From Broadway to Burke County: How CoMMA brings world-class entertainment to Morganton

Midtown Manhattan may be 650 miles from downtown Morganton but recently, the Big Apple was ground zero for a local team looking to bring world-class entertainment to Burke County.

The City of Morganton’s Municipal Auditorium’s (CoMMA’s) Amber Austin and Jaime Money traveled to New York City in early January to attend the annual Association of Performing Arts Professionals (APAP) Showcase. They spent five days and nights selecting much of the entertainment locals will enjoy in the coming year.

The team is responsible for booking CoMMA’s annual performance season, which runs from late September to the following April each year and includes about 15 shows that are part of the organization’s season ticket package.

During the conference, the duo’s days were spent in classes, where they got tips about the business end of their jobs. They learned about ticketing strategies, building a customer base, increasing audiences, and focusing on family programming, a priority for the Morganton venue.

But at the showcase, nighttime was the right time for music, comedy, magic and variety acts, as more than 1,000 acts pulled out all the stops to woo venue booking agents. Each performer or group had just 15 minutes to convince audience members to sign a contract for the upcoming season.

Austin said she and Money review the APAP schedule before the trip and plan a strategy in order to see as many performances as possible. They focus their time on specific shows they believe will be enjoyable for a Burke County audience.

Showcase performances take place in eight rooms, where acts are hustled onstage for their 15-minute time slot, then hurried offstage to make room for the next ensemble. Austin and Money packed every evening’s schedule with back-to-back shows.

“We put our roller skates on and spent the evening going from room to room, just experiencing as many showcases as we could in 15-minute segments from about 6 to midnight,” Money explained.

“They were giving us their best 15 minutes, and then they were off the stage,” Austin said. “You have to figure out what you’re looking for, for your audience. You’re not trying to see everything, because everything doesn’t fit our art center.”

“We look for variety,” she stated. “We like to provide programming that is family friendly. I feel like that is a big takeaway for us, but we also want to have a lot of variety.”

The women admitted their days were packed from sunup until well past sundown, with very little time for enjoying the sights, sounds, and experiences of the city.

CoMMA Director of Cultural and Creative Development Sharon Jablonski said each season, the team tries to contract at least one Broadway show.

“Broadway is really big,” Jablonski said.

“Broadway is the one that you’ve got to nail down before you can really fill in the rest of your schedule,” Austin added.

Jablonski explained before the COVID-19 pandemic, CoMMA often booked multiple Broadway shows each season, including big draws such as “Stomp” and “Jersey Boys.” But since 2020, Broadway shows are harder to book since touring companies have not returned to pre-pandemic strength.

Austin said she can always rely on country music, bluegrass, and comedy to be big hits with the Morganton crowd, but the CoMMA team tries to think outside the box and books something a little different each season.

“We’ve offered some (unusual acts) and they didn’t work,” Jablonski stated. “They were failures, but you’ve got to keep trying.”

While CoMMA is a massive performance venue, the full-time staff is quite small — only six employees keep the auditorium running year-round. In addition to Jablonski, Austin, and Money, Production Manager Tony Bova, Technical Assistant Leah Hall, and Custodian James Hildebrand round out the staff.

Austin and Money were tight-lipped about the acts they’ve already booked for the upcoming season, but they did share that local audiences will have an opportunity to see a Broadway show, a little country and a little bluegrass and some comedy, among other genres of entertainment.

Jablonski said she hopes locals will watch for the announcement later this year detailing the 2025-26 season. She encourages Burke County residents to take advantage of the quality programming CoMMA offers.

“Every time somebody walks out of the theater, they talk about how great the show was and how much fun they’ve just had,” Jablonski said.

Season tickets for the CoMMA season go on sale around the end of July, and single-show tickets are released in mid-August. The auditorium’s website can be found at commaonline.org.