“We thought, let’s do something at the very beginning that’s going to bring us all together … and from there we would reflect the entire community event by event,” says David Fischer, executive director at Tacoma’s Broadway Center for the Performing Arts, which launches its most ambitious season ever with the Cirqueworks company’s production of “Birdhouse Factory” Friday and Saturday.



“The reason that we selected it for the launch of our season is because it works, pretty much, across every demographic we could think of,” Fischer explains. “Because it has a wonderful, open and loving narrative, I think that it’s going to touch every age. Because it is circus, it crosses age boundaries, it crosses language boundaries … and because it is so visually and musically stimulating, I think that it’s a wonderfully appealing program to kick off the season.”



Cirqueworks brings together performers from the Cirque du Soleil, San Francisco’s Pickle Family Circus, and the Moscow Circus. The performers, a collection of clowns, contortionists and acrobats, share the stage with a series of contraptions that form the giant machinery of the Birdhouse Factory where the story involving the worker-performers unfolds.



Fischer first encountered Cirqueworks while he was serving as executive director for the Wells Fargo Center in Santa Rosa, California — which he left to take the helm at the Broadway Center in 2006. (Fischer was the Broadway Center’s deputy executive director from 1998 to 2001.) He had an idea of what the company would bring to the stage.

“I met with them … and really got to know who they were as artists and as business people, and believed in their program and what they were trying to do.



“I’m a huge fan of Cirque du Soleil,” Fischer explains, “and yet, every time I go to see their programs, there’s always this one part of me that feels a little let down. “ Why? “There is, generally, no narrative,” Fischer says. “And I’m a narrative junkie. I think most people are.” Most of us, he believes, are naturally attracted to stories with a beginning, a middle and an end. 



“And I like for there to be some way to engage people in what it means to be a human being,” he adds. And that’s what the “Bird Factory” promises to do.



Exploring “what it means to be a human being” is in keeping with what the Broadway Center has been trying to provide its audiences since the number and variety of acts and shows began to expand at the beginning of 2007. Fischer says that the process by which the Center makes its season programming decisions has “changed radically” in the last year, reflecting the organization’s overhauled strategic plan.



The 2007-2008 season lineup represents a shift in programming design that began midway through last year’s season. “We really looked at our history,” Fischer recalls of the impetus for that change, “to understand what we have been doing … and to recognize that we needed to change.”



The season programming process at the Broadway Center hadn’t changed for more than 20 years, “and audiences were declining,” Fischer admits. “We as an organization had been focused on a very narrow and focused slice of the [demographic] pie.” The organization had been content to attract generalized, mainstream audiences to what were themselves mostly mainstream events and acts.



Still, those audiences kept the organization going for those 20-some years. Fischer adds: “But this community is not the same community that it was 20 years ago. It is a much more diversified community. Therefore, we’ve got to embrace the whole pie, we’ve got to find ways to serve that cross-section of community and let this performing arts center reflect all of the facets of this community.



“And when you look at our season this year,” he continues, “I think you can say that we’ve done a pretty good job of that.”



Such diversity-driven scheduling includes the World Rhythms series of concerts, which opens this season with Mariachi Los Camperos de Nati Cano (Sept. 28); followed by Ragamala Music and Dance Theater, an Indian dance troupe (Oct. 7); a tribute to tap dancing that reflects the form’s roots in African American culture (Feb. 13); and Dark Star Orchestra, a Grateful Dead tribute group (see cover sidebar), as well as the Pink Floyd Experience (April 23) — the latter two reflecting the community’s “boomer” demographic. In all, the season has grown from few more than 20 events to the current lineup of more than 80 offerings spread among the Pantages, Rialto and Theater on the Square venues, and with entertainment forms ranging from solo and group comedy to staged drama and concert music.



“We’re excited by the prospect of broadening our service and broadening our relevancy to this community,” Fischer says. “And that relevancy has to reflect the diversity of this community. And diversity isn’t just about color, isn’t just about race, isn’t just about religion, isn’t just about age, isn’t just about economics … it’s about all of those things.”



[Pantages Theater, Friday, Sept. 21 7:30 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 22 3 and 7:30 p.m., $32-$54, 901 Broadway, Tacoma, 253.591.5894, www.broadwaycenter.org]