Selling Out: The organizers of the fifth annual TEDxBroadway announced the final lineup of speakers and performers who will be taking the stage on Monday, February 22, 2016 at New World Stages in New York City to contribute to the cornerstone question of the day: “What is the BEST Broadway Can Be?”
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As a very geeky person, I love watching TED Talks and really admire the company TED and what they do. It was not until doing these comments a couple months back that I learned TED partners with Broadway each year, and I cannot be more excited to see what they do. When looking at the line up I was not familiar with most of the names except for Miral Kotb. I think who have they have sound very interesting. I was surprised and a little disappointed to see that no one was going to be talking about the changes and statements Broadway has been making in the past year about racial casting and feminism. I know that those are not normally subjects covered at these kind of conventions but I thought maybe someone would be a spokes person on the subject because of how much Broadway is striving to make changes.
The only thing I knew about this event before this article was that the title of this year’s event had some conversation around it, such as questions like is there a limit to the success and developments that can be made on Broadway. Moving on from that however, I was completely taken back by the lineup for speakers for this event. The main thing that I was extremely taken aback by was the diversity in the backgrounds of all these speakers. I thought that it was going to be some Broadway designers, managers, actors, and a producer or two, but instead it is people that come from a large variety of backgrounds, which I totally support. Some of the ones that stood out to me were a professor of biomedical and chemical engineering as well as the screenwriter for “Birdman”, which I had no idea was also the guy who wrote “On Your Feet!” I would now love to hear what each topic they present will be.
As someone who loves both TED talks and theatre, I am so surprised that I had never heard of TEDxBroadway until I came to Carnegie Mellon and started reading this blog. This sounds like it would be such an incredible thing to experience. Theatre is overlooked so often, and seen as frivolous and unnecessary, but an entire TED talk event about how to make Broadway the best it can be applies sort of scientific methods to the study of theatre and performance. I wish the article was able to list the topic each speaker would be covering, in addition to their short bio and picture. It would be very interesting to see how people with different experiences from different career paths all contribute to the same question in different ways. Since this is definitely something I won't actually be able to attend live in person, I can not wait to watch it online when it comes out.
Like the previous commentators, I also hadn't heard of or stumbled upon TEDxBroadway until I began reading this blog. TED talks are a great way to productively procrastinate or to learn more about a topic of interest. I assumed that these talks would be centered on Broadway designers and performers. I suppose it is good to branch out and host talks by people from various other disciplines. Theater is, after all, part of humanity. Now that I think about it, it is right to host speakers from many different backgrounds. I am most excited to hear about the presentation my DJ Kurs, the artistic director from Deaf West Theater. I am hoping that his talk and some of the others focus on diversity in entertainment. Race, abilities, and gender presence in theater remain a problem that needs to be discussed and acted upon. On an unrelated note, I would also like to see more TED talks about how things were made. Hand Spring Puppet Company has an excellent talk about how the company was started and about the creative process in building the horses for Warhorse. It's a fantastic talk. I doubt I will go, but I look forward to watching the talks online.
I’m a fan of TED talks. I like watching people lecture about interesting things; that keeps me pretty entertained. I really hope these talks will be publicly available to watch online. However, there’s no guarantee of that, so I’ll just have to hope. I’m interested by the theme of the talk: “What is the BEST Broadway Can Be?” That sounds great, but what does best mean? The most artistic? The most profitable? The most efficient way to churn out even more fluff musicals? The most equitable playing field for actors, directors and designers? Looking at the lineup, I’m hopeful that this talk will be a discussion for artists by artists focused on reinvigorating Broadway rather than a group of producers just talking about money. I am very excited for the future of Broadway. It is continually becoming more diverse and I believe the level of art it produces will only increase in the future. I am also excited to (hopefully) watch these talks online.
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