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Thursday, November 23, 2017
“Broadway 2017” on Jeopardy: Test Your Knowledge
New York Theater: Jeopardy had the following answers in a “Broadway 2017” category during the Double Jeopardy Round of the Tournament of Champions earlier this week.
This was a really exciting game to play with my friends during thanksgiving break as they are musical theatre majors. I love that jeopardy is inclusive towards theatre audiences as usually jeopardy is geared towards really hard mind-boggling questing that someone like me usually doesn't know that answers to. Although I think that inclusiveness towards the theatre community is essential, this jeopardy was far too easy. I's like to have seen a more comprehensive and particular choice of jeopardy questions when it comes to broadway, something that really takes research and social intellect to find out, because as of now, you can know all of the answers by watching just the Tony's. I hope to see far more articles hat are similar to this one in the sense that it covers topics that usually aren't in the mainstream media. Nonetheless this was a lot of fun to read and even more fun to play with my friends from back home.
These questions were kind of disappointingly easy. I guess they shouldn't be that hard for someone who has chosen to do theatre for a living, but still these seem a little bit too easy. It's still great to see when Jeopardy includes theatre trivia in its categories. I remember there was a Hamilton question many moons ago (it may have been Final Jeopardy?), and that was extremely exciting. I wish I had been watching this particular episode live, since this would have been extra fun. Whenever there are any categories related to entertainment or pop culture in general, my mother and I always knock it out of the park. We balance out my brothers, who can generally answer anything related to chemistry or physics, and my dad, who can usually cover sports. It would be interesting if the article included how well the Jeopardy contestants did with this category, and what the other categories of that round of Double Jeopardy were.
This article sucks. The questions are interesting and I’m glad that theater is being recognized in other media and other avenues – like Jeopardy. To be fair, I might only have known two of the answers. This article would be a lot better if it told us which questions the contestants got right and which they got wrong. These all look like new shows on Broadway. At least, I’ve never heard of a couple of them. I find it interesting that there aren’t questions related to other, longer running shows. I’m shocked that Hamilton didn’t come up in some form. I don’t think that Broadway is going to see a boom in ticket sales because of this, but I wouldn’t be surprised if seeing this encouraged a few Jeopardy watchers to go see a Broadway show. If the contestants didn’t get these questions, I wouldn’t be surprised, but maybe it shows that the arts need to be more accessible to everyone.
I enjoy watching Jeopardy, I always like to see how much of the knowledge that I have crammed into my head over the years has stuck. I would have cleared the category. Even before I saw the correct responses, I was getting the questions. But as Daniel said, the article sucked. Oh hey, we did a Broadway category on our show, look at how hip we are. Eh, not really and not really challenging either! I always thought that Jeopardy was supposed to be tough but it seems more so now than in the early days of the show, it’s just gotten easier and easier. If you want to have some tough questions about Broadway or theatre in general, just look to books like Les Miserables by Victor Hugo or the works of August Wilson or even John Patrick Shanley and Agatha Christie. So much more material than just the current shows on Broadway. Not every great show is a musical.
I think it is interesting all of the theatre students who are so frustrated by the simplicity of this quiz. I’ll admit that I too have taken a random buzz feed theatre quiz and similarly felt disappointed at the lack of depth which they seemed to carry. However, we have to remember that this is not the point of jeopardy. The questions are meant to be a brief glimpse into the section with some challenge for the average player. While you might exceed in theatre a lawyer may not. Would you express that same outrage at a section on lawyers that was only surface and did not go into depth about the details of the specific laws that a lawyer should know? Most, likely this would not be the case. I think that is exciting to have theatre mentioned at all as often the only glimpse into our business is through movie or TV trivia.
I always love when musical theatre questions come up on Jeopardy. Yes, they are extremely simple to us, but that is because we live and breathe this industry. It is the same reason why doctors will excel at medical questions, or Classics historians will thrive on questions about Ancient Rome. What have always been sort of astounding to me are the Jeopardy contestants who seem to have lived in every one of these headspaces. They know the answers to Broadway questions as well as we do, but they also know hundreds of other subjects on the same level. This always drives me crazy. How do they study? Where do you even start? Is it something that just begins in childhood? Are these the people who have read thousands of books or just memorized millions of facts? How does one prepare for a game of Jeopardy? I need five more words.
I can’t tell if these questions were super easy because I keep up with Broadway or if they actually were just too easy. I suppose that most people with no knowledge of theatre might not know what Come From Away was about, but I feel like Dear Evan Hansen is something that more people would know about because of the Tony’s. To test if people would know this I asked my non-theatre person dad these questions. Here were his answers:
1) Come from away question: Um probably 9/11? 2) Charlie and the chocolate factory question: That’s easy, Willy Wonka 3) Miss Saigon Question: Oh I should probably know this but I have no clue. 4) Ben Platt Question: The Evan Hansen thing! 5) War Paint Question: Bette Midler? I don’t know.
Three out of five isn’t bad! I suppose to get all five you would need to have kept up with recent Broadway news, but that’s just something that in drama school we’re expected to do.
Wow it is so nice to see that a mainstream show like Jeopardy is teaching and educating viewers about something as important as the theater. I also like that they asked about a wide array of shows that cover a myriad of different topics. Hopefully some viewers were enticed to see some of these shows the next time they visit Broadway. At the very least maybe some children watching the show became interested in theater and maybe researched some things about the different shows. Allowing Broadway Shows to permeate the mainstream culture of America helps the commercial and artistic success of Broadway and Commercial Theatre in general.
I love trivia. I play it all of the time and randomly ask questions into the room that is a non sequitur to anything else being said. I think its so great that jeopardy had this category and I can just imagine all of the theatre people at home getting excited and being like "I know this. I know this!" After reading the answers, I wish they were a little bit more complex and obscure. Most of the questions were common knowledge and I like a little of a challenge. But i understand that the general public is not going to college for theatre and that these questions might prove difficult for the majority of jeopardy audiences and contestants. I was just a little disappointed when I opened this article because I thought I would be able to play along but alas this proved to be the wrong thought. I do think that it is great the broadway has made its way to mainstream media - though Im not sure how mainstream jeopardy is anymore. At the very least its cool that it had its own category in such a well known show.
9 comments:
This was a really exciting game to play with my friends during thanksgiving break as they are musical theatre majors. I love that jeopardy is inclusive towards theatre audiences as usually jeopardy is geared towards really hard mind-boggling questing that someone like me usually doesn't know that answers to. Although I think that inclusiveness towards the theatre community is essential, this jeopardy was far too easy. I's like to have seen a more comprehensive and particular choice of jeopardy questions when it comes to broadway, something that really takes research and social intellect to find out, because as of now, you can know all of the answers by watching just the Tony's. I hope to see far more articles hat are similar to this one in the sense that it covers topics that usually aren't in the mainstream media. Nonetheless this was a lot of fun to read and even more fun to play with my friends from back home.
These questions were kind of disappointingly easy. I guess they shouldn't be that hard for someone who has chosen to do theatre for a living, but still these seem a little bit too easy. It's still great to see when Jeopardy includes theatre trivia in its categories. I remember there was a Hamilton question many moons ago (it may have been Final Jeopardy?), and that was extremely exciting. I wish I had been watching this particular episode live, since this would have been extra fun. Whenever there are any categories related to entertainment or pop culture in general, my mother and I always knock it out of the park. We balance out my brothers, who can generally answer anything related to chemistry or physics, and my dad, who can usually cover sports. It would be interesting if the article included how well the Jeopardy contestants did with this category, and what the other categories of that round of Double Jeopardy were.
This article sucks. The questions are interesting and I’m glad that theater is being recognized in other media and other avenues – like Jeopardy. To be fair, I might only have known two of the answers. This article would be a lot better if it told us which questions the contestants got right and which they got wrong. These all look like new shows on Broadway. At least, I’ve never heard of a couple of them. I find it interesting that there aren’t questions related to other, longer running shows. I’m shocked that Hamilton didn’t come up in some form. I don’t think that Broadway is going to see a boom in ticket sales because of this, but I wouldn’t be surprised if seeing this encouraged a few Jeopardy watchers to go see a Broadway show. If the contestants didn’t get these questions, I wouldn’t be surprised, but maybe it shows that the arts need to be more accessible to everyone.
I enjoy watching Jeopardy, I always like to see how much of the knowledge that I have crammed into my head over the years has stuck. I would have cleared the category. Even before I saw the correct responses, I was getting the questions. But as Daniel said, the article sucked. Oh hey, we did a Broadway category on our show, look at how hip we are. Eh, not really and not really challenging either! I always thought that Jeopardy was supposed to be tough but it seems more so now than in the early days of the show, it’s just gotten easier and easier. If you want to have some tough questions about Broadway or theatre in general, just look to books like Les Miserables by Victor Hugo or the works of August Wilson or even John Patrick Shanley and Agatha Christie. So much more material than just the current shows on Broadway. Not every great show is a musical.
I think it is interesting all of the theatre students who are so frustrated by the simplicity of this quiz. I’ll admit that I too have taken a random buzz feed theatre quiz and similarly felt disappointed at the lack of depth which they seemed to carry. However, we have to remember that this is not the point of jeopardy. The questions are meant to be a brief glimpse into the section with some challenge for the average player. While you might exceed in theatre a lawyer may not. Would you express that same outrage at a section on lawyers that was only surface and did not go into depth about the details of the specific laws that a lawyer should know? Most, likely this would not be the case. I think that is exciting to have theatre mentioned at all as often the only glimpse into our business is through movie or TV trivia.
I always love when musical theatre questions come up on Jeopardy. Yes, they are extremely simple to us, but that is because we live and breathe this industry. It is the same reason why doctors will excel at medical questions, or Classics historians will thrive on questions about Ancient Rome. What have always been sort of astounding to me are the Jeopardy contestants who seem to have lived in every one of these headspaces. They know the answers to Broadway questions as well as we do, but they also know hundreds of other subjects on the same level. This always drives me crazy. How do they study? Where do you even start? Is it something that just begins in childhood? Are these the people who have read thousands of books or just memorized millions of facts? How does one prepare for a game of Jeopardy? I need five more words.
I can’t tell if these questions were super easy because I keep up with Broadway or if they actually were just too easy. I suppose that most people with no knowledge of theatre might not know what Come From Away was about, but I feel like Dear Evan Hansen is something that more people would know about because of the Tony’s. To test if people would know this I asked my non-theatre person dad these questions. Here were his answers:
1) Come from away question: Um probably 9/11?
2) Charlie and the chocolate factory question: That’s easy, Willy Wonka
3) Miss Saigon Question: Oh I should probably know this but I have no clue.
4) Ben Platt Question: The Evan Hansen thing!
5) War Paint Question: Bette Midler? I don’t know.
Three out of five isn’t bad! I suppose to get all five you would need to have kept up with recent Broadway news, but that’s just something that in drama school we’re expected to do.
Wow it is so nice to see that a mainstream show like Jeopardy is teaching and educating viewers about something as important as the theater. I also like that they asked about a wide array of shows that cover a myriad of different topics. Hopefully some viewers were enticed to see some of these shows the next time they visit Broadway. At the very least maybe some children watching the show became interested in theater and maybe researched some things about the different shows. Allowing Broadway Shows to permeate the mainstream culture of America helps the commercial and artistic success of Broadway and Commercial Theatre in general.
I love trivia. I play it all of the time and randomly ask questions into the room that is a non sequitur to anything else being said. I think its so great that jeopardy had this category and I can just imagine all of the theatre people at home getting excited and being like "I know this. I know this!" After reading the answers, I wish they were a little bit more complex and obscure. Most of the questions were common knowledge and I like a little of a challenge. But i understand that the general public is not going to college for theatre and that these questions might prove difficult for the majority of jeopardy audiences and contestants. I was just a little disappointed when I opened this article because I thought I would be able to play along but alas this proved to be the wrong thought. I do think that it is great the broadway has made its way to mainstream media - though Im not sure how mainstream jeopardy is anymore. At the very least its cool that it had its own category in such a well known show.
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