MJ The Musical
CLIENT
Situation Interactive
TECHNOLOGIES
WordPress Multisite, PHP, JavaScript, Ticketmaster API, Gravity Forms
YEAR
2022
EXTERNAL URL
The most architecturally ambitious build in my Broadway portfolio — a WordPress Multisite network powering six productions across four continents from a single codebase. Custom design system, Ticketmaster API integration, and region-specific content management for a franchise that has grossed over $319 million on Broadway alone.
Led development at Situation Interactive. The multisite approach evolved from the single-site tour patterns I had built on Pretty Woman and refined across subsequent Broadway projects.
Background
From the first conversation, this was never about one show — it was about building infrastructure for a global franchise.
MJ the Musical opened at the Neil Simon Theatre on February 1, 2022, but the ambition predated the first preview. Written by two-time Pulitzer winner Lynn Nottage, directed and choreographed by Tony winner Christopher Wheeldon, the production centers on the making of Michael Jackson’s 1992 Dangerous World Tour — telling the story through narrative rather than revue. It earned 10 Tony nominations and won four, including Best Leading Actor for Myles Frost. What made this project different from any other Broadway build was the scope: New York was just the first market. A North American national tour, London’s West End, Hamburg, Sydney, Melbourne, and an Asian tour were all in the pipeline from day one, each requiring its own regional ticketing, content, and marketing infrastructure.
I had built multisite architectures before — Pretty Woman was the first — but MJ demanded a level of scalability and design system rigor that went well beyond anything in my prior work.
Implementation
A multisite network with a shared design system and custom ticketing calendar built for a global franchise.
I led development on a WordPress Multisite network where a single codebase powers dedicated subsites for each production — Broadway, the national tour, London, Hamburg, and every market that followed. Each subsite runs the same custom theme with its own content, ticketing configuration, and regional settings while sharing the design system, component library, and plugin infrastructure. The design system was the most comprehensive I built at Situation: a CSS custom property framework governing color tokens, a responsive spacing scale, fluid typography, and component-level layout rules, all enforced without duplication across every production’s site. The ticketing calendar integrated directly with the Ticketmaster API, rendering dates, availability states, and performance slots into a visual interface that routed users into the correct purchase flow for their region, venue, and showtime.
Spinning up a new international production — subdomain, ticketing partner, language considerations, regional newsletter — required zero theme duplication. The Pretty Woman multisite had proven the concept; MJ proved it could scale globally.
Results
One platform, six productions, five million audience members and counting.
The platform launched alongside MJ’s Broadway opening in February 2022 and has since scaled to support productions across six markets — New York, the U.S. national tour, London’s West End, Hamburg, Sydney, and Melbourne — with an Asian tour launching next. The multisite architecture delivered exactly what it was designed for: each new production went live on its own subdomain with full design system inheritance and regional ticketing integration, without rebuilding or forking the theme. The ticketing calendar became the primary conversion path across all productions, routing over 2.2 million Broadway ticket purchases through the platform. The show has grossed over $319 million on Broadway alone, and more than 5 million people have experienced the production worldwide.
MJ represents the culmination of every Broadway build that came before it — the ticketing patterns from TINA, the tour architecture from Oklahoma! and Mean Girls, the design system thinking that only becomes possible after building enough sites to know what actually needs to be shared. Designed once, deployed globally, still running.
