Tag Archives: Twitter

Tony Award nominations announced

Read the full list of Tony nominees on the official tonys site. Click here

The 66th annual Tony Award nominations are out this morning, with a movie remake, Once, topping the list. But another film takeoff, the just-opened Leap of Faith, also got one in the Best Musical category.

There’s lots of other news to report, including the snubbing of big stars Bernadette Peters and Ricky Martin and the revamped Spider-Man, but we’ll leave that to other reports.

The full list is here.

New York Daily News theater critic Joe Dziemianowicz‘s report is here.

New York Times ArtsBeat blog report here.

Billboard’s take here.

Playbill.com offers coverage here and reaction here.

We told you Condola Rashad was great! Now the Tony Awards panel backs us up by nominating her as best featured actor in a play

Condola Rashad outside the Cort Theatre after a performance of Stick Fly. (Photo © 2011, Steven P. Marsh)

The Alicia Keys-produced play Stick Fly hung on at Broadway’s Cort Theatre for just 93 performances last winter. The play may have fallen a bit flat, despite every promotional effort. But one member of the cast made a big impression that has lasted well beyond that last performance on Feb. 26.

Condola Rashad (yes, the daughter of The Cosby Show alum Phylicia Rashad and former NFL wide receiver Ahmad Rashad) was that show’s secret weapon, as Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? told you back in December.

On Tuesday morning, she was nominated as Best Featured Actor in a Play.

So she’s crossed the first hurdle. The Tony nominators have joined with WYMMWIG? in recognizing this young superstar. Now, Tony judges, it’s time to vote for her and give her the award she earned and so richly deserved.

Her reaction was sweet and humble, as you’d expect from the sassy-smart young actress. She took to Twitter to tell her fans:

Funny fact about Condola: She never watched The Cosby Show when she was growing up. “I was on the set!” she says in this interview with The Associated Press:

Discuss: Twitter at the opera?

OperaHouse

Nashville Opera is encouraging audience members to use Twitter to comment on its performances of Tosca tomorrow and Saturday, and promises to project the Tweets in the lobby of the Tennessee Performing Arts Center’s Andrew Jackson Hall during the show’s two intermissions. (Click here for a full report.)

“Social networking has become an integral part of Nashville Opera’s marketing efforts,” says Carol Penterman, the company’s executive director. “The use of Twitter and Facebook has been the ticket sales catalyst for this production, and we see this unique program of projecting ‘tweets’ in the lobby as a natural extension of our networking strategy.”

The marketing strategy makes sense. Whether you think facebook and Twitter are useful tools or huge time-wasters, there’s no denying their popularity and impact on our culture. Social networks help build buzz about shows, boost sales and clue people in on things the might not have even noticed in the arts pages of the local paper or in other old media.

But it seems to me that this is another example of an arts presenter encouraging its audience to not pay attention to the very thing they’ve come to see. The only way there will be Tweets to project at the intermissions would be if patrons are Twittering during the performance.

Does that make sense? Won’t it be a distraction? I’m a big fan of Twitter and facebook. But I find it terribly distracting to sit in a darkened theater and see audience members’ faces glowing with the reflection of their cell phone and BlackBerry screens as they text or Tweet or send facebook messages. And the clicking of the tiny keys adds another dimension to the distraction.

What do you think about this development? Please weigh in!