Life's a Pitch: April 2011 Archives

"How does a composer write a work about a failed President (Johnson) and a probable war criminal (McNamarra) without lapsing into propaganda? Does he have to check his personal opinions at the door? If a middle-class white composer writes music about the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, does he risk being patronizing? In writing a historical symphony does he steal the voices of those who actually went through the struggles of the movement, fought and died in Vietnam?"

More information about the piece can be found in this preview video:

Today at noon, Melinda Wagner, one of the Orpheus New Brandenburgs composers, will host a chat on behalf of Spring for Music, a festival I'm working on this year. Oh actually: this is double client-plugging (which somehow sounds dirty?), since I work for Orpheus, too.

My shameless promoting does not mean you shouldn't join us for the chat, though! if you want to embed in your own blog, here's the information:

<iframe src="http://www.coveritlive.com/index2.php/option=com_altcaster/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=b8e8b85b0c/height=550/width=570" scrolling="no" height="550px" width="570px" frameBorder ="0" allowTransparency="true"><a href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=b8e8b85b0c">Orpheus Chamber Orchestra w/ Melinda Wagner</a></iframe>

If you're really attached to Life's a Pitch and want to stay here to participate, here you go:

I was watching some Family Guy on Hulu last night after the tragically disappointing New York City Opera Stephen Schwartz concert thing (if Raúl Esparza bores me--me, who has Loved Him Forever--everyone's in trouble), and saw a preview for this Friends With Benefits movie. Didn't I see this movie this summer? Possibly kind of tipsy? As a joke for a friend's 30th birthday?

Oh wait, yes I did. Were Natalie and Mila both just like, maybe this would be cute? Like wearing matching outfits to middle school?

Anyway, just wanted to let you know about creativity's untimely death. RIP.

Via Some E Cards:

Available for the bargain price of $4.50 on Etsy:

The New York Times reports that good old group sales still reign supreme on the Great White Way:

If Facebooking Broadway is all the rage for shows, the real economic engine remains the sales agents wearing old-fashioned headsets and tapping through decades-old databases to pitch group buyers working with churches and synagogues, schools and businesses, and the "theater ladies" who have kept the Wednesday matinee in business since before Steve Jobs founded Apple.

...Take Group Sales Box Office, founded in 1960 and today one of the most profitable group ticket agencies on Broadway. The company projects sales in excess of $30 million this year, with "Sister Act" (its current top seller with groups) accounting for more than $1 million in tickets so far. Located just off Times Square and across the street from the Broadway revival of Tom Stoppard's "Arcadia" (a show that has not been a group magnet for them), the company and its 22 sales agents may still be version 1.0 in Broadway discounting and promotions, but in terms of results, they are the hare to social networking's turtle. Ticket orders were up 43 percent from Feb. 1 to April 1, compared to the same period in 2010. 

It seems people want to talk to someone who has actually gone to these shows (the article reports that most agents have seen the popular shows several times) rather than just be inundated with self-produced buzz:

The four-minute phone call was enough to induce mental whiplash, but Mr. Campbell and his fellow brokers were pros at the chief duty that some Web sites have only begun to master: aggregating details about the 39 Broadway shows this spring and then differentiating them for longtime customers whose preferences are reflected in databases listing their past purchases. (For example, past groups for the drag musical "La Cage aux Folles" are the prime target for "Priscilla" sales calls.)

My dad will only buy TVs/stereo equipment from this one guy in Stamford, CT. Jack Watkins at County Appliance. "Located on Summer Street," dad texts me now. I tried to buy a TV from Best Buy or whatever once because I had a coupon and their prices were lower, and dad simply wouldn't allow it. He trusts Jack Watkins alone, and County Appliance is where we Ameers buy our TVs. I wonder if a comparable trust can be built through social media. "That person's links are always funny," "the shows that person goes to are always great," "that person seems to have a fabulous life, I will do what they do in an attempt to emulate it," etc.. I can't think of any one person, myself, which may be exactly the point of social media: it's not any one person's recommendation that matters, but rather, a collective, a critical mass, of recommendations that ultimately sways potential buyers.

Additionally, we live in a time where we essentially pick and choose what information we want to receive. Rather than sit down with a newspaper and flip through every section, we set up our Google Readers to personally deliver us the blogs and the sections we already know we want to read. (Sports? Science? What are those things?) The downside of this is obvious, but perhaps the upside is that if we're already reading/following/friending things we like (actually and Facebook-style "like"), then that critical mass probably can recommend to our tastes. Just as you would go see a show on the recommendation of a critic you've grown to trust, just as the groups in the Times article follow the guidance of their sales agent, we follow the social networks we've built around ourselves. "Everyone" was talking about the New York Philharmonic's La Grand Macabre online last spring, but they weren't really; everyone in my network was talking about it, and maybe that was enough.

Has anyone in the performing arts really figured out how to use social media to sell tickets? Clarification: to sell trackable tickets? That is, We Know X Number of Sales Came from Facebook? Reportable to the powers-that-be, like a group sales number? Or all we all just putting as much information out there through as many channels as possible, hoping someone will select it for themselves?

It struck me as odd, when I was walking through that annoying passageway between Port Authority and Times Square, that the revised La Cage Aux Folles posters were billing the show as "It's The Birdcage...on Broadway!" OK, sure, kind of, but it was a play, and then a movie, and then a musical, and then The Birdcage, and then two revivals, so this logic is kind of like when I told Jeffrey Kahane that he "looked just like" (his son) Gabriel Kahane when he played the piano. Well yes, but one came first.

I was distracted, however, from this La Cage tagline nonsense, when I saw that the Priscilla Queen of the Desert posters next it did not feature the three drag queens that the show centers on, but rather three, attractive, genuine females, smiling away, safely welcoming us all to their family-friendly show of sparkles. Maybe that's just one poster, I thought, part of a bigger campaign with all the characters' photos. But no no - the website homepage is the same:


As is the sign at the box office:

Wherefore art thou, cross-dressers? Oh look, here's one!

TRUST ME! That little stick figure with the flowing stick hair is a Man in Drag! She's riding a shoe on the top of a bus! But don't worry, tourists and parents: Priscilla Queen of the Desert is actually about these nice ladies with Marge Simpson hair and natural-born cleavage.

The only other ads I've seen are simply a list of popular songs in the show: "I Say A Little Prayer", "I Will Survive", etc.. Where is Will Swenson, the show's star? Or the truly excellent Tony Sheldon? Nick Adams, who burns more calories during the course of the show than I do in a week's time? Nowhere to be found. Is this because they play men dressed as a women? Let's have them do PSAs, but we're going to put the real ladies on the posters. 

I went and saw the thing last week, thinking to myself perhaps they toned down the movie for the tourists and families. Maybe these three poster girls have big parts! No, gentle readers, no. At one point in the show, a joke about an exploding Tampon is made. At another, "F*** You F*****s" is spray-painted on the bus. One character pops ping pong balls out of her...well, you know. Sex is referenced in nearly ever scene, which is all well and fine, but what, exactly, is the show's marketing team trying to achieve by advertising this musical with three women who have no speaking roles or character names? (All three are just called "Diva".) I would be OK if the poster was just going to be the stick figure in the desert, I suppose, but if we're going with photos, why these three women and not the three (she)male leads? Are you afraid the Mama Mia crowd won't go for it? My memory is a little fuzzy, but I don't remember the hate crime scene in Mama Mia. Did I miss it? Was it during "Fernando"?

As my sister pointed out, this is like if The Rocky Horror Picture Show (which came out, might I add, in 1975) had used a picture of Brad Majors and Janet Weiss' wedding on the posters instead of this:

I guess this would have been the ad campaign for the 2011 Broadway show version:

"It's about two nerds in love...GOTCHA it's about a sweet transvestite from transexual Transylvania and he's building a man for himself!"

What I resent most, really, is not that tourists and families will be "tricked" into the ping pong popping and exploding Tampon jokes. Maybe it's good for them. Better, maybe they'll like it. Gloria Gaynor et al. will get them through. What upsets me is this: if I am going to be soapboxed for 2 hours and 30 long minutes about how people will accept me no matter who I am, who I love, how I dress, or what operations I've had, I had better see some serious drag on posters.



In lighter news, I went to Sister Act tonight, and I would say the highlight was when an actual nun walked up to Ben Vereen at intermission and asked him to autograph her program. I'm sure glad I can check "watch a nun get Ben Vereen's autograph at a musical version of Sister Act" off the bucket list!