{"id":9806,"date":"2015-08-20T17:57:20","date_gmt":"2015-08-20T23:57:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/?p=9806"},"modified":"2015-08-20T17:57:20","modified_gmt":"2015-08-20T23:57:20","slug":"nancy-nagel-gibbs-71","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/2015\/08\/nancy-nagel-gibbs-71\/","title":{"rendered":"Nancy Nagel Gibbs \u201971"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Nancy<\/a>

Nancy Nagel Gibbs \u201971<\/p><\/div>\n

It takes a lot of people to make a hit Broadway show. If you had told Nancy Nagel Gibbs \u201971<\/strong>, while she was working in the Armstrong Hall basement, that she would be the producer of the multi-Tony Award winner \u201cPeter and the Starcatcher,\u201d she would have said, \u201cNo way.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Denver native didn\u2019t have a plan when she took a small scholarship from Colorado College. It was just a fine school, she said, and close to home. She\u2019d worked in theater in high school, but didn\u2019t dream of working the Great White Way.<\/p>\n

Still, her work-study program took her backstage and into the tutelage of Jean McMillen, a creative drama teacher married to Bill McMillen, then head of the Drama Department.<\/p>\n

\u201cI spent a lot of my time backstage at Armstrong, in the basement of Armstrong Theatre in the costume shop. I was completely devoted to working those productions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nancy didn\u2019t miss being on stage. \u201cI had one part in high school, one part in college, and one part in graduate school. Basically, I was always paying attention to everything else going on. I didn\u2019t realize at the time that I was destined to be the person who looked at everything, the general manager.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy husband and I agree that, at CC, we learned to learn,\u201d she said, referring to her husband of 32 years, Christopher Cochran Gibbs \u201967. \u201cAt CC, you learned how to apply what learning meant to other things. That was a very valuable lesson. It was about the process.\u201d<\/p>\n

After getting a degree in fine arts with drama concentration, she earned a master\u2019s degree in theater at University of Northern Colorado. Soon after, she ended up at the Chuck Wagon Dinner Playhouse, an old cow barn in Greeley, Colorado, converted into a dinner theater. She was the production manager for about a year.<\/p>\n

Then, in the spirit of a Judy Garland-Mickey Rooney movie, Nancy and 11 other members of the company moved to San Francisco to mount a show, \u201cSHINE,\u201d in a church.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the \u201970s,\u201d she explained. \u201cIt was a crazy time. You did it because you could.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, she met a commercial theater manager who would propel her to New York City in 1977. Within six months, she had a job with \u201cThe Wiz\u201d national touring production, then was a company manager on Broadway and Off-Broadway for 15 years.<\/p>\n

Thirteen years ago, Nancy, who with Nina Essman \u201987 had formed 321 Theatrical Management, was invited to a reading of a musical called \u201cWicked\u201d by producer David Stone, with whom they\u2019d worked 10 years previously. \u201cWe liked it and thought this would probably last a few years. We got very busy after that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The award-winning show has been running on Broadway since 2003; 321 Theatrical Management has overseen four additional domestic companies and more than twice that many international productions of \u201cWicked.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the years, Nancy and her colleagues have worked on many winners, including \u201cBat Boy, The Musical,\u201d (which she also produced), \u201cNext to Normal,\u201d and \u201cThe 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.\u201d Their latest musical, \u201cFun Home,\u201d received 12 nominations at the 2015 Tony Awards in June, winning five, including Best Musical.<\/p>\n

In 2012, Nancy produced \u201cPeter and the Starcatcher.\u201d Adapted by Rick Elice from Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson\u2019s 2004 children\u2019s novel, it tells the backstory of Peter Pan. The play with music was nominated for more Tonys in a single season than any other play in the award\u2019s history, winning five.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a producer, I really look for something that I believe moves people,\u201d Nancy said, \u201cthat will do something in their lives. That\u2019s why I don\u2019t do it very often. It\u2019s hard to find pieces like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

And her dream as she toiled in that basement of Armstrong Theatre?<\/p>\n

\u201cI was just putting one foot in front of the other. I didn\u2019t know what a producer was. I didn\u2019t know what a general manager was. I had no idea,\u201d Nancy said. \u201cBut, partly because of what I learned at CC, when the opportunity arose, I was ready to use the skills and knowledge I had gained over the years and apply it with considerable success.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

The week before \u201cFun Home\u201d swept the Tony Awards, NYC alumni ambassadors Tara Moncure \u201908<\/strong> and Holly Carter \u201905<\/strong> gathered alumni and parents for dinner, a performance, and VIP post-show talkback with the cast and producer. If interested in attending similar New York City-area events, contact Tara: tsmoncure@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It takes a lot of people to make a hit Broadway show. If you had told Nancy Nagel Gibbs \u201971, while she was working in the Armstrong Hall basement, that she would be the producer of the multi-Tony Award winner \u201cPeter and the Starcatcher,\u201d she would have said, \u201cNo way.\u201d The Denver native didn\u2019t have…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-9806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-august-2015","tag-alumni-profiles"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9806"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9808,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9806\/revisions\/9808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}