PRISCILLA on “AMERICA’S GOT TALENT”

TONY AWARD-WINNING HIT PRISCILLA QUEEN OF THE DESERT THE MUSICAL WILL PERFORM ON NBC’s “AMERICA’S GOT TALENT” PREMIERE RESULTS SHOW WEDNESDAY, JULY 13

Priscilla Queen Of The Desert, presented on Broadway by “The Divine Miss M,” producer Bette Midler, will perform on the first live premiere results show of season 6 of NBC’s hit summer talent competition series “America’s Got Talent.” Tony-nominee Will Swenson will lead the cast in a diva-tastic medley of some of Priscilla’s most popular songs - “Finally,” “Shake Your Groove Thing,” and “MacArthur Park” – featuring the show’s trademark 2011 Tony-winning costumes designed by Oscar and Tony-winning designers Tim Chappel and Lizzy Gardiner.

Following hit productions in Australia, London and Toronto, Priscilla Queen Of The Desert The MUSICAL opened to critical acclaim on March 20 at the Palace Theatre (1564 Broadway).

Priscilla Queen Of The Desert was awarded a 2011 Tony Award® for Best Costume Design for Academy Award® winners Tim Chappel and Lizzy Gardiner’s designs. The new hit musical was also honored with three Best Musical award nominations from the Drama Desk, Drama League and Outer Critics Circle Award organizations. Olivier Award nominee Tony Sheldon received a Tony Award® nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in addition to Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and Drama League nominations, and was awarded the Theatre World Award for outstanding Broadway debut. Tim Chappel and Lizzy Gardiner were also honored with 2011 Outer Critics Circle and Drama Desk Awards for Outstanding Costume Design this season.

Now in its sixth season, “America's Got Talent,” airs Tuesdays (9-11 p.m. ET) and Wednesdays (9-10 p.m. ET) on NBC. Howie Mandel, Piers Morgan and Sharon Osbourne star as the celebrity panel of judges, and Nick Cannon serves as host. The series is a true celebration of the American spirit, featuring a colorful array of aspiring stars, including singers, dancers, comedians, contortionists, impressionists, jugglers, magicians and ventriloquists, all vying for their chance to strut and perform on stage hoping to win America's hearts – and the $1 million prize. Check local listings.

Priscilla Queen Of The Desert The MusicaL stars Tony Award® nominee Will Swenson, Olivier Award and Tony Award® nominee Tony Sheldon and Nick Adams as the trio of friends on a heart-warming, uplifting road trip of a lifetime who hop aboard a battered old bus searching for love and friendship in the middle of the Australian outback and end up finding more than they could ever have dreamed.

Featuring a score of over 20 dance-floor classics, a company of 27, and with a dazzling array of more than 500 outrageous costumes, the spectacular new stage musical is a sensational journey to the heart of fabulous!

Adapted from the Academy Award® winning film The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, PRISCILLA QUEEN OF THE DESERT THE MUSICAL is written by Stephan Elliott and Allan Scott. Direction is by Simon Phillips, choreography by Ross Coleman, musical supervision and arrangements by Stephen ‘Spud’ Murphy and set design by Brian Thomson and costumes by Tim Chappel and Lizzy Gardiner. Production supervised by Jerry Mitchell. Lighting is designed by Nick Schlieper, sound design is by Jonathan Deans and Peter Fitzgerald and make up design is by Cassie Hanlon.

PRISCILLA QUEEN OF THE DESERT THE MUSICAL is produced by Bette Midler; James L. Nederlander; Garry McQuinn, Liz Koops; Michael Hamlyn; Allan Scott; Roy Furman/ Richard Willis; Terry Allen Kramer; Terri and Timothy Childs, Ken Greiner, Ruth Hendel; Chugg Entertainment; Michael Buckley; Stewart Lane/ Bonnie Comley; Bruce Davey; Thierry Suc/TS3; Bartner/ Jenkins; Broadway Across America/H. Koenigsberg; M. Lerner/ D. Bisno/ K. Seidel/ R. Gold; Paul Boskind and Martian Entertainment / Spirtas-Mauro Productions / MAS Music Arts & Show; and David Mirvish.

For Tickets, Schedule and more information, visit: www.priscillaonbroadway.com

Follow PRISCILLA on Twitter or on Facebook.

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Tweet up! Both sides of the Bay!

As you know, TBPAC loves social media! We've been on board since the beginning. Social media is the fastest growing segment of our marketing strategies and our fans/friends/followers are the best around!

We've partnered with St. Pete Tweets and the TampaBloggers to do a very special networking event this Friday! Beginning at 6:30 on October 9, we will be doing "haunted tours" of the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. This is the underground stuff you never get to see - evacuation tunnels, views under the stages, and some stories that you won't believe!

Then our bloggers and tweeters have a couple of options at 8 p.m. You can either see the always red-hot Florida Orchestra's Rhythms on Fire, Jobsite Theater's hilarious comedy And Baby Makes 7 (and get 1/2 off your ticket price with the promo code CECIL), or you can save your pennies and see the free movie on the lawn Coraline.

If you're staying for the movie, lawn chairs and blankets are wonderful, coolers and dogs that like to bark at the move are not wonderful. Bug spray is recommended for this first movie of the season and of course extra points if you come in your Halloween costume.

RSVP for the Tweet Up and we'll see you on Friday!

-Kari G.

Taylor Hicks Tweets About Tampa!

Behold! The inside of the ice cream cone Taylor Hicks emerges from in Grease!

How did we get this insider's view? From the insider himself! Taylor Hicks uses Twitter to share his experiences in Grease and other thoughts. He also gave a nice shout out to Bern's Steakhouse. Glad he's doing Tampa right! We've loved having him here, he's been a great sport doing a lot of press to promote the show. He's a talented professional and we'll be sad to see him go. Don't worry there are still seats available for the final 5 shows!

-Kari G.

If you care, SHARE!

We have a feature on our website and our eCenter newsletters - no matter what the information - announcements, shows, discounts, classes, dining opportunities, you name it - there is always an icon nearby that looks like the one above.

That's the ShareThis option. Click on it and you can share our information with your friends on MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, Blogspot, Technorati and more!

Be a Performing Arts Social Media Maven! When you see a show, event, class, or blog post you like - let everyone know. You'll be rewarded with new fans flocking to your Social Media Mecca. If nothing else, you'll look tres sophisticated and well versed in the arts scene in Tampa Bay. We all win!

-Kari G.

Test Drive Your Social Networking

Today was Test Drive Your Seats - a great opportunity for the community to run around Morsani Hall and see the available seats for the Broadway Season.  It was a bit of an early morning for most of us on the marketing staff.  We all had the "best intentions" to go to bed early last night - but I think the average bedtime was between 1:30 and 2 a.m.  

Bleary eyed but eager, we opened the doors to scores of waiting patrons at 9:30. We answered questions, talked of sight lines (Is stage left better than stage right?), levels (is the Mezzanine better than the Orchestra?) and season ticket options (Silver package v. Platinum package?).  Our Development team assisted patrons who saw the benefits of becoming members and ensuring the best seats in the Broadway Circle.

There are still great seats available for all performances in the season.  If you missed Test Drive today, don't worry, your perfect seats might still be waiting for you!

As the event wore down - we realized that in our quiet time, we were all posting Tweets.  This is what happens when an account has multiple users and too many marketers with iPhones.  Ah technology!

TBPAC's social networking contributors is expanding.  It's only going to get more interesting.  In the coming weeks TBPAC will be giving you, our readers and fans, a multi-dimensional look at all aspects of the world of a Performing Arts Center.  Staff from all areas of TBPAC will share their world with you.

Social Networking channels for TBPAC will still be one of the first places to gain information on discounts, show announcements and reminders of public on-sales, but we want to add to that knowledge a glimpse into the experiences we have at TBPAC.

Follow us on Twitter @TBPAC and get the news as it happens, from all corners of our organization.  Friend us on Facebook and MySpace for photos and contests that will be exclusive to our Friends.  Subscribe to Culture Shock and find out what we're up to and comment back with your thoughts and questions.

There is a Native American proverb that "It takes a thousand voices to tell one story." We're adding more voices and we need your voice as well - come to the discussion.

Have a great weekend - and if you haven't seen RENT yet, you still have 4 performances left.  If you're going to the Tampa Bay Rays game tonight - Anthony Rapp is singing the National Anthem - then rushing back to do the evening performance.  How cool is that?

-Kari G.  

Don't forget to watch the Tony Awards

The Tony Awards air this Sunday, June 7, at 8 p.m. on CBS. Hosted by Neil Patrick Harris, the show will feature lots of great performances including Dolly Parton with the cast of 9 to 5 and Elton John with the cast of Billy Elliot: The Musical (15 nominations). For a complete list of nominees, performers and presenters, visit http://www.tonyawards.com/.


Want to follow and comment on the action as it happens? We'll be tweeting live! Follow us on Twitter at WHOBroadway. If you don't have Twitter, don't worry. You can read the posts on Culture Shock. Just look to the right for the heading WHOBroadway Twitter Updates.

Follow In The Heights!

If you love In The Heights, the show is now on Facebook and Twitter. Become a fan of the show on Facebook and/or follow them on Twitter... http://twitter.com/ninarosario

And for all the Rent Heads, or wanna be Rent Heads, you can also follow the new Rent Broadway Tour (coming to the TBPAC in July) on Twitter... http://twitter.com/rentthebwaytour

Following any other Broadway shows?

Opera Tampa Tweets for #OperaPlot

If you don’t follow Opera Tampa on Twitter (http://twitter.com/OperaTampa) – here’s the reason to start.

The Omniscient Mussel will be reviving the #OperaPlot contest and there are great tickets to the opera to be won!

The rules seem pretty simple – create an opera plot in 140 characters (or less) and #OperaPlot must be included – so 130 characters.

Opera Tampa will be doing our collective best and trying to tie it in to our 0910 season. Let’s see:

#operaplot Nice Scottish girl gets in knife fight with Bridezilla, battle ensues for 15 years with Coppola at the helm, stars Renee Fleming.

That is exactly 140 characters!

Good luck!

P.S. I just got word from The Omniscient Mussel – Opera Tampa will be providing tickets to our season as prizes! Sign up to Twitter and the fun starts on Monday, April 27!

Are you a WAISTWATCHER? Can you give us a hand?

One of the core components of good show marketing is knowing who your audience is and planning smart to reach them. You can buy all the TV, radio and print you like and still miss people though (as was evidenced this weekend when overheard at the Watchmen was "they should have an intermission in three-hour movies, you know, like back in the day when they had plays"). Some shows come with built-in niches. For a show like Motherload we'll obviously reach out to mom groups and play-date services. For HATS! we located all of the Red Hat chapters in a 100-mile radius.

For WAISTWATCHERS: The Calorie-Free Musical we've been reaching out to health and fitness organizations: Weightwatchers, Anytime Fitness, Shapes and the like. Still, it would be a virtual impossibility for us to hit up every single gym, weight loss center and health food store in the whole DMA.

And this is where you might come in ...

Grass-roots level marketing is important. It costs nothing in dollars usually, but is often the most labor-intesive and elusive. Our patrons operate on a grass-root level when they see a show then tell their friends who would like it to make a plan. They help us by posting links in their blogs or on their social networks. They can also help us out by taking a poster or some flyers to a relevant business they frequent - in this case like those gyms, weight loss centers or health food stores I mentioned previously.

Can you give us a hand?

If you've seen the show already, you know what folks are in for. Maybe you'd like to come back again and bring a friend? That might be possible for us to work out. You scratch our back and maybe we can scratch yours. Maybe you haven't seen it and you'd like to. Pitch in and we can probably take care of you, too.

So let me know if you can lend a hand. Any and all help is appreciated and we're always working on a show like this that's here for such a long time to help make sure that the show stays top of mind with folks.

Help like this isn't valid just for WAISTWATCHERS (though, admittedly, it's my most immediate need), but you can always help any show at TBPAC by doing any of the following:

• Request a poster or flyers to put at a relevant business, your work or church
• Follow us (tbpac) on Twitter, friend us on MySpace or join the group/become a fan of us (tbpac) on Facebook
• Use the forward to a friend feature on an eCenter newsletter that you think someone else might be interested in
  
• Post tinyurl links to your Twitter status
• Post links to our blog or our videos or photos to your Facebook or MySpace profile.
• Post how excited you are to see a show or what you thought of a show to your blog or social network

TBPAC is here for the community, and the community can also help us continue to bring the best of touring shows and regional productions by pitching in to get the word out!

Follow TBPAC on Twitter

If you're a user of the nifty (if not always reliable) service Twitter, follow TBPAC to get instant updates, news, notes and offers.

(and hey, check that out, the post itself was in fact under 140 characters ...)

TBPAC is now on Twitter

Now that I've personally had a chance to play on the (in)famous Twitter service for a few months now, I've branched out and created an account for TBPAC. The service seems to be going down a lot these days, which I'll rack up to growing pains which will hopefully work themselves out soon.

The account? You guessed it - TBPAC.

So, if you're a Twitterer. Err, if you tweet. Umm, ok, if you're part of the mighty Twitterati, go ahead and follow us!

I'll admit that this Twitter thing is a bit cooler than I gave it credit for. I remember reading about it, and even checking it out when the service first started getting popular. People would actually be interested in me sending a text message from Starbucks announcing "grabbing latte, i <3 caramel" or "at the mall waiting for iron man to start," really?

I had a hard time seeing the real use when I had so many other p2p tools at my disposal.

But now, that's changed.

I use several social networking applications and I now use Twitter to regularly update almost all of them when I don't have time to create full posts, update my status or anything else. Those 140 character updates really seem to get it done, and keep me active in those places. Twitter updates my status on Facebook, once a day it exports all of my tweets to my LiveJournal account ... handy!

I've turned off the mobile applications for Twitter (you don't even have to activate them). I'm simply not that interested in what my friends are doing enough to get text updates. Sorry, guys.

So anyway ladies and gents, we plan on using this service for the same reasons we're using the others - a fast way to get you the information you want. We can remind folks that a certain show just went on sale, x-post a blog entry here at Culture Shock, point you to an article in a newspaper story, send out a special offer with a promo code.

We're always looking for ways to get people the info they want, the way they want it.

Is there a way that you'd like information that we don't currently take advantage of?

-dj

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