Mixed Reviews for Phantom 2

Love Never Dies opened in London last night mixed reviews. The Telegraph gives it four stars and the Independent gives it four stars. Other reviews are not so nice. The New York Times didn’t like it at all.

Phantom of the Opera is the highest grossing musical of all time bringing in over 5 Billion dollars. That is more than Titanic (the movie) and Star Wars. Phantom has been seen by over 100 million people in 14 languages. The Phantom also didn’t see 100 percent rave reviews. So who knows what the fans will think. I personally like the one song I have heard. The album is out and I hope to give the whole show a listen soon.

I personally am excited for Love Never Dies to get to the States so I can see it. I have made fun of it since they started talking about it but the press today and the publicity they have done have over the last couple of months have really swayed my perception of the show. Share your thoughts about Love Never Dies in the comments section. I want to know what you think.

Fringe Project 10 - And So It Begins…

The Diary of a Dancer will be my Fringe Show! I am soooo excited to be working on this show. Author Wade Dooley contacted me months ago to put his show in for the running for my Project Fringe show. The show I will produce at the Capital Fringe Festival this summer. His show was a wonderful musical about a retirement community that had many great characters and some fun music but ultimately was just too big for me to budget at Fringe.

Then he came back with the idea of using the main character from that musical and creating a one-man show. I was instantly intrigued and loved all the work he has put into the show.

Then there was the whole application process for Fringe. You have to apply and wait to see if you even get accepted. We have been accepted and I have put the first payment in $250 (including the application fee) and I have to make the rest of the payment a week from Friday.

I am going to start a three part fundraising project for this show. My goal is to raise $1,000 to cover the fees involved in Fringe and to help pay the rest of the costs involved in producing a show. The total budget today is $4,430. Scary right? Stay tuned for how you can help!

The Oscars, Anything to Learn?

The Oscars are by far the Creme del la Crème of the awards shows. They, like the Tonys, have had declining viewership over the last several years. The Oscars took it head on and tried to figure what their problems were and how to fix them. First, they added more movies to the Best Picture category. They noticed that the Best Picture nominees were often leaving out some of the year’s biggest blockbuster movies. Should we add more Plays and Musicals to the Best Play and Musical categories respectively? I am not sure that would solve our problem. Usually our blockbusters do make it onto the nominee list.

Another thing the Oscars did was embrace social media. With their average viewership age at 49.5 they tried to use social media to accomplish a couple of things. The Oscars streamed the nominees live on the Facebook page bringing in 170,000 unique visitors. Then there was my favorite the Oscar iPhone application. You could pick your predictions then see how you faired. They also upgraded the site this year. The goals of all this was to of course get viewership up. But to also enhance the experience and hopefully make people continue the conversations after the awards show was over.

This was the best year for the Hollywood Box Office so let’s see how that relates to their new strategies and lets borrow what we can.

Shout Out!

I have to give a shout out today to a new company in Washington DC. As many smaller theatre companies have closed in the area and around the country my friend Anne Kohn and her friends have founded the No Rules Theatre Company. The company just started a campaign to help them “kickstart” their next couple of projects including the run of Some Girl(s) that is playing now through March 21.

I hope you will help support them as they make their mark on DC.

Just Network

A good friend wrote me yesterday to ask for advice on how to get a job in a new country. She has lived there for a bit but was not getting anywhere in her job search and wanted to know if she should just give up on her theatre career and take an office job or try and start over as an intern. My answer was “either.” The most important thing she needs to be doing right now is expanding her network and meeting new people. In order to do that she needs to be doing something. Interning or an office job could lead to her next job. I said go to work. Meet new people and then meet their friends. And find people with interest in the area you want to work in.

It is rare that a job will come find you out (although it has happened to me once). More likely than not you will gain employment by the people you know. So when in a new town or country in her case, get out and meet as many people as you can and turn one of those connections into a job.

New York to DC to New York to DC

It was announced this morning that Next to Normal will be back in DC during the next season at the Kennedy Center. I remember getting the demo CD at Arena Stage and falling in LOVE with this show. It was also my last show with Arena and I still went back to see it many time.

If you are in NYC or one of the many stops on the upcoming tour I hope you go see this production. From the producer of Wicked and the director of Rent this show is truly amazing.

If you didn’t get the chance to see it you can see it at The Kennedy Center.

I am back!

It has been so long since I have blogged I feel a little weird getting back into it. Since I have been gone, I have been working on two projects. One is a Fringe Show and the other a real live commercial project for next Christmas. Although the Christmas project hit a big bump today I hope it will pan out.

I don’t even know where to start.

Hmm. I think I will just share the “Obama musical” with you first and really pick up some hot topics tomorrow. (Please watch it all so you can hear how catchy “Yes We Can” is.)