Chan Poling says he loved musicals as a kid. But he became a performer of witty pop tunes instead.
In 1977, the keyboardist and composer cofounded the Suburbs with buddies from the suburbs west of Minneapolis. A contract with nascent local label TwinTone Records followed, then a deal with Polygram Records for the 1983 album Love Is the Law. The Suburbs went on to pop stardom; Poling’s theater interests went unexplored.
“I got the bug” for theater, he says, when the experimental Theatre de la Jeune Lune asked him to write a score for what would become one of the now-defunct theater’s signature productions: The Children of Paradise. The show opened to national critical and media acclaim in 1992. Then, “I wanted to do my own show,” he says.
That show, Venus, premieres May 5 and runs through May 24 at the Ritz Theater in Northeast Minneapolis. A sort of Jekyll and Hyde story—Dr. Margaret Kennedy drinks an elixir that transforms her into a supermodel and pop star—the comedic musical is also about the nature of true beauty. It’s “pop music, entertainment, story—the best of all worlds for me,” Poling says.
“I’m not the guy that writes an opera. I just thought this was a swell idea. And it became clear to me that it could be commercially viable,” he adds. But he needed investors.
Poling started by making a DVD of a stage reading of Venus that he could show around. He also made other links to investors.
“This will sound like a cliché, but I was playing golf with a gentleman, and by the 18th hole I’d convinced him to invest in the show,” Poling says. “He in turn introduced me to some other people.”
John Stout, a lawyer with Minneapolis-based Fredrikson & Byron who assembled financing for Robert Altman’s A Prairie Home Companion film, helped do the same for Poling’s show. Together, a group of unnamed investors ponied up $200,000, with which Poling created a limited liability corporation called Venus Productions.
“You have to form an umbrella corporation for insurance, accounting,” and other functions, Poling says. The $200,000 will pay for the three-week run at the Ritz, which includes house rental and salaries for key production staff and actors. Minneapolis marketing agency Little & Company has done pro bono design work on the production’s logo, posters, Facebook page, and Web site (venusmusical.com).
“My goal is to produce a straight-up-the-middle, commercially viable, family-type, Broadway show that will break even this year, generate some buzz, and fill the Pantages Theater next year,” Poling says. He also believes the show has legs outside of the Twin Cities market. Based on his conversations with producers and directors in both New York City and Los Angeles, Poling expects “there will be some offers to go forward” following the May show—whether to license the play or tour the current production.
