A Virtual Venue With All The Trimmings Launches This Week

Imagine this: You're going to perform for an audience of up to XX hundred people. You've sold tickets, you've had a tech rehearsal, your sound and lights look great, and your audience is waiting for you to come on stage looking fabulous, pick up your mic, and get to work. You're excited when you enter the room to see all the faces, interact with them, hear their applause and get the feedback all performers adore. But-wait! You're in your living room, and the audience is in their living rooms!

Bernie Furshpan, the managing partner of the much-missed Metropolitan Room which closed its doors in September 2017, is introducing MetropolitanZoom, a virtual platform that brings LIVE high-end entertainment to audiences with all the production values and services of a show in a nightclub venue, with the exception of food and cocktails. Furshpan's virtual nightclub platform will offer LIVE shows for cabaret, comedy and jazz acts, with a live audience visible to the performer, and audience participation as in a real venue - not just a scrolling "comments bar" as in a Facebook Live, or a streaming show with no opportunity for audience and performer interaction. There are shows already in the works: performers Sarah Zahn - whose FREE event kicks off the series in a virtual champagne ribbon cutting ceremony - Jaycee Driesen, Danny Bacher, and John Minnock will be among the first to use the new platform.

To secure your seat for Sarah Zahn's event on Saturday May 16th at 4pm visit: https://metropolitanzoom.ticketleap.com/

MetropolitanZoom offers the many services of a club experience:

· Graphic Design for digital posters, posted to a calendar

· Marketing to your fans and the general public

· Ticket sales

· A receptionist who admits ticket buyers, comps and press into the room, keeping others out and giving audiences the option of purchasing tickets up until 5 minutes after the show starts

· Announcing the rules of the virtual performance world to the audience and introducing the show

· Conducting tech rehearsals, and running show sound, lighting, video feed; muting audiences, unmuting for applause

· Have contingency plans in place if power goes out, internet is down, and other potential hazards

· Acting as a bouncer for those who break the rules of a virtual intimate club environment.

· Branding MetropolitanZoom as the leader in virtual cabaret, jazz, and comedy club experiences and build a loyal audience for these kinds of intimate club experiences.

The performer is required to:

· Submit a request to the booking department to do a show on our platform

· Meet certain technical requirements: either purchase a pop-up kit that we can recommend, rent a pop-up kit from us, or utilize a suggested studio or stage we are partnered with

· Meet marketing requirements

· Co-produce the show from your location, or a location MZ partners with, while MZ manages the back-end

"It's 'Plan B,'" says Furshpan, "which, we all have painfully learned, is critical to have in place! This isn't meant to replaced live performance in a nightclub. But now we know it's an excellent option and audiences are already demanding high quality from online performance, just in a few short weeks. So, who better to make this happen for you than the people who know how to run a bricks and mortar club; only now it's virtual, without the insurmountable overhead for all those involved. A performer only has two hands and it could take 2-4 people to run your show, depending on how complex it is. In any case, you want to make sure that the show doesn't crash due to unforeseen technical issues, like power and internet outages, computer failures, etc. Our quickly evolving platform for intimate shows is becoming more secure with contingency plans in place. We'll take back our audiences."

For more information, webinars on virtual performing and opportunities, visit: MetropoltianZoom.com.