"Broadway Bullet," a new, weekly theatre podcast that aims to cover the entire spectrum of the New York theatre scene, launched on Wednesday, August 16th with the first of 8 episodes dedicated to covering the New York Musical Theatre Festival.
"There is just such a wealth of great material there," said producer and host, Michael Gilboe. "The festival puts on over 40 productions of various sizes, and with all the shows being musicals, there is a lot of variety to make what is essentially a radio program interesting."
The show will mix up interviews with the show's creators and participants with songs from the shows in the festival. "Most of the shows have some really good demos of the songs from their musicals," said
Kris Stewart, Executive Director of NYMF. "This is another great avenue for the participating shows to promote their hard work."
Gilboe sees another advantage, "Getting New Yorkers to the shows is one thing, but the podcast gives a platform for people around the United States, even the world to discover all the great talent emerging on many small and medium-sized stages in Manhattan." He added, "I'd love to hear that a regional, college, or community theatre presented one of the festival's shows because they discovered it on the podcast."
"Broadway Bullet" is aiming to cover all of the shows in the festival during the eight weeks of coverage. "It's a lofty goal, and I hope they make it," says Stewart, "There are so many shows, and so many great stories here... it will be a fascinating record of the whole festival if they can indeed get it all."
After the festival concludes, "Broadway Bullet" will continue on as a weekly theatre podcast. The show will cover straight plays and musicals on and off Broadway. "We're aiming to be an audio version of what Theatre Week Magazine was," Gilboe said. The show will interview all types of personalities and continue playing songs from musicals heading to the Great White Way, or nearby.
For those still unfamiliar with podcasting, it is simply an audio file that can be downloaded and played anywhere you can play an mp3 file. Listeners can enjoy the programming on their computer or iPod. When they "subscribe" for free, their computer will automatically check for new episodes, and automatically download them as they become available. If listeners have an iPod or iTunes, they can subscribe to an enhanced version of the feed that has "chapters" that allow them to move around to the segments that most interest them and has pictures to go along with the different parts of the show.
Listeners can subscribe to "Broadway Bullet" by going to
www.BroadwayBullet.com or searching "Broadway Bullet" on iTunes.
BroadwayWorld Radio will also begin playing the program every Tuesday/Thursday at 8 PM.
