The Sunday Giveaway: The “Be a Broadway Star” Board Game!
Believe it or not, the Holidays are here.
You can tell by the number of tourists arriving in Times Square and the number of A Christmas Carol productions around the country.
So for this week’s giveaway, we thought we’d give out what has become one of the top theater gifts of the last few years: our Be A Broadway Star board game!
Didn’t know we created a board game? Well, we did! Yep, it was one of those shower moments of mine (“How come Broadway doesn’t have a board game?”), and we released it three years ago (click here to read the original announcement). It was in a bunch of top gift lists, was featured on the Today Show and is one of Amazon’s Top Selling Gifts every holiday season.
What is it like to play? Imagine the game Life . . . with a touch of charades thrown in (click here to see our commercial).
But forget imagining, because one of you is going to get it for free!
Here’s how you can win your very own Be A Broadway Star board game.
In the game, we have these “Make or Break” cards (which are everyone’s favorite). They’re like Community Chest or Chance cards in Monopoly. The only difference is that they include tasks that you have to do before you get your “prize.” Some cards make you sing a Sondheim lyric or speak in an accent, or perform an interpretive dance. You know, the type of stuff you might be called upon to do in an audition with an evil casting director behind the table.
Make up your own “Make Or Break” card task and put it in the comment sections, and we’ll pick one who’ll win the game!
Good luck! I hope you “Make It!”
(Got a comment? I love ‘em, so comment below! Email Subscribers, click here then scroll down to say what’s on your mind!)
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FUN STUFF:
– Come to my 6th Annual Producer’s Perspective Social on 12/12! Click here to RSVP.
– Have you invested in a Broadway show? Take our Broadway Investor Survey by clicking here!
– Attend the How to Audition Workshop on 12/5. Only one participant spot and a few auditor spots are left! Click here to register.
Recite as much of a Shakespeare soliloquy (other than “To be or not to be…”) as you can. At least two sentences, please.
List the actresses that have played Dolly Madison and also the ones that have played Mama Rose
Grab a round prop from the room and deliver the line “To be or not to be: that is the question”
Perform 16 bars from the first musical you saw.
Recite all of Shakespear’s play titles, in reverse chronlogical order.
I know…I can’t spell! Shakespeare!
Name all of the colors of Joseph’s coat!
List all the one-word-titled plays that are Pulitzer Prize winners
Name all the women who have played Elphaba (not including standbys and understudies, that is) on Broadway! 🙂
Create a song list, theme and some funny patter for you premiere engagement at Below 54.
Please tombe, pas de bourree, glissade, saut de chat across the room.
Sing a song from Annie in two different languages.
Sing eight bars of a Broadway show tune associated with a particular star, but sing it in the style of a different broadway star.
I love this game! I got it a few years ago and My younger sister and I play it all the time (nobody else in our family will play it with us anymore because we’re too good).
We’ve added our own “Audition” cards with more recent shows and we’ve used the “Make it or Break it” cards as games during the commercials at our Tony Award parties! Definitely an excellent game to have!
We haven’t gotten around to making any new “Make it or Break it” cards yet, but if we were I might suggest:
“The actor playing Spiderman got in an accident and you have to go on! Sing 3 lines of your favorite show-tune while upside down”
You just failed your audition. However, the director made you an assistant to the assistant property manager who, for your first task, asks you to find a left-handed smoke blower. Where would you look?
Perform a monologue as a recognizable celebrity, and change the celebrity with every new sentence.
It’s time for 6 Degrees of Betty Buckley! Another player provides you with a Broadway actor and you have to get back to Betty!
I’ve been fortunate enough to win the game so I’m not competing for it again. But I’ve often thought that with a few modifications a television game show or live immersion theatrical show could be created based on it.
You’re auditioning for Law & Order SVU. Roll the die and perform an improv monologue as the associated stock SVU character:
1. smooth Assistant District Attorney
2. tough detective
3. sleezy defense attorney
4. Special Victims Unit victim
5. mild-mannered forensic psychologist/profiler
6. creepy perp
I LOVE THIS!
Sing as much as you can of “Memory” from Cats. Do it in the voice of Barbra Streisand.
You are auditioning for a remake of Oklahoma with updated lyrics and music by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Sing a few lines from one of the songs.
You’re in an audition and you forget your lyrics. Make up new lyrics on the spot and hope the director doesn’t notice.
Do a monologue, only instead of it being delivered by the original character, perform if as if it was being delivered by the enemy of the character.
Best Sunday Giveaway ever!! I’m dying for this game!
You show up for an audition and find out moments before you walk in that you’ll be reading with your life long bway crush (fooor example Jeremy Jordan) Show the other players your best “fan freak out” and then get it together, recompose. (You have 45 seconds)
Make up and sing a song from [Insert your favorite movie]: The Musical!
Do your best “Patti Lupone” to berate, belittle, embarrass, humiliate and shame the other players in the game. “WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?”
Just saw john lithgow “stories by heart” sooo.
Become a parrot for one full min.
Sing a verse of a favorite song sung by someone of the opposite sex. Love this when the pros do it.
CHARADES
YOU HAVE TO GET THEM TO GUESS YOU’RE
—JUDY GARLAND— AT CARNEGIE HALL.
IN MIME.
YOU CANNOT SPEAK, SING, OR MAKE ANY SOUND WHATSOEVER.
Show us your feet.
“Tell us a knock-knock joke.”
Please recite your most sincere over-the-top Tony Award acceptance speech.
Be a bobsled.
Choose your favorite death scene to recreate. Yes, Shakespeare counts too.
Flawlessly perform 20 acrobatic tricks in a row while reciting all of CELL BLOCK TANGO
sing both parts of the duet, “You’re nothing without me”, from City of Angels.
“You are auditioning for a Mel Brook’s show and he just asked you for your best joke. Keep delivering jokes until you have made everyone in the room laugh.”
90’s musical madness, your favorite bad 90’s movie (or good in your opinion) has been green lighted for a musical run. Sing the melody to the 11 O’clock number with the tony award winning gusto. “Stop or my mom will shoot -The Musical.”
Show that you have the chops, perform 16 bars of your goto piece from a Broadway Musical.
Give us your best FOSSE inspired dance routine!
Sing the first 12 bars of any three Heroine’s Wanting Song in the persona of Jackie Hoffman.
In celebration of NBC’s upcoming Sound of Music special…
Perform “The Lonely Goatherd” using another player as a marionette.
Perform a Shakespeare excerpt of at least 4 lines in a foreign (non-English/American) accent (e.g., French, German, Spanish).
Speak the lyrics to a verse and chorus of “you’re the top” without once humming the melody.
This happened to me, many moons ago, while auditioning for a Livent show in Toronto. The musical director instructed me to sing my audition piece (“If I Loved You”)while unstacking and then re-stacking chairs in the room. SO… my challenge for the game would be to sing your audition song while re-arranging the furniture in the room!
Good Luck!
You have been cast in the newest “Forbidden Broadway”…due to your incredible talent. You must perform the chorus of a current Broadway musical number … impersonating one of the stars of that role (in the last ten years),and the parody version of the chorus of the song.
i.e., Jane Lynch as ‘Miss Hannigan’ singing “Little Gleeks, Little Gleeks, every week I want to destroy them! Little Gleeks, Little Gleeks, must I dream, see and flee them?…”
Sing replacement lyrics for a familiar show tune that reflect a crisis ,big or small ,of someone else in the room or your most irritating relative or intolerant neighbor. You must rhyme and fit the meter.
Do your best Carol Channing impressions.
Perform three different “Bobby’s” each from a different show.
The evil casting director asks you to show him your language versatility so you answer his questions in Pig Latin!
The impressive credit you made up on your resume has just been challenged. Relate an ‘anecdote’ from the ‘run’ and name drop a ‘co-star’ that convinces the casting director it’s all real. (I am NOT endorsing this behavior…just having innocent fun!)
These suggestions are all so brilliant.
Mine is to turn a Greek Tragedy into a comedy
My children (8 and 12) absolutely LOVE this game!!!! Buy it!
Here’s your “Don’t Rain on My Parade” moment, show us your dramatic flair, Barbra style!
You are a master salesperson. You are Ken Davenport delivering a pitch to sell the “Be a Broadway Star” Board Game!
Choose from the following 2 options:
1) Turn to the player on your right, sit Indian-style, and sing “A Whole New World”.
2) Turn to the player on your left, lay on your stomach, and sing the opening chant of “The Lion King”.
Right after the big closing musical number there is a passionate kiss with your co-star. Please sing the ending from any Broadway musical number and at the end please demonstrate your kissing technique with your…..invisible partner….and GO!
Recite a lyric from each of Richard Rodgers’s lyricists.
Sing “One Day More” from Les Mis and sing every part in every voice, male and female!
5 second costume change. Go!
Apply role-appropriate makeup and prance around singing your choice of song from “Cats”
Bought the game the moment it went up for sale. LOVE it.
ALWAYS play it on Thanksgiving. How about a make it or break it with a song from “Cats” in the voice of your favorite dish?
Dream Casting: Name your favorite stars in your least favorite show or vice versa…Go!
101 Dalmatians is opening on Broadway. Howl at the moon!
Act out the tree you would be, if you were a tree. (ala Barbara Walters)
Paint my House.
(Apologies to Rosie O’Donnell, Exit to Eden.)
Stand and “rock the ship” like Luther Billis in
South Pacific.
Explain the Curious Case of Jeremy Piven and the Mercury Poisoning.
Sing the end of Valjean’s Who am I (the 24601 bit) in the voice of a singer of your choice. (i.e Liza Minnelli)Your fellow players have to guess who you are impersonating. Each player has 1 guess per singer. Repeat process until someone gets the right answer.
It’s your worst nightmare. You’ve accidentally shown up to your audition – naked. What do you grab from the audition waiting area to use as clothes, and display how you would justify your appearance to the director.
Oh no! You’re auditioning for the Scottish play and while introducing yourself you accidentally dropped the “M” word! The director is NOT amused. Quick, performance the curse purging ritual, and beg for forgiveness!
That would be *perform. Thanks, autocorrect.
Sing a song from Rock of Ages in the style of Rogers & Hammerstein.
Give a Tony acceptance speech.
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Bernadette Peters gets laryngitis and you as her understudy in Into the Woods gets you your breakout performance