Meet The Drag Queen Conquering Broadway Marketing

If there is one show that has Broadway talking right now, it’s Oh, Mary!. Cole Escola has cooked up one of the funniest plays in recent Broadway memory following Mary Todd Lincoln and her yearnings to be a cabaret star. Chances are if you are remotely online, you have seen the show’s social media posts that have probably brought a smile to your face. 

I recently caught up with Austin Spero, the brainchild behind the Oh, Mary! and New York City Center’s social accounts, to chat all things Cole Escola, the latest Encores! Season, and his drag persona Reese Havoc. 

Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. 

Theatrely: So my first question is kind of just what led you into the world of theatrical social media?

Spero: Oh my gosh. I was an actor since I was really young. I just sort of instantly loved theater because one of my straight friends at the time, me saying a straight friend about a six year old is crazy, was in a production of Beauty and the Beast and that was the first time I ever saw theatre and was obsessed. My parents were like the opposite of stage parents, so I was like the stage parent for my own self. I was an actor all throughout high school and college and ended up producing some of my friend's shows and with that came social media. I enjoy the instantaneous sort of quickness that social media requires. After I graduated Fordham University, I ended up working at New York City Center in social and the rest is history. I love it and think it's a great way for me to kind of connect all my interests.

I feel thanks to you and your social media, you have revolutionized the entire organziation and brought it into the zeitgeist. How receptive was the marketing team there when you were just getting started?

I think I had been there for about a week. My first day was the first rehearsal for Into The Woods, I think. I remember we had the Milky White puppet and I was like this is sort of a great way to tease the production without giving anything away. And also, as a fan of Into the Woods, I know everyone is always interested in how they will do Milky. I made a post teasing it and that did super well. I had the advantage sort of because I know Into The Woods so well that I just sort of have like a built in vocabulary and encyclopedia in my head. You have your rolodex of f phrases and through lines and motifs that are easy to pull from. After that first week, everyone was like we trust you, go do it. Into the Woods just became such a big moment for City Center, especially in the larger theatre and cultural context of New York. So I guess it was sort of like the perfect storm of factors.

Your social content surrounding Encores! is always just so fun. What is the strategy behind it?

It's sort of two-factor when I think about an Encores! show. The first thing is because we announce our season in the summer and the titles won't start on stage until the next year, that is sort of our one opportunity to really brand the Encores! season as a series, which ultimately the goal is to build a greater awareness for the City Center brand. We won't even talk to the creative teams beyond our initial conversations about larger themes of the show until we're heading towards production. And that is sort of what's fun about a nonprofit and a season like ours is that you have two stories going on at once. You have your individual show and then the overall brand. Our content happens so quickly because we only actually have artists in the building for about a month from start to finish. But what's also fun is that we can sort of fire on all cannons immediately. There's really no saving anything because we run for two weeks only. So pretty much the minute something happens, it's turning it out as quickly as possible. I feel like the aliveness and the being in the moment engagement of it all is super cool. And that's part of what I think the Encores! charm is, it really lives and breathes and goes away very quickly.

Is there a certain post or campaign you've done since being there that you're really proud of?

I do think like our initial emoji tease that we did for the season that was Oliver and Dear World and Light in the Piazza was really effective. It just was crazy to me to sort of watch that sort of online world really light up and get excited about like the Encores! series and why I felt like that was particularly effective is it put our series itself as part of the conversation.

What are you most excited for about the year coming up at City Center?

The team that exists currently at City Center feels like the strongest it's ever been and we all know how we're working together really well. This season, I’m excited to see what we do with it, plus we are working with titles that aren’t as familiar as an Into the Woods. There's an element of surprise in there and it makes it more of a challenge. Plus, I don’t know Love Life, it doesn’t even have a cast recording so that is what makes it all so fun. 

So with. Oh, Mary!, how did you get involved with them?

Cole messaged me on Instagram and said I'm doing a show that I wrote called Oh, Mary! at the Lucille Lortel and rehearsals start next week. Would you want to do socials for it? You can say no! Obviously I said yes immediately, I bought tickets the second they went on sale because I’ve loved and known Cole for a long time; it was a no brainer thing for me. I knew that Mike and Carlee had just produced Kate which was one of the best things I have ever seen in my life so I knew I wanted to get in. 

Where does one begin with Oh, Mary!?

The first sort of conversations were with the producing team about the general sort of approach to the run. Truthfully when we started this was not a pre-Broadway tryout, it was just a project that everyone was really excited about happening downtown; the coolest downtown sense. I think the initial sort of approach for the play was this is a very serious drama — we wanted to keep that sort of mystique and cool factor. That is a luxury of downtown by keeping everything pretty limited, not sharing a lot and having everything exist in the world of: this is a very important piece of American theater. And also just the play is so, so, so funny and nobody had seen it yet, just allowing people to really have that unique perspective. I have chills thinking about, like, how nobody had seen this play before. But we did some initial content captures with the cast and then yeah it was all very low key. It was downtown and the opening night was like on the sidewalk at the Lortel!

When you heard that Broadway was on the horizon, what came to mind?

My first reaction to going to Broadway was just that I'm so happy for Cole. It’s the coolest thing in the world that this play that I also think is just very good was getting its flowers. Cole has worked so hard and it's sort of like the opposite of an overnight sensation. It's like the putting in of so much work over so many years. I was excited that more people would get to see it really. Plus the whole team had worked so hard, I was just thrilled. 

I assume it was a no brainer that you would want to move to Broadway with the show?

Oh my God! I wanted to continue with it so bad and like obviously, like working at City Center, we've had transfers in the past but once they leave City Center I am not attached to it at all. I hoped and prayed in bed at night that Broadway was going to be the possibility. But then the team asked me to continue and its been such a blast.  I do have to say its been so great working and collaborating on big creative ideas with RPM our advertising agency and Grapevine for PR. I will come to meetings with ideas that are so dumb and stupid and everyone will be like: Totally.

Any challenges when you are working with an incredibly funny play?

I think the hardest part is that we're doing a comedy and we have been gifted by the love and praise of the American public and the critics by saying this is a very funny play. I'm a firm believer that if your play is funny, your social media should be funny. So it's a big job. I don't know if I could do this with like Enemy of the People. I don't know if that would be something interesting to me. It's a world of, you know, anything goes. It's Mary Todd Lincoln on Broadway as a cabaret star. It sort of combines everything that I love, which is making fun and loving our idea of the American theater and Broadway women in dresses lamenting their life. And that’s Cole Escola in a nutshell. That’s my icon. 

I’d love to chat about Reese Havoc, do you think your work in drag has in any way informed any of your social media, or vice versa?

I've always been a funny girl. But I think Reese has forced me to really hone my point of view and sense of humor. It just made me really, really sharp about that sort of thing and being with an audience all the time. It has introduced me to so many people and really connected with New York, plus its an alter ego. I call myself the Hannah Montana of drag. I feel like there's all these personas and brains inside me —  there's Austin brain, then there's Reese and then there is City Center, and Oh, Mary!. At the end of the day on these social accounts, we all know its a gay boy on a computer, so I think the opportunities are that we're able to lean into it and be a real person behind these brands. People are smart, Gen Z is smart, so it has made me sharper and funnier. 

For tickets and more information on Oh, Mary!, visit here. To learn more about City Center, visit here.