After months of waiting, I finally saw Hair on Broadway last night with my best friend Jay. I've been dying to see this show. The music is just amazing, Gavin Creel, Will Swenson and Caissie Levy are favorites of mine and the "fun factor" of the show and engagement with the audience has earned chatter since opening night.
Broadway is one of those events that I tend to keep my phone in my purse. For one, you can't have your phones out during the show as you'll get a stern talking to from the usher. Second, it's just rude to have it out and live tweet when you have performers on stage acting and singing their heart out.
That said, I did do SOME of my normal internet stuff and there's a lot of opportunity moving forward that shows can take advantage of.
- Foursquare: Upon arriving at the theater, I checked in at the Al Hirschfeld Theater. Tips were normal, go see Hair and dance on stage. Would have loved tips or back stories about the theater. What else had played there? has the theater been renovated? All of these theaters in New York have some sort of history to it, would love to know more.
- OMGICU: BroadwaySpace.com has a special Twitter account whenever people spot Broadway celebs on the street-BroadwaySpotted. Integrating this with OMGICU would be awesome and help track all of them.
Social media and Broadway is a world that has done some amazing things this past year and is quickly becoming a perfect example of keeping fans excited about the show before they see it, after they see it, and hopefully encouraging them to buy tickets again.
Hair's social work is represented by Situation Interactive, an agency I have always admired for doing amazing work socially in the entertainment world. Hair has a Twitter account with charity auctions and contests, they set up the awesome Facebook page and recently launched the "Hair eParty" where you can tag the video of the audience dancing on the stage at the end of the show. (I'm still waiting for mine to go live today as I was OBVIOUSLY one of the first ones on the stage--come on!)
Situation has done such a fantastic job, because they're dealing with events that you can't "live tweet" or live update from, a trend that helps other brands events really gain momentum. Bravo to them for it doing it so successfully. I'm excited to see what they do with the upcoming American Idiot show, based off of music by Green Day. (They already have a Twitter and Facebook set up)
Ken Davenport (uber talented producer on Broadway and founder of Broadwayspace.com) wrote this great article in Mashable a few months back. It's all still relevant. Take a read.
