Gillioz pens booking deals for pair of venues

The Gillioz Theatre, the historic vaudeville house that operates through a 501(c)3 nonprofit, has shown itself to be surprisingly spry, considering it will become an octogenarian in 2026.

In the past two months, the theater has forged a partnership through its operator, the Gillioz Center for Arts and Entertainment, with two Queen City mainstays – the Historic Fox Theatre, located on Park Central Square, and nearby Hammons Field, home of the Springfield Cardinals.

The Gillioz is assuming management of the Fox Theatre on behalf of its owner, the History Museum on the Square Inc. Gillioz personnel will handle booking and promoting and shaping the guest experience, said History Museum Director Sean FitzGibbons in a news release about the agreement.

In a separate deal, for the Springfield Cardinals, the Gillioz will negotiate and secure artists and handle production-related duties at Hammons Field, according to recent Springfield Business Journal reporting. The Cardinals organization plans to maintain ticketing and promotion for the events the Gillioz coordinates.

Geoff Steele, executive director of the Gillioz Center for Arts and Entertainment, and Joy Bilyeu-Steele, associate director, will handle most of the responsibilities of the agreements, according to Steele.

That started immediately. Two days after announcing the Cardinals partnership, Steele was off to Nashville for the annual conference of the International Entertainment Buyers Association. It’s an opportunity to get artist representatives in one room and leave with commitments and contacts. He also talks to agents weekly or sometimes daily from his office in Springfield.

“There’s still nothing like sitting down in the same room for the volume of business,” he said. “It gives them a jumping-off point for routing, and it gives me a jumping-off point for filling in gaps.”

The Gillioz seats 1,015, or can accommodate 1,300 general admissions, Steele said, if he removes some seats. The Fox seats 500-600, he said, and plans are to book four shows per month.

The size is a sweet spot for the kind of new artist who would have a hard time filling the Gillioz, Steele said.

“Despite my best efforts to get some emerging talent that I think would resonate in Springfield, they simply aren’t interested in playing a thousand seats,” he said.

Hammons Field is on the other end of the spectrum, seating about 8,000 – a draw for about four concerts per year that would require a larger space than the Gillioz.

Steele declined to disclose the financial terms of the separate agreements. He said 30% of the nonprofit theater’s revenue was non-ticketed last year – through donations, endowments and grants – a figure that was down slightly from the year before. The theater was only at 3% non-ticketed revenue when he arrived in 2014.

Total revenue was about $4.4 million last year, supporting the historic theater and nine employees, he said. The two agreements will provide additional income streams to support its work.

Staying in their lanes
FitzGibbons said the pairing of the Fox and the Gillioz is a natural one that came about when he and Steele were working together on the planning committee for Celebrate Springfield.

Half a century ago, the entities had a partnership of sorts, sharing custodial teams, projectionists and other personnel, FitzGibbons said.

“It’s kind of going back to the way it used to be,” he said. “We had a lot of conversations to figure out what a partnership could look like.”

Sometimes the right moment to act is made clear by events. For FitzGibbons, that was in July, when the Springfield Contemporary Theatre announced an indefinite pause in its operations. SCT had been the house theater organization for the Fox.

“I went back to Geoff, and I said, ‘OK, I think this is an opportunity for us to really kickstart something,” FitzGibbons said. “He agreed, and thankfully we were on the same page with this.”

FitzGibbons said he welcomes Steele’s expertise.

“At the History Museum, we are a bunch of museum people – we aren’t skilled in the ways of theater hospitality or know the ins and outs of booking national acts,” he said. “We get to focus on what we do and what we have a passion for – storytelling.”

The Gillioz knows its business, too, Steele said.

“Because of the unique type of programming we do, I’ve had people from 48 states and six foreign countries in a 12-month period of time that come to this independent theater in Springfield, and that’s pretty significant. I wouldn’t presume to know what the History Museum’s business is, but I’m fairly confident it’s not that.”

Steele said his goal, and FitzGibbons’, is to make the Fox Theatre more famous.

“A lot of people that come to Springfield for the shows would be appreciative of the quality of programming and the other aspects of our community that we have available,” he said.

Win-win-win scenario
Hammons Field entertains large crowds about 100 times per year, with about 60 home games for the Double-A Cardinals and 40 for Missouri State University’s squad, according to Minor League Baseball, not to mention other community events at the park.

In a news release about the partnership, Cardinals Vice President and General Manager Dan Reiter said the organization’s goal since the city of Springfield purchased the stadium in March 2023 has been to host a few concerts per year on the field. Last year, former St. Louis Cardinals hurler Adam Wainwright performed a country music concert – the first for the venue, mounted in the area of second base. According to past SBJ reporting, the Hatch Foundation purchased decking at a cost of $165,000 to allow on-field viewing.

“Now we are ready for the next step to achieve that goal,” Reiter said in the release, adding he believes the strategic partnership with the Gillioz will help get them there. “To partner with Geoff Steele and his team at the Gillioz is a great example of a win-win-win scenario for both of our organizations and the community at large.”

The Hammons plan was hashed out between Steele on one side and, on the other, Reiter and Zach Pemberton, director of ticket sales and special events.

“Zach and Dan came over and just said, ‘We really want to do this, but we’re focused on baseball, so could we get the guys that focus on the concerts to do the concerts?’” Steele said.

The deal took a little over a month to put together because the Cardinals had to devote some time to winning a championship, Steele said. Again, though, the time to strike was clear.

“I said, ‘Hey, do you want to try to put this to bed, because I go to Nashville every October, and if we’re talking about 2026, you’re gonna want me to be able to talk about that while I’m there,” Steele said.

He added that economics decides which of the three venues is most suitable for an artist.

“One of the challenges that we have in Springfield is that we really don’t operate like the rest of the country in understanding our median ticket price,” he said.

Springfield is slow to buy and slow to commit, and ticket prices are roughly 20% lower here than in the rest of the country. There’s a lower cost of living here than in many places, but that isn’t a factor for artists.

“For an artist, it doesn’t get any cheaper to drive the bus here,” he said.

Relational business
Why would Steele choose to book more than one venue? He said because the business is relational, and the two other venues allow options for those acts that don’t fit at the Gillioz.

It’s important to the Gillioz to extend a warm welcome when it can, according to Steele.

“My wife is my associate director; she’s my favorite human being. She fulfills all the promises that I make,” he said. “She develops the rapport immediately to say, ‘We’re going to make this a great day for you.’”

Agents trust the Gillioz, and they’re eager to bring their acts back, Steele said.

“The first time I went on this trip to Nashville 11 years ago, no one would even meet with me. I mean, Springfield, Missouri? The Gillioz Theatre? No,” he said. “Now, Wilco called us and said, ‘We want to come back after 20 years, but only if we can play the Gillioz – and that’s a great arc.”

Wilco is a Chicago-based band that formed in 1994. It played a double-length show, “An August Evening with Wilco,” on Aug. 13.

Steele said he plans to do 100 events in the Gillioz Theatre in its 100th anniversary year, 2026.

“The Gillioz is still the mothership to me, and it always will be,” he said. “It’s special and unique, and the room contributes so much to the show. The tours call literally after the show and say, ‘That was a great day.’”

“It shouldn’t be lost on your readers that that community has a great deal to contribute to that: an audience that’s respectful – that is quiet when the show needs to be quiet and loud when it needs to be loud,” he said. “Our audiences, by and large, are really, really present, and a component of the experience, and the artist as well.”

That has a downside, too, Steele said.

“Vince Gill played almost four hours here and never took a break, and when it was over, I said, ‘What happened?’” he said. “That’s actually not good for me as a businessman. I’m paying labor that’s watching a show instead of loading it out.”

Gill answered by interlocking his hands.

“He said, ‘It felt like this. I felt like they genuinely saw me, and I could genuinely see them, and I didn’t want it to end,’” he said.