Pictured above: Nick Cartell and Haley Dortch from the National Tour Les Misérables with Zach Zelman
As French Club president at Rice, I'm always on the lookout for exciting opportunities both on campus and in Houston, so when I saw last spring that Houston would play host to Les Misérables this winter at the Hobby Center, I jumped into action. Les Mis also happens to be my favorite musical, and knowing how popular it is, I realized this could be an amazing chance to build significant interest and awareness for Rice’s French program. Working with Dr. Jacqueline Couti and Rice Goes to the Theater (RGTT) co-leader Logan Rossiter, we began by first pricing out discounted tickets based on student surveys of price sensitivity (leading to us selling student tickets for $25). We then applied for funding from several sources and worked with Sarah Kohler from the Hobby Center to initially reserve over 200 tickets. From here, we launched a campus-wide marketing campaign for ticket sales, enlisting help from several theater club ambassadors to distribute both physical materials like posters and to give out sales information on Rice communication platforms. After doing a pre-sale for Modern and Classical Literatures and Cultures (MCLC) students and faculty, we quickly sold nearly all of the tickets, leading to us securing more tickets in order to offer them off a waitlist. Logan and I also worked together to organize and distribute the tickets. Ultimately, we sold 308 tickets for five performances, totaling nearly $15,000 in combined sales revenue and funding (funding totaled above $4,000).
Then, the race was on to capitalize on our momentum by working on event programming for the week of the performances. We reached out to Rice French Professor Dr. Phillip Wood, who agreed to give a lecture analyzing and contextualizing the differences between Victor Hugo’s novel Les Mis and the modern musical. We worked with the School of Humanities Deans, including Natasha Bowdoin, to add this lecture to the Rice Humanities NOW lecture series, elevating Dr. Wood’s platform and increasing awareness for the event across campus. We used additional funds to charter a bus to take students to the performance on the day of the lecture, and the French club added other events, including a Les Mis movie night and a crepe dinner outing. Finally, we were elated when Robin Anderson from the Hobby Center reached out and offered us the opportunity to collaborate on events interacting with the Les Mis cast, including a Q&A with cast members Nick Cartell (Jean Valjean) and Haley Dortch (Fantine) before one of the performances. I am so happy with how everything has worked out regarding this programming, and I look forward to continuing working with our stakeholders and collaborators on future events and opportunities.
A big thanks must go to these stakeholders, including MCLC, the School of Humanities, the French Consulate in Houston, The Hobby Center, the Student Activities Presidents Programming Fund, The Student Association Initiative Fund, Humanities NOW, and French Club donors. Finally, thank you to collaborators, including MCLC department head Dr. Jacqueline Couti, French Club advisor Dr. Julie Fette, Dr. Phillip Wood, Dr. Rice Humanities associate Dean Dr. Natasha Bowdoin with Humanities NOW, John Waterhouse and his team with the School of Humanities, Bettina Gardelles from the French Consulate, Sarah Koehler and Robin Anderson from the Hobby Center, the Student Activities team including Kristi Tyrrell, RGTT co-leader Logan Rossiter, French Club leaders Liz Pan, Nicole Interiano, Catt Nguyen, and Anael Roig-Gicquel, and the other RGTT club ambassadors.