photograph by jon w. sparks
Editor's Note: Community leaders gathered at Memphis Botanic Garden on May 7th to honor the 2025 CEOs of the Year, honoring five business leaders who are making the best kind of impact on the Mid-South: Boo Mitchell with Royal Studios, Brett Batterson with the Orpheum Theatre Group, Laurie Powell with Alliance Healthcare Services, Dr. Stewart Burgess with the Children’s Museum of Memphis, and Ted Townsend with the Greater Memphis Chamber. Here, we spotlight Brett Batterson and the work he's done at the Orpheum.
As a young boy in Davenport, Iowa, Brett Batterson liked to play Army. This meant gathering kids from the neighborhood, organizing platoons, and establishing ranks. “My uncle had been a staff sergeant in the Army,” explains Batterson, now in his tenth year as CEO of the Orpheum Theatre Group. “He had given me staff sergeant stripes, so I declared that in our club, the highest rank was staff sergeant. Which makes no sense. But kids were coming from three blocks away. It’s the first time I thought about leadership.”
Batterson’s parents were both puppeteers, so the performing arts are woven tightly through his DNA. He joined his first community theater at age 5 (and happily remembers his first play, The Bear Hug). As a college student at Augsburg University in Minnesota, Batterson recognized that he had the singing voice of a really good set designer, so he studied the latter, earning an MFA in the craft at Tulane. His professional rise included time in Chattanooga, and lengthy stints in both Detroit (as COO of the Michigan Opera Theatre) and Chicago (as executive director of the Auditorium Theatre). The seeds of leadership in that young “staff sergeant” grew steadily into the strengths that ultimately landed Batterson in Memphis.
“I’ve always led through personality,” says Batterson. “I’m very empathetic, a people-oriented person. I’ve been lucky that people have let me be a leader. In Chattanooga, I had volunteers willing to come in every night of the week and build sets with me. And I’ve worked with unions. The stage-hands union is notoriously difficult to work with, but they were also willing to do what I asked of them. It’s all about the respect I have for them. I’ve wanted to do what’s best for them, and what’s best for the organization. A lot of it’s listening, letting them make decisions. My goal is always to be fair.”
“I’ve always led through personality. I’m very empathetic, a people-oriented person. I’ve been lucky that people have let me be a leader.”
Batterson succeeded Pat Halloran — a Mid-South celebrity in his own right for more than three decades — when he assumed his current duties on New Year’s Day in 2016. “I had some idea [from my experience in Detroit, following the founder of the Michigan Opera Theatre] about how to work with a legend,” notes Batterson. “You don’t criticize him. You don’t try to pretend you’re smarter. You give credence to their knowledge and experience. It doesn’t mean you have to follow their advice, but you have to listen. I came from two large cities, and Memphis is really a large small town. Everybody knows each other.”
A leader’s survival instincts surface during an unforeseen challenge, and Batterson’s kicked in when Covid-19 shut the world down in March 2020. While many theaters across the country chained their doors shut, Batterson recalled the story of one in Chicago that converted itself into a bowling alley during World War II. He decided on a similar pivot: mini-golf. Properly masked patrons could play a timed game of mini-golf (nine holes, four rounds) on the Orpheum stage. Players who sank a putt under the iconic image of Cosette from Les Miserables may as well have been on the 18th green at Augusta.
“When the pandemic started, we were getting contradictory instructions,” reflects Batterson. “The goal posts moved every day. We had a supportive team of vice presidents, and I’m glad we were in Tennessee, which was less restrictive than some states.” The golf “show” ran for 17 weeks, and Batterson likes to emphasize it’s the longest-running production in Orpheum history.
The Orpheum family includes 47 full-time employees, 240 part-time, and a 34-member board of directors. Batterson manages a $20 million budget, one he has utilized for major renovations — including new seats — without closing the operation. “I have a very supportive board that has let me do a lot of fun stuff,” says Batterson. “I brought a camp that I started in Chicago — for young people who have experienced the death of a parent — to Memphis. The Mending Hearts Camp has been one of the joys of my life. [Batterson lost his own father when he was 7 years old.] Some of our community’s greatest leaders are on our board, and that’s been a joy to me.”
Batterson is one of only two Tony Award voters in the state of Tennessee. From the marionettes his parents brought to life to the biggest and brightest of Broadway hits, he appreciates a live performance. But when asked about his favorite show, he offers a temporal qualifier. “Hamilton is the most genre-changing musical of the last decade,” he says. “The decade before that, it was Rent or Miss Saigon. In the Eighties, it was Phantom of the Opera, which I still love. But I also love Rodgers and Hammerstein.” Just don’t ask him to sing along.
