With over 200 live events a year, the not-for-profit Ridgefield Playhouse is having a post-Covid renaissance, and Co-Managing Director Jared Shahid is a big reason it’s rockin’!
Jared was raised for the role. He grew up in Ridgefield, and went to Rippowam Cisqua, and then, as he explains, “Because I was more than a little rebellious (I got my first tattoo with a fake ID when I was 15, and couldn’t get into Hotchkiss like my older brother and sister), I went to Suffield Academy… which was actually a great experience for me. I played squash and tennis, and felt like I was able to start discovering myself. Every chance I could, I was off to a Santana, or Allman Brothers, or Dave Matthews, or Aerosmith concert, or a festival like Bonnaroo, and I partied a lot! I went on to Hobart College. I started out as a double major in Chem and Bio, thinking I’d go the pre-med route, as the doctor business was the family trade. But half a semester in, it was clear that my college career was going to be spent in a lab and I had, let’s say, greater social ambitions than that. During my junior year I got to work on a research program in Lahaina studying the sensory perception of whales, and I loved doing that. But I never really felt that academia was my calling, and I graduated majoring in Psychology!”
“When I graduated from college and came home to Ridgefield in the Winter of 2006, I needed to find a job, and wasn’t qualified to do much. My mom knew the Executive Director at the Ridgefield Playhouse was looking for an Assistant. She hired me after about a five-minute phone conversation, not because I was all that impressive, but because they really needed help. Before I started, I wrote a list of about 40 or so acts I thought would be good to book, including artists like Michael McDonald, Bob Weir, Béla Fleck, and others. By the time I left the venue 18 months later, we had booked just about every one of them, so it felt like my instincts were right for the space,” Jared says with a big smile.
“Having worked on one side of the business, I moved into Manhattan and got a job as an Agent at Entourage Talent,” Jared continues. “I was 23 years old and working with Derek Trucks, Joe Satriani, Procol Harum, and other great artists. In some ways I was living a dream because I got to rub elbows with people like Eric Clapton, but being an agent disconnected me from the joy of actual music; it was just about business. So I left, and worked with Gathering of the Vibes for a year, then moved into the public speaking world. After a couple years at a startup, I joined the team at Daymond John’s Shark Group, and worked from 2014 to 2019 helping his celebrity entrepreneurs with speech writing and marketing.”
Jared continues, “I’d ‘moved back’ to South Salem in 2017, and in 2019 Allison Stockel, who was then the Executive Director of the Ridgefield Playhouse, asked me to get involved, on at least a part-time basis, working on the capital campaign. I started helping with bookings as well, and in January I took over as Artistic Director. Then in March, Covid shut down the world. …We had to navigate running a theater without the theater! …Instead of canceling shows and having all of the attendant economic damage for the acts and for the theater, we postponed a few hundred shows, some as many as five times, and our patrons stuck with us and held onto their tickets. We would have closed our doors if it had gone another way. We managed to keep nearly our entire staff through the pandemic. We went outdoors in summer 2020 with a successful program of comedy and solo music artists, including Bruce Hornsby, who performed to an intimate audience of 50 seated inside, with the rest of the audience out in the tent watching on a large screen. And then in 2021, we ramped it up, rented a big outdoor stage and tent, and hosted some really big acts, including comedy like John Mulaney, Nate Bargatze, and Bill Burr, and music like Tedeschi Trucks, Fitz & The Tantrums, and JJ Grey & Mofro. We had over 10,000 people come for entertainment that summer, without a single reported case of Covid! It was generally 14-hour days, and I aged about 12 years, but it was worth it!”
“2023 has been the Ridgefield Playhouse’s biggest year ever!”
“Returning indoors was a whole new world! The entire business changed. Allison retired after nearly 20 years at the venue, and I took over as Managing Director of Booking, Marketing and Production, and my Co-Managing Director, Ashley Paltauf, took over Operations and Development. It was and is a very natural division of labor for us,” Jared explains. “But post-Covid we were all of a sudden priced out of booking the heritage acts we had previously relied on, and knew we had to draw a new generation of patrons to the Ridgefield Playhouse! With capital campaign funds, we put about $4M into tripling the size of the lobby to turn it into a thriving gathering space with a full bar and concessions area, building out new backstage facilities with all new dressing rooms and a full kitchen and hospitality area, and adding major upgrades to the lighting and audio production, including some new sound paneling and acoustic design. Amongst other praise from performing artists, 20X Grammy-winning Pat Metheny recently remarked to a sold-out crowd: ‘This is one of my Top 5 Worldwide Favorite Places to Play!’”
“And 2023 has been the Ridgefield Playhouse’s biggest year ever!” Jared exclaims. “While we’ve been able to bring back some fan favorites, about forty percent of our programming was brand new to the venue this year. That’s huge in this business. And it’s allowed us to vastly augment our patron base. We sold out FOUR consecutive Pete Davidson shows, breaking all Playhouse records. From Wynton Marsalis, Ann Wilson, or The Beach Boys, to Joss Stone, The Wallflowers, or Tower of Power, it’s the variety that keeps the audiences interested. A substantial majority of our shows sell out! …Our biggest limitation is that we only have 500 seats!”
It’s important to point out that Ridgefield’s most active production schedule may not even be its most important work! Ridgefield Playhouse is a not-for-profit and, in addition to substantial community outreach efforts, boasts a thriving Arts in Education program. The Director of Arts in Ed, Jodi Simon Stewart, coordinates live educational programming which reached a record just shy of 16,000 students in 2022! As part of the Playhouse’s 20 For 20 Campaign, they’re raising $200,000 to bring 20,000 students from NY and CT to the theater for free, with about 60% from Title 1 schools. They’ll reach more than 30,000 students virtually as well, bringing their total reach to more than 50,000 students in a single year! As Jodi expresses, “For these kids, coming through the Ridgefield Playhouse doors is a new kind of magic, and for most it’s the first show of any kind that they’ve ever seen!”
In addition, the Playhouse produced several extraordinary in-house events, including the Annual Bernie Williams Charity Softball Game & Concert, Summer and Fall Galas, the last featuring Itzhak Perlman, and a two-part program that explored Black history through the lens of the Amistad.
“2024 is going to be even bigger and better!” Jared declares. “We’ll again produce over 200 events, and have already booked such notables as David Sedaris, Tracy Morgan, Patti LuPone, Brian Regan, and Corinne Bailey Rae. Did you ever think you’d hear those names in the same sentence!?”
Jared adds, “And as a differentiating factor for the venue, we’ll be launching a Podcast on the Ridgefield Playhouse website as a new vertical. I’ll be talking with lots of our performers and plenty of other interesting personalities, and discussing our Ridgefield Playhouse productions among other things ‘au courant.’ But before we get to that, we’re closing out 2023 with our first ever New Year’s Show, featuring Gabe Dixon, of the Tedeschi Trucks Band, and The Gin Blossoms. We’ll have decorations, champagne, and an after-party with a DJ. We wanted to give people a chance to see a great show and not have to go to NYC.”
“With about 200 live events a year, that means we host something every 1.8 days! …And it’s something different almost every night! …I have to get back to work!” Jared laughs.