Two Chicago-born musicals are rewriting the conventional wisdom about what it means for a show to succeed. The Notebook had its world premiere at Chicago Shakespeare Theater in 2022 and is now enjoying a national tour following its Broadway run. Illinoise made its major-theater debut at Chicago Shakespeare in 2024, traveled Off-Broadway and then to Broadway where it won a Tony Award for Best Choreography, and is now set to return to Chicago Shakespeare for the theater’s 40th anniversary season in 2027. Together, the two shows trace a pipeline that is less a straight line than a circuit, one that loops through regional stages, Broadway, touring houses, and back again.

Ricky Ubeda, Ben Cook (back) Tasha Viets-VanLear, and Shara Nova in Illinoise on Broadway (photo by Matthew Murphy)

Chicago as a Launching Pad for Broadway Musicals

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that the Chicago-to-Broadway trajectory has become one of the more reliable pathways in American theater, though reliable does not mean cheap or safe. Producer Kevin McCollum, whose credits include Rent, Avenue Q, and In the Heights, put the cost difference plainly: moving “The Notebook” from Chicago to Broadway took the production from a $3 million budget to a $15 million one. That fivefold jump lands on top of an already unforgiving industry norm. A longtime adage in the business holds that only one out of five Broadway musicals recoups its initial investment.

“A hit is a show that returns the money,” McCollum said.

The math is not improving. Last season, only six new musicals opened on Broadway, compared to 15 the year prior, with rising production costs far outpacing what ticket prices can absorb, according to the New York Times as cited in the Sun-Times reporting. Chicago’s role as a development market has grown in this environment. The city’s audiences carry a reputation for candor that producers find useful. “Chicago audiences are very honest,” McCollum said. “You know where you stand.” That directness has drawn commercial producers to the city’s stages repeatedly, and not only to Chicago Shakespeare. Steppenwolf Theatre produced two world premieres, Purpose and Little Bear Ridge Road, both of which received Tony nominations for Best Play, with Purpose taking home the award.

How Producers Apply a Spread-the-Risk Logic

The editorial team at Live Sports Odds covers risk management across competitive markets and tracks how the same underlying discipline surfaces in different industries. The $3 million-to-$15 million cost jump McCollum described, set against a one-in-five recoupment rate, makes the producers’ strategic response legible in those terms. Rather than concentrating exposure on a single Broadway run, producers spread their positions across tryout engagements, regional partnerships, and touring legs, treating each phase as a bounded commitment where the broader strategy remains viable even when one phase does not return its cost. The team notes that about LiveSportsOdds articulates exactly that bankroll philosophy for sports wagering, framing each bet as a capped position within a longer-term approach rather than an all-or-nothing stake on a single outcome.

“They’re living organisms.”

That is McCollum’s description of musicals themselves, and the financial architecture around them increasingly reflects it. No single run is designed to carry the full weight of a show’s economics.

Closing Broadway Frees the Assets That Tours Require

When The Notebook closed on Broadway after a solid nine-month run, it had not recouped its $15 million investment. What it had done was generate a fully realized production. Sets, costumes, and in some cases performers can move directly from a closing Broadway production into a touring company, sparing producers the cost of rebuilding from scratch. The national tour has performed well.

The show’s life extends further still. Producers are licensing The Notebook in the Philippines, Brazil, and Germany, allowing the production to earn revenue across multiple markets simultaneously. Each licensing deal draws on the work already done rather than requiring a new investment at scale.

Chicago Shakespeare participates in these extended earnings through its partnership structure. Executive director Kimberly Motes described how the arrangement functions in practice: “The commercial producer may provide the resources for things that are beyond what we would normally do if we were producing it ourselves.” In return, the theater receives a small percentage of revenues for the ongoing life of shows it partners on, meaning that a production’s international touring and licensing activity continues to benefit the institution that helped develop it years earlier.

Broadway as Launch Event, Not Final Verdict

McCollum frames the Broadway run not as the culmination of a musical’s life but as its most visible public phase. “Broadway is an important part of the life of the show,” he said. “I think you have to look at it as the launch event.” History supports the argument. Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along was widely considered a failure after its 1981 debut, but it accumulated a substantial afterlife and had a successful revival in 2023. The long-running revival of the musical Chicago has sustained decades of productions, tours, and international stagings well beyond any single run.

Illinoise now presents a different variation on the same principle. The show is returning to Chicago Shakespeare in 2027 without a national tour preceding it, a remount rather than a transfer. For Motes, the decision felt necessary. “It did not have the national tour,” she said. “As we were planning the 40th anniversary season, Edward Hall, our artistic director, and I felt like this was unfinished business.”

Unfinished business, in this context, is not a concession. It is a recognition that a show’s arc remains open after any single chapter closes, Broadway included.