Broadway general management company Live Wire Theatrical has acquired Jumpstart Entertainment. Roy Gabay, principal of Jumpstart, joins the team of Live Wire led by principals Robert Ahrens and Chris Aniello. Ahrens, Aniello and Gabay will lead the combined venture together as general managers.
Live Wire is currently represented Off-Broadway with the long-running revival of Howard Ashman and Alan Menken’s “Little Shop of Horrors” at the Westside Theatre, as well as the limited run of Gordon Greenberg and Steve Rosen’s “Dracula, A Comedy of Terrors.” Live Wire provided general management services for both of Kristin Chenoweth’s concerts on the Main Stem, 2016’s “My Love Letter to Broadway” and 2019’s “For the Girls.”
According to Ahrens and Aniello, Live Wire’s growth over the past several years sparked the idea to expand. Aniello had begun his professional theater career with a position at Gabay’s company. So, when Aniello and Ahrens decided to grow Live Wire, “[we] they thought it would be a natural partnership and mutually advantageous to expand their operations with Live Wire’s acquisition of Jumpstart,” the team told Broadway News in an exclusive statement.
