BroadwayCon 2016 - Experience reports!- Page 11

[jasonf]

Posted: 1/26/16 at 5:45pm

The Why Didn't It Run panel was one of my favorite hours of the con. It went so quickly because it was fascinating. Viagas and Filichia know their stuff and it shows. Both are pretty opinionated and not afraid to speak their minds.  It was definitely a highlight for me.

 

[UnwoundFantasies]

Posted: 1/26/16 at 6:16pm

Wow glad to hear it was so informative! Wish I could've gone. Do you remember what shows they spoke about by any chance?

[shanphelia]

Posted: 1/26/16 at 7:34pm

Overall, I had a good experience at BroadwayCon, and definitely will try it again next year if there are people who are 'draws' for me.   

What I enjoyed the most:

- Panels! Especially the panels featuring creative teams from musicals.  Sunday afternoon was a highlight for me.  Sara Bareilles & ART team discussing the transfer of Waitress to Broadway and the power & implications of having a great, all-female creative lead team.  Then Sara performed "She Used to be Mine" and I was crying!  

 

Also loved the panel of previews of shows coming to Bway.  Discovered I am more interested in "Found" than I thought I would be, and I was blown away by Denee Benton's performance from Natasha & Pierre.  As a huge fan of Phillipa Soo's original performance as Natasha, I've been cautiously curious about Denee, but she nailed it. So glad she's coming to Broadway, and felt like I was witnessing a Bway star being born.  I hope these previews become a mainstay of the con.

 

- The Jukebox.  This was a fun idea -- performers selected 4 songs and audience voted on which of the songs they would sing. It was well executed, fun, and allowed me to see Alysha Umphress singing the hell out of "Someone to Love" and Lena Hall doing the same for "Life on Mars."

 

- The app.  I personally thought the con app was very well designed; it was very intuitive to use and made things like the voting for jukebox very easy.

 

- Random stories and performances sprinkled throughout.  A few people have already mentioned Rob McClure's delightful one-,man Sweeney Todd.  Lesli Margherita's reenactment of her midnight performance of the Little Mermaid was also a highlight for me. 

 

What I enjoyed least:

 

- Line and crowd management.  Many have cited this. This needs to be solved for next year.

 

- Especially line management for the photo/autograph booth.  I think this got better over the weekend, but I was in a very long and confusing line for a photo with Jonathan Groff, and there was a lot of griping going on around me in line.  (At least until we got up there, and he was so delightful to everyone.)

 

- Any game show/audience participation type event I attended was very uneven.  The password section of the variety hour almost ground to a halt when two young attendees (who were very well meaning and nailed everything else) didn't seem to know anything about Ragtime, and so were unable to give clues.

 

What I'm not sure about:

 

- There was definitely a generational divide.  I'm in my early 40s and fortunately found some peers, and I think we all enjoyed the panels and discussions we attended while the younger set was doing the singalong rooms, but then there felt like a disconnect when we all went into the main room for an event and the con was broadcasting tweets, so there were a lot of "scream if you love Elphaba" type things, and a lot of screaming.

 

- I was really missing a focus on musicals that were NOT Hamilton, Rent, Wicked, Phantom.  But it would be great if this could be done in such a way as to introduce new/younger Bway fans to more classic shows. I'd hate there to be more of a generational divide in panels.

 

- Also unsure about the lottery system for autographs; on the whole it seems fair and preferable to long lines, but it was unclear how this was managed on back end, because some people got 10-12 of their lottery picks and others had none.  (I got 2)

 

Just my thoughts!

 

 

Updated On: 1/26/16 at 07:34 PM

[jasonf]

Posted: 1/26/16 at 9:36pm

Yeah, that Ragtime password was kind of painful. My wife leaned over to me and said, "Just say COALHOUSE!"  That should have been WAY faster than it was, but it did give us "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamboat," so it does kind of even out.

The age differences weren't as noticable to me. I only really saw it at the Sondheim meetup and at the Why Didn't It Run panel. I'm in my late thirties - I got a huge kick out of Ben Cameron's reaction to the Rennaisance mosh pit at one of the sing alongs - THAT was the most awkward thing I saw all weekend, by far!

[LizzieCurry]

Posted: 1/26/16 at 9:57pm

I was DYING over that mosh pit. I felt bad for Alysha Umphress but also couldn't stop laughing. It was amazing.

 

The jukebox, overall, though, was pretty fun. I'd never seen Lena Hall perform other than in Hedwig.

 

I actually tweeted "Scream if you're over 30," but they never showed it. HMMMM. (Then I deleted it.)

Updated On: 1/26/16 at 09:57 PM

[jasonf]

Posted: 1/26/16 at 10:06pm

Ha - I thought I saw that tweet! I was too tired to scream. :)

That was another great idea - showing tweets on the screens. I got up there a couple of times :) 

[LizzieCurry]

Posted: 1/26/16 at 10:17pm

Did they?! I tried to wait, but ultimately had to run to the bathroom and told my friend, "If you see my tweet, take a picture," but I'm glad to know that maybe it was up there.

 

Oh, and meant to say that I am totally with shanphelia about how you didn't feel the generational divide until we were all in a bigger room together. It was usually easy to ignore otherwise.

[Pootie2]

Posted: 1/27/16 at 10:29am

Interesting new reports; thanks for sharing.

 

UnwoundFantasies, did the convention management ever debrief their volunteers? Or did you or other volunteers inform management about your experiences and observations like inconsistent fire code crowding at panels? (Side note: Anyone ever involved with managing anything should be required to read The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande.)

 

By this time, I don't think Mischief Management/BroadwayCon/Melissa Anelli ever intended to survey attendees. In retrospect, if attendees for LeakyCon and GeekyCon never had a chance for formal feedback, certainly there was no intention here. In my experience both in creating and taking surveys, a survey is designed before an event and deployed shortly thereafter so the memory stays fresh. There's also no guarantee anyone on their teams are reading any of the feedback that is not on Twitter or Facebook, etc. If anyone wants to share specific feedback with the BroadwayCon people, I'd suggest contacting them by email ([e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail]). shanphelia's post above I think is a great example of listing good, bad, iffy. Maybe they can iron out kinks by next year and take suggestions to heart like more plays, don't hire the trivia quiz guy, use a different room for autograph sessions, and so on.

 

I wondered about the "generational divide" that others had complained about earlier in the thread, which confused me because the panels on the schedule struck me as things tweens wouldn't be interested in. Where were these attendees who say the convention was aimed at 14-year-olds? Now it makes a little more sense if the main stage programming was aimed at younger fans, since that content is overbearingly front-and-center. I don't think anyone has mentioned the closing ceremony, though; how was that?

[LizzieCurry]

Posted: 1/27/16 at 10:42am

Lesli Margherita and Danyel Fulton read from scrips (Lesli made a quip about memorizing lines last-minute) had some banter about how BroadwayCon was hard but fun and WE DID IT! It was pretty cute. 

http://www.playbill.com/multimedia/gallery/lena-hall-lesli-margherita-and-more-close-out-broadwaycon-with-a-bang-382028#1

Lena Hall sang "Give My Regards to Broadway" in a regular musical theatre style and then did a trademark rocker scream for the last half or so of it. A little strange but also worked with her talents!

Then there was a Seasons of Love singalong, and I hate singing in public (even in big singalongs), so I just clapped.

Mostly it was cute but kind of awkward and obviously not well-rehearsed. I didn't expect it to go as smoothly as the opening, though.

Updated On: 1/27/16 at 10:42 AM

[UnwoundFantasies]

Posted: 1/27/16 at 3:40pm

Pootie- The volunteers had a very brief orientation in the days leading up to BroadwayCon that lasted about an hour. They also sent out a "handbook" that didn't really contain much besides maps and general information. That was about it. No one asked our opinions or thoughts after the event was over (though I really wouldn't mind taking a survey and giving feedback). There really weren't people around to give feedback to or to ask questions to during the event if that makes sense? The volunteer coordinators were running around so busy the whole time, so I think even if we had an opportunity to voice our thoughts it would've fallen on deaf ears at that moment. I only volunteered on Friday and Saturday, and my friends and I left early due to the impending blizzard.. a few of us also missed our last shifts due to this (and no one noticed/or cared enough to find out where we were... so you can see the lack of organizational skills right there). Which is also why we left.. we knew we wouldn't be missed or even that our absences would be noticed. That's another thing- we didn't have to check in or check out for our shifts either. Only in the morning when we arrived we had to give our name and our first shift of the day (though I highly doubt anyone crossed checked that to validate it).

In terms of inconsistencies such as the fire code procedures, I think that was just each individual volunteer's call if that makes sense. I tried to do each of my shift to the best of my abilities even without any guidance. But I wasn't working during that room (the panel where no standing room was permitted), so I don't know if someone had given those volunteers prior instruction. 

I think next year will be a lot better. I think everyone, both staff and attendees, will have a clearer grasp on what to expect.

[Pootie2]

Posted: 1/27/16 at 4:18pm

Oh, I did see tweets about the Seasons of Love singalong, LizzieCurry, but I don't know why I wasn't much interested in the closing ceremonies. Maybe there simply wasn't a lot of online buzz--probably due to it being so unpolished as you say. Which strikes me as quite odd. Wouldn't you want an event to end on a perfect high note? Maybe people went missing due to the blizzard.

 

UnwoundFantasies:

Thanks for that. It's disheartening to see that the volunteers didn't receive much guidance or training but also received the brunt of yelling people. I'm a bit more worried that no one bothered to check in with volunteers during the blizzard emergency; what if someone was stuck? Having such a disorganized back-end ensures the front-end can't be entirely smooth as well. Hopefully you're right that management will have learned from this year, though I don't know how greatly they can improve if they're not actively seeking feedback. I expect the line situation on Friday was addressed with ropes because enough people complained, loudly.

 

On another note, BroadwayCon mentioned that they'll be putting some of the convention merchandise on their website. I'm hoping for a playbill just because of the Rent 20th anniversary panel.

[LizzieCurry]

Posted: 1/27/16 at 4:37pm

That was what it felt like to me, though I don't remember if anyone onstage hinted at it -- that it was intended to be bigger, but the blizzard ended up canceling so many guests' plans that they had to rewrite it on the fly and include anyone who was still in the building.

[Pootie2]

Posted: 1/28/16 at 12:02pm

BwayCon tweeted that they ARE planning a post-event survey, so keep an eye out!

 

 

LizzieCurry said: "That was what it felt like to me, though I don't remember if anyone onstage hinted at it -- that it was intended to be bigger, but the blizzard ended up canceling so many guests' plans that they had to rewrite it on the fly and include anyone who was still in the building."

 

That would make sense; I'd give them the benefit of the doubt for missing guests.

Updated On: 1/28/16 at 12:02 PM

[Marianne2]

Posted: 1/28/16 at 12:21pm

I was wondering why the closing didn't seem to be as big of a deal than the opening.  It was supposed to be like 50 minutes to an hour and it was certainly shorter. I think I was surprised that it was only about 5:30 when it was over. Especially since it did start late. I knew Anthony Rapp had to leave to catch a flight back to If/Then on tour. But, it was not anything I was expecting.  Was still a fun experience.  Will definitely consider going next year. 

[atuomala]

Posted: 1/28/16 at 6:18pm

I enjoyed the panels and the lectures, but the market place was a big miss for me. A majority of the 'businesses' who purchased space to set up their booths were clearly not theatre people, and were selling merchandise that they THINK would appeal to someone who likes Broadway and, in a couple instances, they weren't selling Broadway-related merchandise at all (one booth was selling leather and cow hides!) Don't get me wrong, I like Hamilton, The Lion King, and Wicked just like everyone else, but Broadway is so much more than just the musicals that run all year long. I felt like the exhibitors were trying to appeal to a tourist's perspective of Broadway. I was hoping for something more reminiscent of the BC/EFA Flea Market, but it wasn't even close. It was unusual to see absolutely no involvement from any of the theatre companies in New York, and the entire event felt as though they had thrown it together the night before with no year-long planning. The Hamilton panel drew a crazy crowd (which was to be expected) but none of the event staff seemed to know how to handle it. It was as if someone forgot to tell inform them about the hysteria surrounding that production. And the lottery for autographs was a big miss to me. If they simply charged for autographs and you had access to whatever guest you wanted to see, they would have made a profit and more people would have been happy. If they don't make dramatic changes, I will not be attending next year. I do more Broadway-related activities every day than what was done at that convention.

[LizzieCurry]

Posted: 1/28/16 at 6:27pm

The marketplace WAS a little weird (what was with the leather?!), but I appreciated that some of the booths had similar items to the flea market and in a somewhat less chaotic environment. I almost took a picture in the Playbill booth.

[Emmaloucbway]

Posted: 1/28/16 at 11:49pm

I agree about the marketplace, as there were many non-theatre related booths set up there. I did like the Playbill, Lights of Broadway trading cards, Drama Bookshop, and Broadway Records booths. Those were the  booths that reminded me of the flea market the most. 

Overall I enjoyed the Con, though there were definitely a few kinks I would work on improving for next year (besides the obvious last-minute changes to accommodate missing guests because of the blizzard). 

Loved the panels, especially the SmashTrax, Untold Stories of the Palace, and the panel on Musical Heroines of the 1960s. 

The MainStage events were a lot of fun as well (loved Something Rotten and Disaster panels, along with the Variety Hour and Broadway Feud).

I agree that Trivia was very disappointing, I wasn't a fan of the Mamma Mia! "rifftrax" and also didn't like how participants had to text in the answer. I wonder what the trivia would've been like if there was no blizzard. Eventually the movie stopped working and the room turned into a giant The Schuyler Sisters singalong so I left.

I'm also hoping for a better way to handle autographs/photobooth. Some people won the lotto for multiple sessions and I was disappointed that I didn't get any. I would willingly wait in a line/pay money for a session, and I think others would be willing to do that as well. 

I had a wonderful time and am already planning to go back next year! 

[LaciePi]

Posted: 1/29/16 at 12:15am

No one has talked about their autograph or photo session.  Does anyone have an interesting story to tell?

 

Lesli Margherita was offering any photo pose.  Anybody do any fun poses with their actor? 

 

 

[Pootie2]

Posted: 1/29/16 at 12:44am

atuomala said: "I enjoyed the panels and the lectures, but the market place was a big miss for me. ..... I do more Broadway-related activities every day than what was done at that convention."

 

Well, that's the crux of the "disparate audience" problem. If 25% of con attendees were locals and have much more "real Broadway" (and Flea Market) experience than the majority of tourists, expectations aren't going to overlap on some important points. Although it sounds like the panels and workshops were the best content for locals, at least. As for the marketplace, the first convention rarely has great vendors, so hopefully next year will be better and more theatre-related.

 

Speaking of workshops, I don't think anyone has talked specifically about that either?

[LizzieCurry]

Posted: 1/29/16 at 1:05am

Do most of the people in this thread skew a little older? I haven't mentioned the autographs and photos since they didn't interest me, and I'm not a performer, so I didn't bother with the workshops.

 

I guess if I were an out-of-town theatre nerd kid I'd have loved the marketplace. Similar to how I reacted to that shop that used to be under the Marriott during my first visit to New York!

[atuomala]

Posted: 1/29/16 at 1:47am

I felt a tremendous disconnect between the convention and what is presently happening on Broadway. Only the tourist-y shows were really being celebrated, and shows like The Color Purple, Allegiance, Finding Neverland, A View From The Bridge, etc weren't represented at all. I think the out of towners enjoyed the con more than the locals, if only because they aren't as exposed to Broadway like some of us are. They need to figure out who they're trying to appeal to. I stayed clear from all the 'sing-a-longs' because they just seemed like a room full of teen-20 somethings screaming. I attended the Phantom of the Opera Panel and the I Am What I Am: Gender in Theatre Panel which I loved. In fact, I would have been more satisfied if it was just about the panels.

[Pootie2]

Posted: 1/29/16 at 11:05am

LizzieCurry, I have no doubt that this board skews both older and geographically more limited (i.e. locals) than the majority of the population that visits Broadway annually and that went to the convention. But it's important to capture both sides of the "fandom": I agree with earlier posts that say the the younger attendance at the convention is actually good for Broadway in the long run, but it's true that if theatre including plays is an art form that builds upon itself as well as promotes cultural dialogue, the missing content has to be represented too.

 

atuomala, the fact that Finding Neverland has been surviving solely on tourists (being shut out from the Tonys and having mixed reviews) indicates it's a tourist-y show, doesn't it? Though I'm curious how show panels and tables are solicited or programmed. Are people invited but perhaps decline, or were certain shows simply not invited at all? Salonga and Leung were apparently present, but that Allegiance otherwise wasn't represented in programming is unfortunate, especially given Takei's social media presence and experience with conventions.

 

Otherwise, I think it's pretty clear even with the disparity that BroadwayCon was trying to appeal to both sides, but the execution might be improved. It's not like the panels and workshops, where at least the former has been getting universal praise, will be cut in the future. The opening number stood out as appealing particularly to the "outcast Glee" high school student, I suppose, but I don't know how that can be shifted to an older theatre audience or if it's even worthwhile to try that. As someone else said earlier, with a large fan convention where there is enough variability in content, it's up to the con attendees to make their own experience. If you only enjoyed the panels, were there enough to justify the ticket price? I guess that's the real question.

[Marianne2]

Posted: 1/29/16 at 1:26pm

There were a couple of people at the marketplace selling stuff from their Etsy shops. Those were Broadway related.  So, I didn't care that they were there. I actually did purchase stuff from both. 

 

I went to the autograph line 3 times. Only long line that I could see being a problem was for Anthony Rapp.  Unless I just happened to get in the other 2 at good times and was actually in the sections near the beginning.I'm not sure what else people are looking for in terms of opinions on this. Nothing went horribly wrong.

[Kad]

Posted: 1/29/16 at 1:42pm

I honestly don't know any locals who attended this event in a context not related to their jobs. Why would New York theatre fans, who have access to not just the shows but also many unique events year-round, shell out that kind of money to attend a more hectic, condensed, and commodified version of what they already have access to?

Updated On: 1/29/16 at 01:42 PM

[LizzieCurry]

Posted: 1/29/16 at 1:47pm

That would be why there were so many out-of-towners, according to that NYT article.

 

I live in Queens and the friend I met up with there lives a couple stops away from the Hilton. But I knew I wanted to be there for the first one.

Updated On: 1/29/16 at 01:47 PM