Theatre Ringleader: United Way's Broadway on the Beach

We did our 2nd (annual?) Broadway customized show for the United Way of Milford's fund raiser Friday and had such a blast. The hit of the evening were our college interns and the Live Commercials that they wrote and performed for three of the bigger business sponsors of the event.

Broadway on the Beach featured Broadway performers, Fred Rose, Bret Shuford, Gwendolyn Jones, and myself as well as Jerold Goldstein and our youth board (singing a featured "Freddy my love") and as singing waiters who raised almost $200 in tips for the United Way.

We also selected four of the Executive Directors of the non profits that the United Way benefits and had them go out individually with our Broadway pros to learn a short fun dance (ala Dancing with the Stars) and then come back in to dance to a Beach Boys tune.

So for instance, the Exec Dir of the YMCA, Charlie Clifford came up on stage, talked a bit about the Y and then went off stage with me for 5 min to learn a fun and athletic dance to the Beach Boy's tune "I get around". While we were off learning the dance the rest of the show went on and when we came back on stage we did a lot of jumping jacks and things that went 'around'. Each of the Broadway folks had their own person to teach and then at the end we awarded prizes like "most athletic" or "best shimmy".

The Live commercials were about 2 min long (think Ed Sullivan) and were the hit of the show. Jake Oswell (one of my college kids) wrote them and Cori Stolburn and Stephanie Wasser, also from Univ of Hartford, were so adorable. Pictures below. One was for an Ice Cream place and had such humor to it. Another was for an appliance store that had the owner crying he was laughing so hard!
(pix of the commercials)

Cori, Steph and Jake

Cori and Stephanie

There were a lot of elements to coordinate on this one and I felt like I needed an assistant, but everyone pitched in and helped. Andy helped set up sound, Lisa Durkee made sandwiches for the stars, the college interns did all sorts of helpful things like running around looking for instruments for the audience to play in Under the Boardwalk.