“Did you hear the one about the Broadway musical so bad, so horrible, so huge a flop that after it closed, the company that owned the theater sold it to a church group?

No?”

According to cheated customers, Brown Paper Tickets’ customer service is a mess. Phone calls and emails aren’t being returned. If there is a response, it’s automated and provides very little details. Questions over what happened to their funds aren’t being answered. And now, to top it all off, they shut down their phone support.

I accidentally introduced myself to Broadway about five years ago and I couldn’t help but notice how theater culture on Broadway differs from the theater culture that I know: the theater culture in Latvia.

“If audience members are tortured by a play, it should be because the playwright is forcing them to deal with life’s difficult issues.  It should not from lack of craft, or because the playwright is rambling on with nothing of substance to say.”

“Full of that dark humour and nihilist thinking that Beckett is so famous for, it really spoke to me on that day. What I didn’t know, however, was what it was teaching me for our very near future, a.k.a. our present lockdown.”

“While most productions big and small across the country did cancel or postpone, unlike Broadway or the West End’s ominous shuttering, a few productions in Korea have remained open. Korea’s approach elucidates hints of what the Broadway community should expect, or perhaps demand, from theater owners, audiences, producers, and marketing in order to move forward together.”

“There are tons of TikTok accounts dedicated to musical theater already, whether because users are creating theater-themed sounds following the “put a finger down” game trend for people to use, or they’re participating in riff challenges inspired by Christina Aguilera’s iconic one in Burlesque.”

Whether it be said in jest, or not, we as performers have heard the lot!

“Whether they’ve had a short Broadway run or didn’t become as popular as the musicals mentioned above for another reason, there are some true gems that haven’t gotten as much love as they deserve, and I’m hereby making it my duty to tell you about all of them. Or, you know, just a handful of my personal favorites.”

“These are hard times for all of us. For some people it is harder to stay at home, for some, it feels normal like nothing has changed. But however the situation is for each of us, we need to find something to occupy us and our minds.”

“Now more than ever, we need our community to come together and to be the biggest theatre troupe ever created.”

I've talked about how certain villains might have been given a bad rap, but let's be honest, there are plenty of characters that don't get enough of a rap. I was recently watching The Sound of Music, and the thought I kept having was, "Man, Rolfe is kind of a jerk."