Tour: Broadway Beginnings

At midnight, my time, Thumbs Up Theatre Toronto came up trumps again, with Broadway Beginnings, a real-life guided walking tour of Broadway! Complete with some history. Complicated payment mechanism though - we had to sign up, then message the organiser to send us the payment details. Well, I did, and she did. But both alternatives involved Canadian banks.. I tried using my regular international money transfer service, Azimo, but they wanted a routing number - and typically for Canada (as I remember from living there), it was impossible to get the right information online! She ultimately agreed to let me use Paypal..

So, I logged on early, and in due course, there was our host, chattering away.

Oh my goodness, can he talk! A bit exhausting if you're not used to it - but he is hilarious. As it transpired, this isn't a tour where he walks around town, like the Hong Kong one the same group did - nope, he sat in what I suppose is his apartment, and showed us slides. No matter - it was fascinating, and the time flew.

He's full of stories - and gives a few trivia questions throughout, which are very interesting. Weird and wonderful stories about the start of Broadway - and curious facts. Like one I should probably have known, but didn't - the difference between off-Broadway and Broadway productions is.. simply the number of seats! Under 500, it's off-Broadway - doesn't matter where it is, physically. As performers are paid more for Broadway - more than twice as much, according to the rates he quoted us - this really makes a difference.

I particularly liked the story of the "ghost light" - the light that's left on in the theatre when everyone's gone, to prevent spirits from invading the stage:

As well as historical stories, we got plenty about what it's like to be a working performer. And he gave us the link to his tour company, with its details of multiple tours (I think the ghost tour would be mine), both in-person and virtual - and tons and tons of merchandise. No half measures with this operation, and good luck to him - he's excellent, and I hope they're all as good as he is!

Well, there I was, prepared to write about it - and the group organiser sent around an email to rejoin the call, that they were chatting to him! So I rejoined - fewer of us, and we could ask what we liked. After a bit, he went off to walk his dog, and the organiser asked him to leave the call running, that we'd chat - unfortunately, those of us who hadn't unmuted yet realised that we couldn't! He'd muted us all automatically (as on the tour) and had forgotten to unmute us before he dropped off. Ah well. Delighted I went though - highly recommended.

Tomorrow (assuming a gap in programming, as usual), back to the St. Patrick's Festival website, I guess.

And Thursday midnight, back with this group for a quiz, which I'll probably do terribly at. But hey, it shouldn't run too late for me to get to work, next day..