Interview: Disney Theatrical’s Adrian Sarple Discusses Disney on Broadway at the EPCOT International Festival of the Arts

Ahead of the launch of the EPCOT International Festival of the Arts, we had the chance to talk with Adrian Sarple, associate director for Disney Theatrical, about the Disney on Broadway Concert Series and the new exhibit celebrating 30 years of Disney on Broadway. We also got some updates as to where some upcoming Disney theatrical shows are in the development process.

Benji: Thanks so much for taking time, Adrian. I bet you're getting excited for the Festival of the Arts. The Disney on Broadway Concert Series has been a critical part of the Festival of the Arts since it began. What has the Disney on Broadway community gained from the experience of performing at EPCOT every winter?

Adrian: The individuals, of course, have a personal gain. They love it for so many reasons. It's Florida in the winter, which helps. But they also love the crowds down there. The fans are so loyal, and those of them have been back a lot, which have been, you know, there's a core of performers that have repeatedly been there. Randy Meyer and I are trying to switch that up a little bit and bring in as many new faces as possible, but also bringing back crowd favorites. I think for the Disney on Broadway family, it's amazing how many people reach out to us from across that family to say, “can I come down to the Festival of the Arts?" They see the videos online, they love the atmosphere of it. They think they love the format of the concerts and the way it's done. I mean there's always excitement, and what I tried to do since I took over the tenure of this just over a year ago, is to try and have a little more synergy between what we do in the theatrical, in terms of our, I wouldn't say marketing, because it's not so much that. It's definitely an awareness, because we don't want to use this as an opportunity for any kind of brutal marketing, and it's not because that's not the way the parks operate. They don't like doing that and it's not interesting for us either. There used to be a few mentions of such and such as coming up on tour next year, but we're like “everyone has a smartphone now," so, you know, there's a song mentioned, they'll check it out. We're adding things like QR codes and things. So certainly what I've been trying to do is to make the concert series enjoyable for what it is, as a stand alone, but also as an invitation to our fans who maybe haven't seen a Broadway show, probably haven’t been to many of these concerts, certainly a Disney on Broadway one. Therefore we hope it'll be an introduction to a lot of those people to say, oh, I wanna go and see that.

Benji: One of the things that has been neat to see throughout the year – particularly for the Disney fan community – is because the performers are not performing as a character, they're performing as themselves, they really have developed a connection with some of the the staple that have come year after year, but also have done things such as like the Disney Vacation Club member cruises. What is it like to see people that may not be Broadway fans to broaden their horizon so that they can become fans of not just the parks, but also Disney on Broadway and develop a connection with these performers?

Adrian: Yeah, I think you're right, Disney fans have developed a sort of a wonderful partnership with the Broadway performers, and the performers know that their fans really enjoy it when they come down. I think there's nothing better than going to perform at something that you know is a special event, and it's not just the publicity, it's not just a TV thing or something. All of which are fun, but this is so heartfelt, and I think that relationship is really important. As I said before, what I’m trying to do is give the fans a little bit more of an insight as to what the the performers actually do on the stage. It's hard to do it in a concert setting because, you know, that they can't play the actual characters, because you can't ask an actor to play six completely different characters, especially if they wouldn’t normally be cast as that. So what we try to do is, without being sanctimonious with it, and without stopping the performer from keeping their connection with the audience. In a Broadway show, there's a fourth wall in there. That's never really broken. In a concert series, you have to have an awareness of the audience and often, you directly address them. So that has to be maintained. But what I've been trying to make sure that we do is as we set up each of the songs is to gently fold in the idea of what the context of the song is, and what the deeper meaning behind the song is. Just so it's just planted in the head ahead of the audience hearing it, so they can sit there and go, “oh, you know, I've heard this song so many times. I've never really thought of it like that." Because of course, when you're watching a full Broadway show, you get all that context in advance, you know what the character is going through or what the character is trying to achieve. I'm trying to put a little bit of that essence into it as well, so you get the full worth of what that particular Broadway performer is able to do. On top of that, we've been trying to add in some visuals, just to try and make it a little bit more reminiscent of the production itself. I don't know if you saw much of last year, but you may have noticed we brought in some photographs of the sets that we then put onto the five screens, just to give the sense of what we do on Broadway. We're not doing that here because we're in a concert setting, but we just want to try and bring some of those elements in there, just to remind our audiences that that's where these songs are intended to be.

Benji: I don't know if you can speak to it, but Disney on Broadway is expanding into CommuniCore Hall with a exhibit celebrating 30 Years of Disney on Broadway, which, besides making me feel old, can really showcase the costume elements and some of the more theatrical elements that you don't have in the concert setting. What's it like to be able to really grow your presence at the Festival of the Arts by having an exhibit that celebrates 30 years?

Adrian: Yeah, it's fantastically exciting and it's a development of what I was just talking about – the fact that we're trying to bring more of what we do on Broadway to the Festival of the Arts. It was something that I had a conversation about when I came down in 2023, just to observe the festival. I asked lots of questions and my catchphrase at the time was “what I'd love for this to be is not a destination, but an invitation." Which I think is important for this, because you don't want it just to be a standalone thing. You want it to be – as we always say on every Broadway show – you hope it's the start of a lifetime of theater-going. You want to encourage not just young people, but older people who haven’t necessarily been to the theater yet, to go, “oh, maybe I would like to try and do that." So, the CommuniCore Hall exhibit is really gonna help with that, to get people up close and personal to the magic of what we do on the stage.

Benji: For those that get inspired to have a stronger presence in Disney Theatrical, next year you've got a lot coming. You have Hercules on the West End, you have the North American tour of Beauty and the Beast, Frozen coming to Disney+, in addition to Aladdin and The Lion King on Broadway, and various tours and things like that. So this is probably the biggest growth era of Disney Theatrical in quite some time. What's it like to be a part of the organization as there's all these new different creative avenues, including being at EPCOT?

Adrian: Hectic. There's a lot going on. Last year actually was particularly crazy, because so much was just in the pipeline coming up. What's added to that list, of course, is The Greatest Showman, which is hurling towards a realization. There'll be more labs for that this year, and they are looking at dates and things, but obviously theaters are always an availability issue. But all that's being worked out, it will be happening at some point, hopefully, very soon they'll announce. But yeah, it's very exciting and it's exciting for the festival as well, because as you say, it's been a while since there's been this much development in the Disney on Broadway campus. It takes a long time to develop a musical, that's the thing. It can take 10 years or more, and often they stop and they start, and they falter. You're always trying to work out what the zeitgeist is about when the best time to release one of these things is. Because of that, I think our song setlists that we can actually utilize are limited. It's finite, rather. Even with Hercules, which we already use the songs from [the original animated feature], but there are new songs that will be in that show, [written by Alan Menken]. So hopefully, when those songs get released to us, we'll be able to bring those to the festival, as we're already doing with The Greatest Showman material as well, which is extremely popular. I mean, it's always exciting. I'm not aware that anything new is being written for Beauty and the Beast, I think they kind of got that one right.

Benji: To bring it back to EPCOT just to wrap up, the park is themed around the vision of discovery, discovering new cultures, discovering new technologies, discovering new art. What does being at a place that is sort of always been billed as Walt’s final vision, and allowing people who go to EPCOT who've never been to a Disney on Broadway, what’s it like to share the culture of Broadway with guests from around the world?

Adrian: Quite simply wonderful. It's what we do, it's why artists will spend hours at a stage door talking to people because just seeing the wonder on people's faces, seeing their excitement. There is nothing better than live performance in the world, there is nothing that stays with you more. Films are wonderful, they're fantastic, they're impactful, they're insightful, they teach us so much. But you know when you've seen a live performance that you are the only person who has seen the show that you saw. Even if, you know, as we do at the concert, we do the same concert three times in a row for two days, two days off, and we we repeat it, but every single one of those shows is different, and you know that when you go there as well, so it's a very personal experience. You feel that, of course, if you go and see any of the um any of the presentations at the parks, you are aware of that. I do think that what we are able to offer is an elevated level of performer, rightly said, they are Broadway stars, and they have honed their craft. So I think to bring that kind of caliber to an audience, who is hungry for new experiences as you just said, and then for them to be delighted by what they saw is really heart fulfilling for us, I think.

Benji: Well, congratulations. I look forward to checking it out and thanks for all your hard work putting this together for all the guests.

You can listen to our interview with Adrian in the third episode of our brand-new Laughing Place “On Balance" Podcast, which is now streaming on Spotify, Apple Music or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Stay tuned to LaughingPlace.com for continued coverage from the opening day of the EPCOT International Festival of the Arts, which runs daily through February 24th.