BROADWAY RECALL: [title of show] Surfs The Internet To Broadway

Welcome to BROADWAY RECALL, a bi-monthly column where BroadwayWorld.com's Chief Theatre Critic, Michael Dale, delves into the archives and explores the stories behind the well-known and the not so well-known videos and photographs of Broadway's past. Look for BROADWAY RECALL every other Saturday.

If the Vineyard Theatre's Off-Broadway production of [title of show] had concluded its run in 1986, or even 1996, the story of the musical where composer/lyricist Jeff Bowen and bookwriter Hunter Bell played themselves creating the musical that the audience was watching most likely would have ended right there.  The creative partners would have patted each other on the back for a job well done, taking their unlikely hit from the New York Musical Theatre Festival to a stint at a significant Off-Broadway theatre, and perhaps would have plunged into a new project while anticipating regional productions.  Their castmates, Heidi Blickenstaff and Susan Blackwell, director/choreographer Michael Berresse and music director/arranger/pianist Larry Pressgrove likewise would have followed career paths to new ventures.

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But it was October of 2006, and while the Internet had firmly established itself as a part of most Americans' everyday lives, so was New York's theatre community feeling out new ways for the web to stimulate further interest in live theatre.  Sure, it was becoming standard for Broadway productions to have their own official web sites featuring video highlights, but on August 12, 2007, Bowen and Bell did something that had never been done before.

They posted a video on YouTube announcing that [title of show] was coming to Broadway.  They didn't know when and they didn't know how, but they were going to get it done.  With Berresse directing and Blackwell, Blickenstaff and Pressgrove getting into the act, an Internet series called the [title of show] show was born.  Just as the musical had the quintet playing themselves as they chronicled the creation of the show, the regularly posted videos chronicled comic adventures as they sought a path to Broadway.  Celebrity guests soon began making appearances and the [title of show] show become the place for Broadway's stars to be seen.

(CLICK THIS PHOTO TO PLAY THE VIDEO!)

"The internet was the major factor in keeping the show on the radar," says Jeff Bowen.  "The buzz picked up immediately when we announced in the first episode of the [title of show] show that we were going to open on Broadway, even though there really was nothing planned. We continued to make episodes because lots of people wanted to see more and we were having a creative blast making them.  We rounded up some theatre and TV celebs to do cameos to up the traffic from users.  Soon, the viewers started getting invested in our campaign to get to Broadway and that helped pique the interest of some prominent financial investors, theatre owners, etc.  Very quickly after we launched the [title of show] show, other shows saw its success and started to jump on board with original video features as marketing ploys; Xanadu's Cubby Bernstein Tony campaign, for example.  And the great thing is that the [title of show] show lives in perpetuity on the internet, long after the Broadway production closed, and continues to serve as a marketing tool for the licensing rights to the show."

But the Internet exposure didn't stop there.  When In The Heights made its move from Off-Broadway to on, the [title of show] cast posted this opening night gift:

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So moved was Lin-Manuel Miranda that when [title of show] joined them on Broadway, the In The Heights gang responded with this welcome:

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The proof that all this Internet exposure was working could be witnessed at the stage door of the Lyceum Theatre on July 5^th, 2009, after [title of show]'s first preview performance.  Here was a musical with no name stars playing in a theatre on the "wrong" side of Broadway, and yet this video, shot by John Kazlauskas, shows the kind of autograph-seeking crowd gathered normally reserved for nationally known celebrities.

(CLICK THIS PHOTO TO PLAY THE VIDEO!)

"I think that first preview on Broadway was truly overwhelming, "says Hunter Bell.  "It's one thing to track YouTube clip viewers and numbers.  It's another to see that translate into real people at the stage door.  What was so unique and fulfilling about the [title of show] show was that it was serving a few purposes:  it was definitely a marketing tool to keep the show and the brand alive, but it was also this incredible creative outlet for us to explore and expand these characters that had a life on stage in a completely different medium.  Many people have said they think it was such a brilliant marketing strategy.  I think it was but it was also this honest documentation of our journey and the struggles and joys of getting to Broadway.  Audiences were able to see that in real time and in this day of reality television and DVD extras, I think we just hit on something right."

Thank you to Jennifer Tepper for her help with this article.

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