Friday June 1 - "Because it is the only city I know where you exit a theater, and step right into another one. New Orleans is a musical, playing 365 days a year."

What makes New Orleans so perfect for Broadway South? It’s the only city I know where you step out of a theatre and into another one. Everyday in New Orleans is a 365-day a year musical. Because New Orleans is the birthplace of jazz, the site of America’s first Opera House, the backdrop for some of the literature’s greatest works, because of all that and so much more, it remains a living theatre. Most cities, even New York, in the name of progress have succumbed to commercialism. But not New Orleans. Its culture is its business. No mater what you do to New Orleans, no matter what Katrina did, you cannot bury its unique artistic underbelly. It is as constant and the water and tides that surround the city.

You walk one block and you’ll hear one sound, walk another and hear a different kind of sound. In one five block area, you can hear jazz, blues, gospel, or the latest funk. I know of no other city in the nation that has this sort of musical diversity combined with the unique environment within which these sounds echo: the French Quarter, the Faubourg Marigny, the Warehouse District, the Warf section along Tchoupitoulas, Uptown, Rampart and Basin Street. It’s as if some force a long time ago in designing this city said, “let’s create the ultimate soundstage and let’s inhabit it (over the several centuries) with the ultimate players. That to me is what New Orleans is and will always be, a living, breathing musical. And it makes sense that if you were to try and bring not just musical theatre but also the feeling of the world’s greatest performing arts to any city other than New York, New Orleans would be the place. When you add our great restaurants, our great hotels, our, almost indescribable, animated culture born from so many areas, our museums, our architecture, our certain way of life which in itself is theatrical, the entire combination makes it quite clear to me that of all the states and cities of the United States, Louisiana and New Orleans are the most logical home for a concept such as Broadway South.

What strikes me tragic though, is when you drive around at night, there aren’t as many clubs or as many musical experiences as you would hope for considering our rich musical history. There are great ones of course and certainly Frenchman Street has defined itself as one of the cutting edge musical boulevards in the city, but I think we all feel in our gut there could and should be more. And though it often doesn’t always get mentioned and people get misled by the term Broadway, Broadway South will celebrate the local musician, the local artist, and give them a chance to perform on an even broader stage for an even broader audience and experience day to day a broader a range of opportunity to advance their careers.

Broadway South will in truth provide, “Something for Everyone”, for every kind of artist, and every kind of audience. Its time is NOW, and its place is HERE.