September Issue - PLSN.com

“Jere started with us when
he was in his 20s,” recalls William
Court Cohen, founder of Theatre
Now, and now running Theatre
Now West in San Francisco. “And
even then he exhibited that rare
combination of greatness. He
had a visionary technical understanding
of the industry, unusually
high business acumen, and
he was a gentleman by anyone’s
standard. Rarely are all three
traits in one human being,
especially at such a
young age.”
“An
Opportunity”
In 1982, at the age
of 28, he started Harris
Production Services
(HPS) , a production management
company serving
the live entertainment
industry, with Fred
Gallo, Roy Sears, John
Wolf and Kevin Baxley.
Since its inception, Harris
Production Services has
been involved in more
than 500 major productions,
including Beauty
and the Beast, Starlight
Express, Madame Butterfly,
An Inspector Calls,
Sweet Charity and EFX.
Four years later, with
Gallo, Scenic Technologies
was launched. One
of their technological
success stories was the
introduction of Stage
Command, a proprietary
motion control system. This system has
been used in such popular productions as The
Phantom of the Opera, Les Misérables and Miss Saigon
on Broadway, EFX and Masquerade in the Sky
in Las Vegas, “Terminator 2 in 3D” and “Twister”
at Universal Studios, and numerous corporate
events, tradeshows and automotive shows.
“We were dominant in the theatre business,
but needed to branch out into the corporate and
industrial world. In those days, the theatre business
was slow in the summer time and our goal
was to have work 52 weeks a year.”
In those early days it was easy enough to
get a meeting with corporate clients, but they
had to be convinced to pull the trigger. First of all,
Harris had to convince them that while he had
a growing list of impressive Broadway credits,
a corporate show certainly wasn’t “below” him.
And it wasn’t. For Harris, it’s taking the same approach—a
professional show going off without
a hitch—using different skills and disciplines but
without changing the foundation of the craft. For
example, often the rigging of an auto show would
be more complicated than a Broadway show, he
points out. And it’s important that the Oldsmobile
CEO be presented just as well as Mary Martin
in Peter Pan. Each one is equally important.
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30 PLSN SEPTEMBER 2006
www.PLSN.com