By Robert Niles: The "eighth story" in the Harry Potter saga has premiered on stage at the Palace Theatre in London, and yesterday, Potter fans around the world got the opportunity to buy and read the script for the two-part play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.
Set after the events of the original novels, the play starts where "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" left, on Platform 9 3/4 at Kings Cross as the adult Harry, Ginny, Ron, Hermione, and Draco see their children off to Hogwarts. From there, we get an original story focusing on Harry's second son, Albus Severus Potter, as he begins his Hogwarts adventure.
What does this have to do with theme parks? On the red carpet for the play's premiere in London, J.K. Rowling — who co-wrote the story for the play though not the script itself — said "I'd love it to go wider than [Broadway]. I'd like as many Potter fans to see it as possible."
If Rowling is serious about using Harry Potter to expand the market for live theater, there is no better venue to do that than the Orlando theme parks. Running the Broadway circuit in America will allow theater fans in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles to see the production... just as they get the chance to see every other successful Broadway show that hits the road. But if you want to reach millions more potential theater fans at once, you need to go to the place where so many of them go.
Orlando.
An Orlando production of "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" could reach millions of fans from communities without the resources to stage the production or from towns where the show likely wouldn't get to in years of touring. By attracting millions of theme park fans each year, Orlando's a perfect (if wildly underutilized) market for expanding the appeal of Broadway and West End-style theater.
If you love theme parks for more than just the thrill rides, chances are that you love, or will love, live theater, too. The connection with theme park shows is obvious, but so many dark rides and other narrative theme park experiences draw from theater, too. The people who design the effects and techniques used in theme park attractions often have experience in theater production and understand how to apply what people have learned on stage to the "moving stage" of a theme park. And thanks to Universal, Orlando's already established itself a powerful draw for Harry Potter fans.
Universal owns those theme park rights to the Harry Potter characters, though it's unclear what rights that deal provides them to the new characters and locations in the Cursed Child script. But Universal Orlando does have one asset beyond its two Wizarding World of Harry Potter lands that would help make it an ideal home for a Cursed Child production — the theater currently used for the Blue Man Group show.
That theater seats a little more than 1,000 people, making it smaller than the 1,400-seat Palace Theatre in London where the show is now playing. But if Cursed Child is to meet Rowling's goal of bringing theater to the masses, it can't play miles away from the theme park zone in something like Orlando's new Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts downtown. It needs to run where the people are — at the parks.
Playing in two parts and demanding pretty much a full day's commitment to watch, "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" might be a tough sell to theme park fans who already feel pressed for time to see and ride everything they want in Orlando. But it also might provide another incentive for people to extend their Orlando vacations. Or, for Universal Orlando, it might provide the tipping point the resort needs to convince more visitors to make the Universal Orlando Resort their primary destination in Central Florida instead of the Walt Disney World Resort.
One way or another, here's hoping that "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" makes its way to Orlando — and its millions of live entertainment and Harry Potter fans — sooner rather than later.