And now she’s gone and done it!

Don’t ask me how I got there, but this morning I poured myself a cup of ambition and tooled around the 9 to 5: The Musical website. The first thing I noticed was that they had an “LA Audience Member” pull-quote on the homepage. Yikes, I thought: out-of-town-tryout reviews were so bad that they had to go with audience survey quotes on the website?

Lo and behold, though, as the quotes rotated, I realized they were doing something I have been encouraging for months (years!): pull-quotes from multiple perspectives. Critics are just a slice of the perspective pie; what does the marketing director think of the show? The audience member? The blogger? The usher? The board member? The musical theatre actor not in the cast? Critics are important, of course, but at the end of the day, a critic’s opinion is just one opinion – an educated and respected one (pre-sumably) – but a single opinion nonetheless. Books have been blurbed by colleagues and non-critics for years, but for some reason, it’s still mildly taboo for an artist quote sheet to include peer and audience member opinions.

If you’re a young artist with only a few bits of “critical acclaim” to your name, fear not: ask the last conductor you worked with to blurb you, ask your teacher, have the presenter ask audience members. Turn your lack of reviews into an advantage, and give potential presenters and writers a well-rounded picture of what your performances are like.

According to the 9 to 5: The Musical site, the audience reviews were sent to the theatre via text message, which far cooler than the usual audience surveys. Everyone is on their phones during intermissions and after concerts anyway; no need to direct them to a survey on a website to comment.

The rest of the 9 to 5: The Musical site is pretty entertaining, too. There’s an option to send a “Doll E-Card”, for example, which starts with “Well, hello, there” (I have sent three). Also on the “Visit Dolly’s Desk” page, a scary, scary ((amazing)) Dolly talking head tells you to sign up for the e mail list “while the boss ain’t lookin’, of course.” She also sites the “big ol’ sets that fly around” as one of the show’s selling points. Fair enough. The News section is tagged as “Articles, press releases and whatnots. Read ’em now.” Story of my life, Dolly. Story of my life.