Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #719: Broadwaycon 2020

Episode Date: March 6, 2020

My eldest daughter and I traveled to New York City to attend Broadwaycon. This podcast talks all about it and how it made me rethink how I do Magic design.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, so I just returned from a trip with my daughter to New York City. So I did a podcast on this last year. So Rachel and I for the second year went to BroadwayCon. So for those who might be old-time listeners of the podcast, Rachel is my oldest daughter. She's off in college in Chicago right now studying theater. And so something we did last year that we did again this year is there is an event in New York City called BroadwayCon, which is a convention dedicated to Broadway. Anyway, we had a real good time last year.

I did a podcast all about it last year. We went again, another podcast. So one of the things that's interesting to me is, people who listen to me all the time probably know this, I'm very holistic. I believe that things all connect together, that a lot of big breakthroughs in creativity come from learning things from different areas and then applying them to your area. So I, one of the things, the way I, the sort of the, the way I always look at BroadwayCon from a podcast standpoint

is to talk about what I learned, how will it affect magic, is sort of my take. It's like, okay, I'm going to go, I'm going to learn things about something that isn't magic, but how can I apply a lot of that? Now, it's important to understand, I, I'm going to go, I'm going to learn things about something that isn't magic, but how can I apply, apply a lot of that? Um, now it's important to understand, I think I mentioned this last year. Um, I grew up a theater, uh, a theater kid. I did a lot of plays. I listened to

a lot of musicals. Um, it's something my daughter and I share a love of theater. Um, so I, it's a lot of fun to go. Um, so this year, we decided to make one small change from last year. This year, we went a day early so that we could go see a play on Broadway. We're going to BroadwayCon. Last year, we didn't see a play. So this year,

we decided to go a day early. And then as sort of her big Hanukkah gift, we told Rachel I would take her to a Broadway play of her choice. So she had all sorts of options. So she ended up choosing Beetlejuice. So real quickly, for those that don't know this, they adapted the movie by Tim Burton into a play, a musical. It is a very interesting, one of the things as an artist that's interesting to me is,

very interesting. One of the things as an artist that's interesting to me is it is, while clearly you can see the influence, there are elements of the story from the movie in the play, but the play is really its own story. It really, you know what I'm saying, like, yes, there's overlapping of characters. I mean,

it's not that you can't get the source material, but they really reinvented it and made it something that was uniquely its own thing as a play. And it stars Alex Brightman as Beetlejuice. I'll get to him in a second. I see him on a panel later on in this thing.

Anyway, it was, Rachel had chosen it. So one of the funny things is that before I see a musical, I want to know the music. And Rachel wants to experience it for the first time in the moment. So I got the Broadway album and I was listening to it nonstop so I could learn all the songs. Super catchy, a lot of fun. If you guys like musicals and have never listened to Beetlejuice, I highly recommend it. The musical lyrics are great. It's a lot of fun. And the other interesting thing was it's not often that I get to listen to a cast album

where I didn't go to get to see that exact cast perform it. I've not, I mean, I have, I think technically, when I was a kid, my parents took me to see Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, I believe. But I've not seen a lot of Broadway plays on Broadway. I mean, I know a lot of Broadway albums and stuff, but. So anyway, this is the first time where I got to see a Broadway show in which I'd listened to the album,

and the cast from the album was the ones performing it. So that was actually quite cool. But anyway, so we did that. We saw Beetlejuice. And one of the things that might take away from Beetlejuice, my little magic element here, is one of the things that's very interesting is one of the tensions that's very interesting is one of the tensions

whenever we revisit a world is how much are we capturing of the original thing and how much are we making it something of its own now this is a little bit different from from adapting a play from a movie but it is interesting in watching and seeing how they made real effort to definitely have things pulled from the movie. And some of it was lines they said or props. There's a piece of art in the movie that in the movie comes alive and becomes something. And it's a piece in the play that gets used but in a different context. But you recognize it.

You're like, oh, it's that piece. I recognize that from the movie. There's a lot of that recognition. And I think when you're making, when you're doing a return, there's a gentle balance between wanting to have enough recognition that it feels like the world, that you're delivering on what people expect.

But enough new things that it feels like that it's not just you know, that there's something about it that has a life of its own like Theros Beyond Death for example a fine example right now is it's a set in which, look

we're referencing Theros, there's a bunch of mechanics from Theros, although to note, like the two big mechanics that are returning, Devotion and Constellation Devotion was at its strongest in Theros Although, to note, like the two big mechanics that are returning, devotion and consolation, you know, devotion was at its strongest in Theros and got weaker as the set— I think Journey into Nyx, only the gods, I think, had devotion. There wasn't much devotion in Journey into Nyx.

A little bit, but not a lot. And meanwhile, consolation only exists in Journey into Nyx. So, for example, we brought back two different things, but those two things had not really coexisted in any large amount. So, you know, it was neat to sort of say, hey, look, here's gods, here's devotion,

here's constellation, you know. We have a few cards that nodded at heroic. We definitely did things that nodded at things that you might recognize from before, but we put them in a different context. We added in the underworld and escape, and there's a whole element that wasn't there before. So I feel like it both is sort of living up to the original

and making you feel like, oh, this is Pharos, but inventing itself and doing new things with it. And that's something that, like my takeaway from Beetlejuice was they did such a good job of feeling like, yes, this is Beetlejuice was they did such a good job of feeling like, yes, this is Beetlejuice. Yes, I recognize elements of Beetlejuice. This is not some brand new thing. But it had its own energy

and just the way the characters were done, it really had a sensibility about it that is different, that felt like its own thing. And that is something that I, like I said, I hope Theros has the same response, so far looking pretty good, that Beetlejuice had for me, where it definitely feels like, okay, it's Beetlejuice, but not the Beetlejuice I know exactly. It's a little bit different.

Okay, so starting Friday. So the convention, so for those who don't know, if you didn't listen to my BroadwayCon podcast last year, it's a smaller convention. I'm used to going to San Diego Comic-Con where you have 125,000 people there. This is a much smaller convention. There is stuff they do. There's a giant ballroom they do some stuff, and that's where they tend to put the stars and things,

the things that draw more people. And then there are a lot of panels that are off in little rooms, and those panels, you could always get a seat. It's a small enough convention that, like, for example, a lot of the conventions I go to, you have to go get in line ahead of time, and you might not even get in if you don't get ahead of time in line. Where here, there was nothing. And even the giant ballrooms, you could always walk in.

Maybe you get a seat in the back. Maybe you're not getting a seat up front. But there's no such thing as a panel or something that you couldn't get into, which is a sign of a smaller thing. Having sat in many lines, it's kind of nice. It's fun. As someone who's done a lot of conventions, this was the fifth BroadwayCon. So it's really, really fun to sort of get to experience something at a younger stage.

And so it was something I enjoyed quite a bit. Okay, so the first thing we had done is Rachel, like I said, she's studying theater. And so one of the things that she's really thinking about now, she's a sophomore, is what is she doing when she gets out of school? You know, what is she doing? So one of the big things is she really was interested in getting a better sense of some of the business and, you know, understanding different aspects of theater. So she had asked if we could do,

on Friday there was a thing called Industry Day, which was a little more money, but it was something more geared toward people who work on Broadway rather than just fans of Broadway. A lot of the later panels I'll talk about were very much geared toward fans of Broadway. This was geared toward people fans of Broadway. A lot of the later panels I'll talk about were very much geared toward fans of Broadway. This was geared toward people working on Broadway. And so Industry Day was six panels.

It was, I think it started at nine and went to one. So I'm going to talk briefly on some of these. And I have a lot of panels to get through because we saw a lot of stuff. So I'm going to buzz through a few of these. I'm going to hit the ones that there's a little more something to say about. Not that these weren't all good panels. If I breeze by a panel, it's more that just, it did inspire me to say a particular thing.

That's all. Okay, so there were six panels for Industry Day. First was a thing called Culture Clash, where they brought a woman from England named Dr. Kristen Sedgman. And she had written a book talking about the theater experience and how people perceive theater. And one of the ideas that's very interesting is when you ask people what is theater supposed to be and what do you expect of a theater environment, meaning, you know, what is the etiquette that you expect of a theater? One of the things that she was talking about, and she had done a lot of research on it,

was one of the problems with that, I mean, from a business standpoint, that Broadway is dealing with is the main audience of Broadway, I believe, are middle-aged and older professional white women are the core audience on Broadway. And one of the things that the business is always trying to do is they want to expand, right? They want to appeal to more people. They want to appeal to younger people. They want to appeal to a wider demographic of people. And one of the things that she was talking about is that one of the biggest stumbling blocks right now to that is just kind of a lot of the behavior that is sort of expected in theater is very geared toward a certain audience. And part of what she was trying to say is

if Broadway wants to expand its inclusivity, they have to sort of look at a lot of things about themselves. One of the big things is sort of what is expected of the audience and understand that certain expectations push you in certain directions. And this was, so for me, for magic, one of the things that we're always thinking about is there's a core magic audience. We love our core magic audience. Obviously we want to continue making them happy. But we're also trying to branch out ourselves, right?

One of the things about Magic that one of our goals is, you know, I love the audience we have. And once again, no way do I want to get rid of the audience we have. But I would love for Magic to keep expanding out to more audiences. And from a business standpoint for us, like, hey, we want as many people playing Magic as possible. And my whole take as the head designer is Magic is an awesome awesome game. I believe

it's the best game ever. Magic is an amazing game and I would love to expose that game to more people. I think that I think a lot of people get intimidated by it because when you first hear about it it's like oh it's a game 27 years old with 20,000 cards and it's complicated.

You know, all this stuff that really is intimidating. But what I find is when you get people to actually sit down and play it, and I've taught a lot of people that one of them, like, when I teach people who have no idea what magic is and I'm teaching them for the first time, one of the things that I find very interesting is one of the surprises I always get is I'm going, this is fun. Like, yeah, yes, it is fun. It's a fun game.

I think people get so intimidated that when they actually sit down and do it, that they get caught up in the game itself. Like, wow, this is a really fun game. And that's one thing to always remember is I don't think, I mean, magic has a certain complication to it. And obviously there's an audience that it's just more complicated than magic, that it's more complicated than the audience wants. But the core of magic, the basic part of

magic is not that complicated. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you start adding in lots of rules and lots of cards and it can get quite complicated. But the basic rules, when I teach somebody to play with just a basic deck and stuff, it's, the core of the game is actually not, not nearly as complicated as people think it is. And one of the things that really, when I listen to this panel,

that really hit home for me is, hey, part of bringing in other audiences is understanding the environment that you have and that you want to make sure that your current audience is inviting of future audiences. And, you know, anyway, it really hit home to me. I listened to her talk about Broadway and what they want.

And it's funny, one of Rachel's big pet peeves as someone studying theater is that she really feels Broadway could be more inclusive of more people, like, geographically, and that Broadway is very, very concentrated in thinking about, like, butts in seats. But there are a lot of audiences that appreciate Broadway that are fans of Broadway that don't live in New York, some of which never travel to New York. And I think one of Rachel's passions is the idea of how do you bring theater to everybody?

Anyway, sorry, going off on a fight. Okay, next was the evolving role of critics in theater. They had, I think, Jesse Green and Helen Shaw were two critics. I think Jesse Green and Helen Shaw were two critics. I think Jesse Green's of the New York Times, and Helen Shaw was of the New Yorker, I think. And one other magazine that I'm liking on. But anyway, they were critics,

and the panel was all about talking about what role criticism plays. What's the role of critics? And the thing that, to me, is interesting is one of the things about magic criticism, and I've made this comment before, is I would love to see more people analyzing magic on more vectors. Like, for example, if you want to know the power level of the cards or what to draft, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a lot of people going through sets and saying, this is a strong card, this is a weak card. Great. The thing that I would love to see more of

is people sort of analyzing it in larger context. One of the things that criticism does very well, and they talked a lot about in this panel, was the role of how the critic can put context to what's going on. I would love people that have some historical sense of magic design and talk about what are we doing for the first time or how

is this mixing things in ways you haven't seen before. I would love some more analytical stuff. You know, giving some sort of context to what's going on and what the design is doing. But anyway. Next, advertising's role in audience development. Sandy Block,

Cara Carothers, Maria Martinez, Jamal Parham, Eric Peitenberg, and Alitha Stevens. I said your name wrong. I apologize. So what they did is they had a lot of people from a lot of different ad companies talking about how does advertising help with getting an audience? And so one of the big things about Broadway is

advertising and marketing is really important. And there's a really good panel I will get to a little later talking about marketing. But the big thing here was making, this panel was making the point of how you market impacts your audience. And that's something we think about all the time, which is we want to make Magic a better game for,

you know, we want more people playing. And part of that is where do you advertise? How do you market? Where do you go? You know, part of getting a new audience is just getting to the point where the audience is. Like, yeah, yeah, we can go to, you know, the places our community hangs out. We can talk on our website or,, yeah, we can go to, you know, the places our community hangs out.

We can talk on our website or, you know, we can advertise. And, but, I mean, and that lets us talk to the existing community, which is great. But we're also looking, how do we expand beyond that? So next was new stories equal new audiences. Kevin McCollum is a producer that's been involved in all sorts of things. I did not write down his, I know he was involved in Rent and I think in Avenue Q and a whole bunch. I mean, his resume was crazy impressive. I feel bad. I can't remember everything that he had done.

But one of the things that he really stressed was that he had been the champion of new voices, that he really is somebody who's going out there and trying to find other people who have something to say that we haven't heard from before. And he really, he's kind of known for taking a lot of risks. Although interestingly, he's been very successful. Um, and my takeaway from there is the idea that risks and success the idea that the safe thing to do is do non-risk things I think is a

false idea like in my job my job is to take risks part of what makes magic exciting is that we're doing stuff and we're doing stuff and we're doing stuff we haven't done before. I mean, we're also returning things and doing things we haven't done before.

But, you know, that, for example, I mean, I just take Throne of Eldraine as a good example, which was, I really, really believed in this idea of doing a fairy tale set. And the problem, you know, the feedback I got all the time was, you know, does our audience want that?

And I said, A, yes, I think they did. But B, it also expanded our audience. We're trying to find new audiences. And I think that there's a lot of people, like one of the things to me about fairy tales is they're fantasy. When magic is looking at more things things more top-down spaces to play in well we should be playing in like yes yes we can stretch beyond fantasy you know

touching and horror and stuff but um why not play like essentially it's in our own backyard like fairy tales are playing in now given it's high fantasy it's a little different from you know we do do high fantasy but it's a it's a certain area that we don't do all the time, but we can do. And there's a lot of people that really were saying, look, why take risks in this area? And whatever, go through my whole thing of pushing double-faced cards or split cards or hybrid mana or, you know, making the Ravnica structure where only four of the ten guilds exist in the set. Whatever it is, whatever I'm trying to push, you know, Zendikar was a land-focused set.

I mean, there's all sorts of things where a lot of the successes I had came from me saying, you know, I'm not going to sit on my laurels. We're going to do different things. We're going to do things we haven't done before. And watching this interview really sort of hit home in that, you know, I kind of want to be the magic

with this guy who's been to Broadway, which is being, finding the new, and also his new voices is, I'm always looking to find new designers. That's why I love doing the great designer search. You know, I,

my idea is, if someone has a good idea, I don't care who they are. You're, you know, I, I'm, my idea is if someone has a good idea, I don't care who they are. Your job, you know, like if somebody, for example, works in another section of the company, but gives me a good idea because they're logic, because they work at Wizards. And it's a great idea. I won't, you know, I embrace good ideas and no matter where they come from, because good ideas are good ideas. But anyway, this interview really hit home for me as far as some of the things I already value importance. Next, so there's creativity, environment, and the fan.

And then there's one called the future of storytelling. So those are the last two panels. They both got into talking about how do we tell different stories and how do we embrace technology. And, you know, one of the things that's really interesting for me is how do you make a magic set?

Part of that is stuff like, are there new ways to do things we haven't done before? Are there new technologies to use? One of the things you'll see in the future is, as printing, for example, as printing technology changes and gives us more options for what we are able to do, it has really opened up the doors for us to experiment and try new things. And a lot of the fun of exploring new spaces is embracing new technology. And

there's a lot of things on the cutting edge. Some of them will take a little while to get to, but there's a lot of really cool things that we're either just able to do or we'll be able to do soon, soon in quotes, that I think really will be game changers in how magic is. Okay, after the Industry Day, we continued on. So the next panel we went to, which was not industry, was called Beyond Broadway, The Pleasures and Promises of Musical Theater Across America. So there was a woman named Stacey Wolf who wrote a book named this. And she was talking about her trips across America, sort of looking at musical theater, not just professionally on Broadway, but, you know, a lot of, the vast, vast majority of musical theater is done by schools and by community theaters.

And that, you know, while shows might begin on Broadway, they go on and they do a lot. They really sort of live on around the world. The Broadway just sort of starts things. And she talked a lot. There's what's called a junior program. The people that sell scripts. I'm blanking on what it stands for. I think it's MTI.

Musical Theater or something. The idea is they do a thing called this junior program where they take famous plays and they make hour versions of them. They make half hour versions and hour versions. Half hour versions are for elementary school. Hour versions are more like for junior high.

And the idea is take a famous play and just condense it down a little bit so you get the essence of the play but a little lighter and shorter so younger audiences could perform it. And one of the things that's really interesting that she talked a lot about was how many people get touched by musical theater and how, and like I said, I, growing up, you know, I did a whole bunch of musicals, whether it was in high school or I also, the Cleveland Playhouse was when I grew

up. I used to do stuff at the Cleveland Playhouse. You know, there's a lot of different things going on and that the imbuing of music and how it enhances things. And the thing that really makes me think too for Magic is the idea of how I think it's very easy to get caught up in like the pro tour and sort of high end premiere play. But a lot of what Magic is of high-end premiere play but a lot of what magic is isn't just premiere play it is the um kitchen table play and the casual play

and so i really you know it was important to me to really reckon like realize that just like yes the pro tour might be where we where decks get premiered or something but there's really a lot of the casual play that's where the vast majority of play happens. Like, the premiere play is this tiny, tiny, tiny, and it gets a lot of attention, but it's a tiny bucket in the overall experience. And just being aware that the overall experience of Magic really is, you know, if I took a trip around the States to write my book, it's really talking about all the different kinds of play and where it all happens.

Okay, next was my favorite Broadway ad campaign. So, I keep forgetting her name. Aaliyah Stevens, who I talked about earlier, Ann Gordon, Jamie Chu, Donta Gianetta, Callie Goff, Brian Dratch, and Julie Bortz. These were all people that worked for a company called Spotco. So, Spotco is an advertising company that specializes in Broadway musicals. And what they did is each member talked about the area they worked in and then an ad campaign that they were

very proud of. And I won't get on the details there just because I have a lot of things to talk about. But it was really, really neat to see how they embraced their marketing and their advertising and, you know, whether it's letting Audrey 2, the plant from Little Shop of Horrors, have his own Twitter, or doing a giant day for Mean Girls where Tina Fey was serving cheese fries, or figuring out a way where they can cross-promote Beetlejuice with different restaurants across the city so people are all offering Beetlejuice with different restaurants across the city, so people

are all offering Beetlejuice-themed things in their restaurant. But anyway, it was really fascinating. I know Rachel, I think this might have been Rachel's favorite panel, just watching how they imbued all the, how the advertising really brought

things to life and really brought the themes to life. And it really hammered home to me about all the marketing we do and all the, like, I make the sets. I'm not the person in charge of marketing, but I work with our marketing people. And it is neat to see the same kind of thing of how marketing can really take,

can take what we've done and make it shine even more. And it just really reinforced the importance of marketing. So, go marketing team. Next, expanding Broadway's impact, education outreach programs. Yvette Kojic, Olivia Atlas, Sean Tessin, Alexandra Santiago-Juru, Lisa Mitchell, and Kaylee McAllister. So this was all about people who worked on things of using theater as a means as education. Very interesting.

One of the things that magic does is we like to use magic where we can for education. We like to work with education. There are a lot of magic clubs and a lot of stuff done in schools. And the one nice thing about magic is there's a lot of skills in magic that are very valuable skills to learn, whether it's comprehension, whether it's strategic thinking, vocabulary. You know, there's a lot of things that you can learn from magic. And there's a lot of teachers that really use magic in cool and interesting ways. And we try to promote that whenever we can. Okay, and then the last thing on Friday was called BroadwayCon Jukebox.

That is where they got Broadway stars up on stage. The star gave three or four choices for a song. We, the audience, through voting got a picket, and then they sang it. The thing I like about that is the fact that we could vote from our seats on our phone. I'm always on the lookout for

how to enhance magic through digital means. I think that's really important. It's something I'm always thinking about. I mean, it adds an extra element to the game in a way that I think is cool. Okay, next, Saturday. So Saturday, what is immersive? So Anthony Logan Cole, James Stewart, Whitney Sprayberry,

Edward Mielkreist, Devin Compton, and Kelly Bartnik. So there's a thing called immersive theater where the idea is rather than you, the audience, sit in a seat separate from the actors, what we call proscenium stage, you, the audience, have some ability to interact with the experience in a way that's very different. So, for example, you might be able to walk around through a house, and there's actors in the house that are acting, that there's a story being told, but you, the audience, get to interact with them and get to sort of choose where you go.

And there's two different types of immersive theater, they explained. One is what's called sandbox, where it's kind of like, we've invented this world, you go explore it however you want to, and you can see whatever aspects you want to see of it. And then there's one where they call, what was the other one called? It was called Dark Something. Dark Track? I don't remember the name exactly.

But the idea is, whether you're aware of it or not, there's a progressive story that you're sort of pulled along with, and either subtly or not so subtly, they're making sure that you see things in a certain order. Anyway, it was very interesting. Like, one of the things that it reminded me of is, one of the things about Magic is sort of formats, is how do you play Magic? What is Magic?

And, like, like taking something like commander which obviously is the rage right now like there's a lot of things about commander that are very different you know there's a social aspects to it there is you know like magic for the longest time most people played two player it was one-on-one and all of a sudden now here's this really large format that's not about one-on-one i mean you can't play one-on-one but it's more about playing three four you know more people in it and all the a sudden now here's this really large format that's not about one-on-one. I mean, you can't play one-on-one, but it's more about playing three, four, you know, more people in it and all the interactions of the people

and the social capital. And there's a lot. It's interesting to see as I look at sort of how magic is changing. The same way that you look at theater is like, theater can be so much. Magic can be so much. And I'm always

excited to watch people play and experiment with magic and that one of the cool things about magic is that it's flexibility lets you the audience sort of reshape it and make it what you want and so i am it really made me realize that there's a lot like i think there's a lot of cool opportunities in magic that stretch beyond the normal traditions of what magic has been. And I'm excited to see that stuff happen. Okay. Then, the next one. So then Rachel and I broke up for one panel.

She watched a panel called The First Pitch. It was an advertising agency talking about how they, I think they came up with the Broadway musical on the spot and then walked through the process of what they would do to advertise it, which Rachel was fascinated by.

I think Rachel was very interested in the advertising aspect and the marketing aspect of theater. I went and saw Beetlejuice. So Alex Brightman who plays Beetlejuice,

Carrie Butler who plays Barbara, and Leslie Christer who plays Delilah, or Delia, sorry, Delia. Those are three of the actors and then Jenny Gerson

was a producer on it and Kelly Goff from Spotco, I mentioned earlier, she does their advertising or was in charge of their advertising. Anyway, they were on stage

talking all about Beetlejuice and I'd just seen, you know, two nights earlier I'd just seen the show and I was very familiar with the music and anyway,

it was really fun. They talked all about putting it on and what's it like putting on a show that owes something to another source but you want to make it your own. So a lot of the things that I talked about before that Beetlejuice really brought out in me, it was neat seeing other people tackle with those things. Another thing that is similar is

when we decided to do a top down on a real world source, that we both, like, we're doing Greek mythology. We both want to be true enough to Greek mythology that you can see the Greek mythology in it, but we want it to be enough our own that it's not just Greek mythology, you know. And that was an interesting thing to think about of watching sort of like, okay, well, you know, what do we borrow and what do we make up of our own? And I love the idea, like, Therese is a good example, where I like the idea that we took a lot of the pantheon

sort of structure of Greek mythology, but we put it through the lens of the color pie, which is very much a magic thing. And so the idea of gods that represent ideals of colors was a really cool thing that I think was very neat. Anyway, this was a lot of fun. This is one of those ones in the main ballroom, so there's a lot, a lot of people.

Beetlejuice is a very popular show. Yeah, one of the big controversies, by the way, on Broadway is Beetlejuice took a little while, I guess, to warm up, but now it's doing really well, selling out every night. And during the early slow period they I guess booked another play in the theater which is they're doing a revival of Music Man

with Hugh Jackman and Son Foster and anyway Beetlejuice is closing June 6th I think and it's in a weird spot

it's selling out every night it's making money like normally shows don't close when they're doing really well and so there's all this hubbub of can Beetlejuice find a new home?

And anyway, I hope they do. Like I said, I was really impressed with the show. So I do hope they find a new home. It was, and the other thing that, oh, the other thing they did at the Beetlejuice panel is they showed off a lot of the fan stuff, fan art and fan videos. And Beetlejuice is all over TikTok. And anyway, it also made me realize a lot of the enjoyment for me of watching. They talked about how much they enjoyed watching the fans participate and get involved.

And I feel the same way. Like, I love when I see fan art or things where clearly the audience is showing their love of stuff that we've made. And that is really touching. Okay, next. Directing on Broadway. Ruthie Fe Fireberg was moderated I believe Kenny Leone

Kathleen Marshall Jeff Calhoun Tyne Ruffelli and Sammy Kennels hope I didn't mingle any of those names too badly these were professional

directors people who direct on Broadway Rachel if Rachel could pick her future she would love to direct I know that's a hard thing

that's why she's looking at multiple things within theater but directing is her passion she loves directing if Rachel could pick her future, she would love to direct. I know that's a hard thing. That's why she's looking at multiple things within theater. But directing is her passion. She loves directing. And so it's interesting watching, these are professional directors, and talking about

what it means to be a director. And one of the things that really was interesting to them was this theme that came through this whole thing was how you have to direct something that speaks to you. Before they'll do a play,

there has to be something about the play that they could do something that they would do, and not something else would do, but it speaks to them. And it's interesting to me, for example, when doing magic sets, there's a similar sense of, I have to always find what in the set

is something that I could do, that's something really, you know, that I, part of being a head designer or lead designer of a set is trying to find that essence of bringing to life something in a way that you could bring it to life. Like, one of the things I love having different lead designers in different sets is that different people can bring to the fore what they, you know, what matters to them. And I think that is really cool. Okay, next was Confessions of a Casting Director

with casting director Jen Rudin and then Bhaved Bhaved Patel was an actor she brought in. And that was all, it was talking all about how mostly it was aimed at actors. Sort of talking about

how if you're an actor, what you need to do to get in good with the casting director, how to be an ally to the casting director. And it's really interesting talking a lot about, there's a lot of, one of the things when you go to different panels is, there's a lot of nuts and bolts you have to learn. And this was all about, like, the nuts and bolts of auditioning. And Rachel is fascinated, because even though Rachel really is into acting,

she feels as a director she wants to understand all the different facets of it. And so directors do do a lot of casting, so they work closely with the, especially in plays, they work closely with the casting directors. So anyway, something that Rachel was interested in. It was a good panel. Anyway, something that Rachel was interested in. It was a good panel. Then we saw an interview by Len Carew.

He's the guy who originally played Sweeney Todd. He's an actor. Anyway, it was a cool interview. It's fun seeing the exploration of how something came to be. It makes me realize why I enjoy so much doing all the behind-the-scenes stuff I do, how fascinating it is. And just, same with the Beetlejuice panel, just learning stories of this is how this came to be was really cool.

Next up was the Blizzard Party line. So this has a funny story. So this is the fifth BroadwayCon. So the first BroadwayCon, so four years ago, there was a blizzard during the first BroadwayCon, and it shut down the city. And the problem was they had a lot of guests that couldn't get to the BroadwayCon. So what they did is they did a thing they called

the Blizzard Party Line, where they called up stars that couldn't make it to BroadwayCon and talked to them through Skype or whatever, through video. And then the audience, the people would interview them and the audience got a chance to see them. And now it's just become a tradition. It just became something BroadwayCon does. And they call it the Blizzard Party Line after the Blizzard. And so anyway, they called a whole bunch of actors that for different reasons weren't there.

One of the people they called this time, Anthony Rapp, who is from Rent. I think he's on Star Trek Discovery. Anyway, he started this convention and normally he's there, but he's's on Star Trek Discovery anyway he he started this convention and normally he's there but he's working on Star Trek right now and like it shoots in I don't know Toronto or whatever

he couldn't get away because you can't fly with so much time of call times and stuff but anyway they called him up and talked to him so it was fun

that was followed by Broadway Trivia so Broadway Trivia was bringing up audience members and quizzing them on Broadway. And the people that won, or the woman that won, really knew who Broadway.

That was fun. And then there was a game show where they bring stars from Broadway mixed with some audience members. And they did a whole bunch of different games. They did like Pictionary. And they did like a $25 pyramid thing, and anyway, they did me in that tune.

And mostly, it was like an hour and a half. It was just mostly entertaining. It was a lot of fun. Okay, then we get to Sunday. We left on Sunday, so we only got to see a couple things in the morning. So first thing we send is they did a Dear Evan Hansen interview with Jordan Fisher and Andrew Barth Feldman.

It was the last a Dear Evan Hansen interview with Jordan Fisher and Andrew Barth Feldman. It was the last day. Basically, they were talking to two Evan Hansens, one whose last day was that night and one whose first day was the following Tuesday. Mondays is when the shows have off. Broadway doesn't have

a Monday performance. That's the day off for the actors. And anyway, it was just kind of talking about how each of them became Evan Hansen, what it's like. And it was very touching. It was very, once again, behind the scenes stuff is really cool. And it was neat. One of the things that's fun about actors is that the actor is going to be very focused on the part they're playing. And so for those who

don't know, Darren Evan Hansen is a very, very popular Broadway play about a boy, a teenage boy that things happen to. And, anyway, it's become a much beloved play. And,

I think there's been numerous different Evan Hansens. The part keeps changing, but, and they keep finding new actors that can just do things a little differently. The newest one now is the first, you know...

is the first Evan Hansen of color. Anyway, it was really neat listening to them talk and hearing about them. And the final thing we saw was called Stage as Screen. So David Alpert is a director, and he had two actresses, LaChance and Alex Gibson. And what they did is they did a scene where the actors, I mean, it was a scene from Urinetown, which is another play. The actors had not seen the scene before because none of them had been in Urinetown before.

And anyway, they did a scene. And during the course of the hour, you saw them first do the read-through and then slowly block it out. And all the time, they were giving a lot of feedback. You know, that David Alpert was talking about how to direct and notes about directing. And it was one of our favorite panels. Rachel and I really, really liked this panel. It was just very, very hands-on. I mean, Rachel loves directing, so it was a very hands-on directing thing.

So it was very cool. Anyway, that, my friends, that was BroadwayCon. So, if anyone from BroadwayCon's actually listening to this, you guys put on a good show. It was a lot of fun. It was also fun doing some one-on-one time with my daughter

and sharing a passion that we both share. I hope you guys enjoy this. I know I did this last year. It's a little off the beaten track but hey I'm 700 plus in I feel like I can do the occasional off the beaten track just to talk about things you haven't heard and if you're ever in

Broadway go see Beetlejuice I really really like Beetlejuice or actually I recommend if you're into Broadway musicals and you have not listened to the album the album is really good but anyway that was my trip, Rachel, my trip to New York City.

So anyway, I'm now at work, so we all know what that means. This is the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.