA from Sweden. They did very little original song composing. To promote original, Sri Lankan English song compositions, the first half of this show was dedicated to originals. A couple of classically trained, young musicians also performed in that segment. The second half featured popular singers singing the latest pop hits. Although not a SLAM project, this show featured pre-dominantly members of SLAM.
SLAM 1 Fund Raiser Pop Concert
It was a great honour when SLAM Invited me to produce their first music show. It was unique as it had 50 stars performing free of charge to raise funds for their young association. The Who’s Who of the
Thank you for the music!