Smash
CLIENT
Situation Interactive
TECHNOLOGIES
WordPress, PHP, JavaScript, Gravity Forms
YEAR
2025
EXTERNAL URL
Full-stack development for the official website of Smash — the Broadway musical adapted from the NBC television series, produced by Steven Spielberg, Robert Greenblatt, and Neil Meron. Custom WordPress theme with a ticketing calendar, a hero layout built around embedded video and gradient backgrounds, and frontend architecture that matched the production’s bold visual identity.
Development lead on this project at Situation Interactive.
Background
A cult-favorite television series was finally becoming the Broadway musical it always pretended to be.
Smash — the NBC series that ran for two seasons in 2012–2013, following the drama behind a fictional Broadway musical about Marilyn Monroe — had spent over a decade as one of the most passionate “what if” stories in musical theatre fandom. The show had never made it to an actual Broadway stage, but the IP retained a devoted audience and serious creative firepower behind it. Original series producers Steven Spielberg, Robert Greenblatt, and Neil Meron led the effort to bring a stage adaptation to Broadway, with five-time Tony winner Susan Stroman directing, a score by Emmy, Grammy, and Tony winners Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, a book by Bob Martin and Rick Elice, and choreography by Emmy winner Joshua Bergasse. The cast featured Robyn Hurder as Ivy Lynn, Brooks Ashmanskas, Krysta Rodriguez, Caroline Bowman, John Behlmann, and Kristine Nielsen. A production with that pedigree — backed by Spielberg and arriving at the Imperial Theatre with years of anticipation behind it — needed a digital platform that could convert fan enthusiasm and press coverage into ticket sales from the first preview forward.
The site needed to launch ahead of Broadway previews in March 2025 and sustain the production through what was expected to be a marquee run at the Imperial Theatre.
Implementation
A custom WordPress build with a hero layout that demanded precision and a ticketing calendar driving every conversion.
I led development on a custom WordPress theme where the frontend was the defining challenge — and the most enjoyable part of the build. The hero section was the centerpiece: an embedded video composition layered over a gradient background that needed to feel cinematic without sacrificing load performance or responsiveness. Getting the video, gradient, and typographic elements to hold together across breakpoints — maintaining visual impact on desktop while gracefully adapting on mobile where the composition fundamentally changes — required careful CSS architecture and an understanding of how each layer interacted with the others. The broader layout pushed well beyond standard Broadway site conventions, with bold compositional choices throughout that made the frontend work consistently engaging. The ticketing calendar was the primary conversion component — an interactive, date-driven interface rendering the full performance schedule at the Imperial Theatre with matinee and evening slots, availability states, and direct purchase links routing audiences into the ticketing provider’s checkout flow with the correct show and date pre-selected. The site carried the full scope of a Broadway production platform: cast and creative team profiles with structured bios, a media section with video content and production photography, press acclaim aggregating reviews from the New York Times and Rolling Stone, a merchandise shop, a cast recording promotion section, and Gravity Forms powering newsletter signup and audience engagement.
The frontend work on this build was some of the most fun I have had on a project — the kind of layout challenges where the design is bold enough to push you but clean enough that the solutions feel satisfying when they land.
Results
Two Tony nominations, a Drama Desk win, and $12.6 million at the box office.
The site launched ahead of Smash’s first Broadway preview on March 11, 2025, and served as the production’s primary digital platform through its entire run at the Imperial Theatre. The show officially opened on April 10 and ran through June 22, 2025 — 32 previews and 83 performances grossing over $12.6 million at an average capacity of 82.50% and an average ticket price of $94.34. The production earned two Tony Award nominations — Best Featured Actor in a Musical for Brooks Ashmanskas and Best Choreography for Joshua Bergasse — along with a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Performance in a Musical (Ashmanskas) and a Chita Rivera Award for Outstanding Dancer in a Broadway Show (Robyn Hurder). The ticketing calendar drove conversions throughout the run, and the site now serves as an archival platform preserving the production’s legacy, press coverage, and cast recording promotion.
The platform I built for Smash carried the production from its first preview through closing night and continues to serve as the show’s digital archive — a complete record of a production that finally brought a beloved television series to the Broadway stage it always belonged on.
