Before we continue on with our exploration of the creation of a new musical, let's take a break for that promised review of the Playbill On-line web site.
The venerable Playbill On-line site has grown by leaps and bounds since its early, more casual beginnings. Sponsored (for the most part) by American Express, the site is now a massive, sprawling (in a good way) view into the world of big time theatre, with data and silliness, hard news, gossip, details, bargains, sights, and sounds on thousands of pages. This article will serve only as an overview -- for much more detail, go ahead and check out the site yourself.
What's most exciting about Playbill On-line (POL, henceforth), is that it's essentially a large database of archived articles, interviews, and information, with an attractive and easy to use front end. As we travel the site, you'll discover how much of it is easily searchable, quickly getting you to the information or gossip you're looking for.
When you first hit the Home Page, you're met with a newspaper-styled layout. As with all of the site's pages, this one is set up in a pseudo-frame manner , with a navigation list along the left side of the page, and all of the real material on the right. Although it appears to be done in frames, it's actually a large table, with the navigation list filling the left-most column of every page. This is slightly unfortunate since it means that your browser needs to spend the time loading the navigation text on every new page -- I say slightly, since for most surfers the time spent on the download of this text will be negligible. The main body of the Home Page is devoted to whatever POL's editors feel is worthy of pushing for the current week. Most of the links you find here are duplicated in the navigation list. The site is updated fairly frequently, and the Home Page is always changing to show what articles and pages have been recently uploaded. Here you'll find the News Extras, and links to features. The features may be articles about new shows, celebrities, theatre events , or interviews with theatre personalities, written by well-known theatre writers (including several from the now defunct TheaterWeek magazine: Ken Mandelbaum and Peter Filichia). There may be links to articles about what's coming up in a specific region (i.e., "Regional Highlights"), or a link to the weekly "Ask Blair" column, in which Blair Glaser, a NYC-based theatre coach, responds to questions from the acting community (sub-titled "Practical Advice to Actors"). This page is also spruced up with a number of cute graphics, looking like characters cut from the cartoon version of Monopoly.
Travelling over to the navigation list, we come first to the NEWS section. This area has links to POL's current and archived articles. It's broken down into sub-sections so that you can retrieve lists of articles specific to the US, Canada, and other countries. There's also a section with articles about Camp Broadway, a new program run by NY director Frank Ventura, where would-be actors get to spend a week behaving like professionals -- auditioning, rehearsing, performing, and the rest (of course without the heartache of real life).
Next is the LISTINGS area, where we first really get to see some of POL's searchability. This is the area of POL where shows currently, or soon to be, in production are "listed." This section is broken into seven sub-categories: Broadway, Off Broadway (where's that hyphen?), Regional, Nat'l Tours, London, Brazil (!!), and Canada. If you click on these sub-categories, some of them will take you to a search page, while others take you directly to the full list, although most will present you with the option to browse the full list for that group. Whatever way you arrive there, you're ultimately presented with a group of shows listed by theatre and category. Clicking on the theatre name will jump you to a page with info on that theatre, and links to any pages with info on the show, stories, and credits (if they exist in POL's database). The listings are fairly extensive -- you can not only find the obvious Phantom's and Rent's, but also what's playing this week at The Coconut Grove Playhouse or the Denver Center Theatre (not to mention the Leblon Theatre - Fernanda Montenegro Room 2 in Rio de Janeiro, where Scener Ur Ett Aktenskap is playing).
Further on down the navigation list is the BUY TICKETS area. Clicking here brings you to a page featuring online purchase of tickets (duh!) through Tele-Charge. If they don't handle tickets for the show you're interested in, box office info is provided. Also in this section are seating charts for Broadway houses. Although they're a little small, you can still tell whether you've just bought an aisle seat or one mashed into the middle of the back row of the second balcony.
The FEATURES area demonstrates some of the redundancy with the Home Page I mentioned earlier. Here you can link to a list of Feature Stories and this week's "Ask Blair" column (weren't we just there?). There's also "Diva Talk" (news about women celebrities, written by Andrew Gans), "Bdwy Grosses," "Quizzes" (trivia, nonsense, and other games), and "League Notes" (an infrequently updated group of promotional blurbs from The League of American Theatres and Producers).
In the INDUSTRY section, you'll find a searchable or browsable list of "Casting and Jobs" -- although nothing deep enough to replace your subscription to Backstage. This is a small list of casting notices for actors, and job listings for musicians, technicians, directors, etc. "Newsletters" are basically periodic promotional items from Theatre Under the Stars, Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization, Music Theatre International, the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, TheatreWorks USA, and others. Oddly enough, in this area you'll also find a good-sized (although not quite exhaustive) database of colleges with theatre programs, including links to pages with greater detail about each.
A casual glance at the next section's sub-categories makes you question the title MULTIMEDIA. If you click on any of the sub-categories, however, you'll find that they're further divided to the point where the nomenclature makes sense. The "Books" area is sub-divided so that it includes "CD-ROMS" in addition to categories like "Theatre Books" and "Scripts." The "Recording" area features "Videos" along with "Cast Recordings," "Cabaret," and the like. The "Theatre Art" section has beautifully digitized (downloadable) jpegs of production photos and Playbill covers from selected shows. The "Audio Clips" area, despite the fact that it seems to be primarily a promotion for the short list of CD's the area displays, holds some short snippets of these recordings in .AU and .WAV format -- helpful in a way for those who may be considering a purchase or are just curious as to what some of these recordings actually sound like.
The next area, REFERENCE, has some serious data for theatre historians and trivia buffs. The "Awards" category is a searchable database of all of awards given in the Tony's, the Drama Desk, the Obies, the Outer Critics Circle, and the Pulitzer Prize. The database is searchable by name, production or year. Also in this category is the obligatory FAQ document ("Frequently Asked Questions") for the POL site.
The CELEBRITIES portion of the navigation list contains the "Transcripts" link (a list of interviews on file) and, oddly, a single link to the Betty Buckley home page. Also in this category is "Who's Who," which probably should have appeared in the REFERENCE section since so few of the people in its database could honestly be considered celebrities (at least not yet!). This is another excellent searchable database; type in a name and, if they've done a show that Playbill has provided a program for, you're presented with the biography that originally appeared in that Playbill. Two odd things about this area: if you type in a name that brings several results (e.g., more than one person with the same last name), the listings' category heading calls them "Cast Members" whether they were cast, crew, or staff; and, when you get to the bio, there's no way to tell which show's program that biography appeared in.
The SHOPPING category allows you to search lists of "Hotels" and "Restaurants." Peculiarly, although you can search by location the database contains only NYC hotels, and NYC restaurants -- except for a single restaurant in New Jersey. POL also offers an occasional "Travel Package," which you can buy through the site -- the current one is a trip to London.
At the bottom is the LINKS link. These lists of links are valid but short, with a preponderance of dance related sites. (You're better off with Suite101!)
You'll also see mention of the Playbill On-Line Club. Members receive a newsletter with special offers on tickets and travel and have access to special "Members Only" areas. Membership is free, and is well worth the price.
Other than the few niggling complaints mentioned above, there are few major inconveniences. Every page has ads/links extolling the virtues of, explaining how to get better use out of, or cajoling you to apply for an Amex card, or pitching the Lincoln Mark MCMXIV or something. And some download time could be conserved if the omnipresent graphics containing identical upper portions with the words "Playbill On-Line," were split into two parts so that the top part ("Playbill On-Line") could be read from disk instead of doubling the size of the graphic download.
Altogether this is an excellent site, both readable as an e-magazine and searchable as a theatrical information database. The writers are top-notch, and you'll find news here you won't find anywhere else -- at least not right away. I think you'll find any time spent at Playbill On-Line to be worthwhile.
Originally published at Suite101.com Theatre, 2/11/97
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