John Corcoran 19:01
Sorry. Sorry. Trigger warning. Trigger warning.
Nick A. Olivero 19:03
Trigger warning. Guys. We lost everything. We we lost. You know, I had a healthy bank account, and then I was bankrupt, and I laid everybody off, including myself. And I was on unemployment for the first time in my life. Wow. And American Express, you know, we couldn’t pay our credit card bills, so they decided to sue me. By June of 2020. And I will resolve that last week was finally resolved after years and years of of just dealing with it. And and that’s in benefits because I finally stopped working like I there was no work to be done. So I went to Dolores Park and on the out we saw the sun for the first time in my life and realized there’s a different way to work or a different way to live, you have a different way to live. And so when we came back, it was a very we didn’t get any federal support. We were supposed to, but the IRS had a process, their tax returns and the SBA couldn’t confirm our revenue. And so they didn’t give us the SBA, which has shuttered venue operators grant. So we got zero. We were supposed to get 1.2 million. We got zero. And I still had to pay my rent for two years of not operating. So I had huge rent liability, and I had to work it out with the landlord, who was incredibly supportive. I mean, I mentioned him earlier, he was the kind of he got us a loan. I mean, the guy has been nothing. He’s at Saint. And so we worked that out and we had a there was a guy, Kevin Blake, who had a magic show that we were running before a closed before the venue closed for Covid, and he was doing virtual zooms. And I told him that if he wanted to use the theater, he could free of charge. Instead of working in his closet in his apartment, He became so popular he ended up. I mean, he made so much money during Covid, I wasn’t even paying attention because I should have charged him, right? But he he.
John Corcoran 21:01
He was doing zoom zoom presentations. But on your stage.
Nick A. Olivero 21:05
He was doing $2,000 a pop. And he would do 2 or 3 in a day. I mean.
John Corcoran 21:09
And you weren’t charging him?
Nick A. Olivero 21:11
No, because I didn’t know that he did a hundred in a year. I mean, the guy made, like, sitting on my stage like a quarter of $1 million.
John Corcoran 21:20
Wow.
Nick A. Olivero 21:21
And meanwhile, I’m on unemployment. So. Yeah. And there’s a huge discrepancy. And when we came out of that, he said, I’d like to do the show live. And he has a marketing. He was in marketing and a marketing background, so he did all the marketing. And this thing has been running for three plus years and is a continuous revenue stream for the company, which I don’t. I’m just not I don’t participate in it should pass the revenue.
John Corcoran 21:49
Just using the venue.
Nick A. Olivero 21:51
He’s using the venue and it brings a lot. It’s also kind of a business card for the venue, so people will end up doing their holiday parties and corporate parties because it is shared. So he he does a very, you know, it’s relatively modest, but it’s just like the little engine that could. It completely changed my outlook from the speakeasy, which was this massive production where I was trying to, like, hit a grand slam every time I went up to play. And now my approach is to hit singles and doubles, and The Illusionist is ended up being kind of a double or a triple. And when we did the Haunted Houses last year, same approach.
John Corcoran 22:31
Yeah. So talk about that. You you found this venue. It’s called the Haas-Lilienthal House in San Francisco. It’s a historic mansion and museum. And you partnered with them, and then you did this, like, horror Halloween experience. Talk about that.
Nick A. Olivero 22:45
Yeah, well, they found me. It was the executive director of this. It’s a nonprofit, the San Francisco Heritage. And they they they’re preservationists and they have this venue. They wanted to do a haunted house, and they placed the person who had done it before. They know my work. One of my actors is his brother in law. So he’s, you know, I’ve known him for years, but I never I didn’t reach out to him. They reached out to me to do this thing. And I said, sure, we’ll put it on. We just did a rev share because I was like, I don’t really want to, you know, I don’t want to be on the hook for anything. I don’t know if it’s going to work. It may or may not. And I thought it would be very modest. And at the same time I said, who’s doing your other events? He said, well, let’s talk about that. So we ended up doing that event for them. And this thing that was supposed to be very modest was incredibly successful. And now we’re going to do it year after year and iterate on it. And now we have this operating agreement to take over all of the weddings and parties. You know, we get a lot of calls for events where they can’t really afford a space in at North Beach, where the speakeasy is, and I wanted to have a backup option.
John Corcoran 23:53
A down south. Yeah. And so that’s what you did? Yeah.
Nick A. Olivero 23:58
And yeah. And it’s kind of I feel like before Covid, I was really even right after Covid, I did a show in London, which I was a total loss. I raised money during the pandemic and we lost it all. And it was another lesson. It was the same lesson I, I now just try not to force the situation so much and, and look at the opportunity and allow the opportunity to come to me, as opposed to being as aggressive and ambitious to go find the opportunity. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s it is just exhausting.
John Corcoran 24:31
Yeah.
Nick A. Olivero 24:32
I just reached a different stage where I if it works, it works. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. And I’m not to say that I don’t work on it or try with it, but trying to stop forcing the round peg in the hole as much.
John Corcoran 24:47
And and when you know, with your business expanding into things like, you know, hosting weddings and stuff like that, do you view that as like an extension of the immersive theater experience?
Nick A. Olivero 24:59
No, but it’s man, I get so jazzed with the creativity of creating these products. You know, you mentioned weddings. We didn’t really do a ton of weddings at the North Beach venue. A few, but the house, all they want to do is weddings. And so now I’m thinking about centerpieces and wedding arches and floral displays and uplighting and drapery and just the scenic. I mean, I designed the space where the speakeasy is. So from a scenic standpoint, I love all of that. And I get really, you know, creativity is just creativity. It’s I don’t need to write a script. I can just be as long as I’m creating something. So I get excited about that expansion. And we do think about how to bring our theatrical spin. I don’t necessarily say immersive, but I’ll talk about the theatrical spin of what we do and how we do as a production company will take their event and not just be the venue for them, but handle their catering. And their their their bar program and create not just a boring DJ but having. You know, Victorian characters like railroad tycoons and women, thick coats and gold miners and that sort of thing. Just 1700s. House. Yeah. Is this something you’re interested in, or rum parlor magic and Texas hold em tournaments and tea time and scotch tastings and all of these other things that we don’t do at the venue that are a little adjacent. I know that you can do them. It’s just a spin on things. And, you know, it’s probably the same way that the, you know, the food guide, Taco Bell, gets excited about the next tostada. That is it’s all very.
John Corcoran 26:32
You got something now? It’s got the cheese on the outside. It’s like on the outside. Exactly.
Nick A. Olivero 26:37
Dorito on the inside.
John Corcoran 26:38
Who knows? Right. Yeah, there’s a.
John Corcoran 26:42
Hilarious Saturday Night Live, but you can Google it like.
Nick A. Olivero 26:45
The taco town.
John Corcoran 26:47
Yeah. And it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger and they just fold more different types of food. It’s crazy. I want to ask about you’ve got a few upcoming items. So the Magic Cocktail Hour, which is a drinking and magic in theater. I’m not sure if that’s with Kevin Blake the Illusionist or someone else and the The Sam Spade Affair. Talk about those upcoming shows.
Nick A. Olivero 27:07
Yeah, well, you know, magic is is very approachable. And that’s I think one of the reasons why it excels so well is I’m going to a magic show. You know what you’re doing. It’s low stress. It’s not I have to convince people to come. You want to come do an immersive speakeasy? What is that question? Yeah, and a lot of money, because it’s an expensive show to run. I have more questions. So I, we, I kind of isolated that. One of the reasons it’s doing so well is that it’s a known quantity. It’s an accessible ticket price. And I said I want to build more of those. So I went to Kevin, said, let’s build a magic show, but let’s do a little bit of what I do, which is more narrative based. So it’s set in 1927. It’s a year after Houdini day guy. It’s kind of like a séance, but we’re trying to reach the spirit of Houdini. And the premise is the the lead character. Who’s this recluse magician? Marlow, the Marlow the Magnificent, who’s, you know, kind of an Orwellian, bombastic character had contact with Houdini after he had this strange concoction of libations. And when he woke up, he had a list of names. It’s all the names of the audience members. And he believes that if they recreate what he drank, we’re going to connect with Houdini. So it’s a drinking experience where you get a flight of four cocktails as you watch this show, and it’s also magic. You get pulled up on stage, this and that, but there’s a story that unfolds and the drinks are coming out in regular intervals, and the drinks are also magical. They’re smoking, changing colors and and doing different, you know, vanishing things into them. And so I reached out to him to co-write the show with me and Jeff, who does my cocktail programs, my operations guy, to create the create the drains that’s going to open in April. And additionally, there’s another show that I, I mean, I wrote it two years ago. I just haven’t gotten around to doing it, which is a Sam Spade film noir detective agency where the audience are players, they’re in a puzzle experience. It’s not an escape room, but you you are trying to solve these puzzles that are given to you at a table.You’re in groups of 6 or 8, and you are essentially an extension of Sam Spade, the private eye trying to solve the case of a lifetime, having to crack codes and use magnifying glasses and look at pictures and study forensics and stuff like that. So they have some of these where they deliver to your house. They’re a little, I don’t want to say basic, but it’s all paper related. So this is dimensional because we’re giving you maps or thumbprints and, you know, you’re having to really do a little bit more physical work that we can get, right. It’s also a team building game so we can bring it to bring it to people’s offices. And you could do it. So 30 to 80 to 100, we can expand it. And you get a little bit of this. It’s not immersive. It’s it’s not even interactive. You watch scenes and then you do the puzzles and then scenes then kind of give you the answers. And I’m trying to solve for the issue that I’ve always had with escape rooms where there’s like a 10% success rate, which means 90% of the people lose.
John Corcoran 30:10
Is it really? I didn’t realize it was.
Nick A. Olivero 30:13
Yeah. There’s a lot of like, oh, you didn’t get out in time. And I’m like, well, I’ve been here for an hour and I’m trapped.
John Corcoran 30:19
In the next group is coming in.
Nick A. Olivero 30:20
The next group is coming in. So this is to solve for that is there’s you can I want everyone to feel like they won, but there’s still a winner because there’s the more detail you provide knowing that somebody was shot or shot twice or shot in the back twice with a derringer or 22. The more information you can provide, the the more you bids. So we’re trying to kind of make it a more rewarding Morning experience.
John Corcoran 30:46
So we’re almost out of time, Ollie. But maybe you don’t get this reflective about this stuff, but, you know, there’s, like an epidemic of loneliness now. And I think after Covid and everything, and with the digitization, we’re all on our phones. There’s definitely a feeling of kind of people are craving more community, you know, more community than than they get like, kind of like, you know, we used to have maybe 50 or 100 years ago. Do you ever reflect on that and that, you know, a part of what you’re doing is giving people that experience of doing something collectively with a group of people getting out of their office, getting off of their phone and doing something in person and having an experience.
Nick A. Olivero 31:27
More so than ever. I think that’s why immersive theater has taken off the way it has, and interactive experiences like Meow Wolf, or like some of these other experiences, that theater is pretty stuffy to sit in a chair. And if I was still doing theater shows, I’d be out of business. I wouldn’t wanted to talk with you. I want to be a member of EO. I’ve been able to grow a multi-million dollar business because I shifted and adapted and and listened to the users, my audience and what they want, but also try to anticipate what their needs are. I don’t think people knew that they wanted to put their phones away, but when they did for the speakeasy, they would thank me. And I’m like, you can put your phone down any time you want, but we force you to do it and reconnect and talk and engage in a different way. And that was not something I realized would be some of people’s biggest takeaway. Putting my phone away for four hours was the best experience. It was like I spent millions of dollars and years of my life writing a show, and all I did was take away your phone, you know, like that, that it.
John Corcoran 32:32
It’s it’s pretty magnetic for people. So that’s that’s a big achievement.
Nick A. Olivero 32:35
It’s a big achievement. And from an artist I was like, geez. But as a understanding what they meant behind that, I was like, how can I create more opportunities for you to connect and to have that community. And that’s why things like magic, we also do stand up comedy. We try to do a little spin on it because some of these forms are very old and tired. So we try to create whether it’s food, dining experiences or drinking experiences, to create a great night out as opposed to a great show. It’s not just a show. It’s a it’s your night out. Yeah. And honestly, you don’t want to be here for four hours. You probably just want to do an hour and a half and then go to dinner. And so we’re we’re part of your night out. And taking that approach has really helped the business and fostering those communities and those those environments for people to have those experiences have been great.
John Corcoran 33:28
Ali, where can people go to learn more about you and learn more about the various things you’re up to?
Nick A. Olivero 33:35
Well, my theater company is Boxcar Theatre with an RE because we’re still very pretentious.boxcartheatre.org. Because we’re an organization. The Speakeasy is the show. People go, oh, you’re speakeasy? I go, The Speakeasy is a show, but it’s kind of the elephant in the room, the speakeasy. So we’re not. We’re dark right now. We do New Year’s, we do Halloween. But Boxcars, you can find stuff like the illusionists. Magic cocktail. I will be launching soon. Sam spade will be down the year. So nightmares, the haunted house that’ll come back. And a lot of that can be found on Boxcar Theatre’s website. And yeah, hopefully we’ll hopefully these shows will do well. You know, you do a follow up in the air and I can be like, that didn’t work.
John Corcoran 34:17
But you take big swings or rather attempts at first singles and doubles, singles and double swings.
Nick A. Olivero 34:23
At the ball. But we’re definitely trying to.
John Corcoran 34:25
Trying to make people run for it.
Nick A. Olivero 34:26
Yeah.
John Corcoran 34:26
Yeah, exactly. Ali, thanks so much.
Nick A. Olivero 34:28
Absolutely.
Outro 34:29
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