November, 2010

Welcome to LocalTheatreNY.com & BurlesqueNY.com 

Several years ago I was playing around with this notion of creating my own publication when I realized the way to go was on the internet.  Everywhere I turned, websites and blogs were popping up, yet I had no clue how to even begin publishing anything online, nevermind a regularly updated site.  Print remains too expensive and while I wasn't necessarily looking to make money, I didn't want to burn it away either.  What I wanted was to create something that I enjoyed producing about a subject matter that I cared about.  The internet - a website - seemed to make perfect sense even though I knew nothing about HTML, search engine marketing, building traffic or anything of the sort.  Still, I was looking to offer some sort of service or function to this thing I "loved" and the idea began to take form. But I loved many things...what would my site be about?

At the time I was very actively involved in community theatre and had even founded and run my own group, The Convent Players, for a couple of years in the basement of St. Mary's School in Woodside. I had been acting, producing, writing, directing, doing tech work and promoting my shows as well as working with other groups out in Brooklyn, Queens and throughout the city. One night, we were sitting around when someone made some comments about a group in Long Island and we began comparing notes on the different groups we had all worked with, whether they were still around, what shows were opening soon, any auditions out there and so forth. The Village Voice listed some off-off theatre, there was Backstage, Show Business and perhaps to some extent, Time Out New York where I had worked for a few years.  But there was absolutely nothing dedicated to local, community, independent and amatuer theatre anywhere in New York!  And that's how I had the idea for what I called at first, CommunityTheaterNY.com.

And this site, in a very rough form, was born.

About two years ago I decided to change the name of the site to LocalTheatreNY.com at the suggestion of a friend and fellow producer, Ron Hellman of the Outrageous Fortune Company in Flushing.  Community Theatre itself was too restrictive and descriptive of that type of production that is often not well produced.  In some areas, community theatre was a good thing and in others it represented rinky dink, poorly produced shows no one wanted to see.  In New York, the range was just too wide and all emcompassing: from Broadway to off, to off-off, local, regional, summerstock, college, even burlesque!   But many such productions resisted the suggestion of being associated with community theatre, so I gladly changed the name.

Several weeks ago, we decided to take on a new challenge: video content. Active Engagement and this desire to see and experience things on an audio and visual level are very popular and this seemed like the next logical step.  Instead of writing articles and reviews (which we really don't do much anymore), we opted for short, mini interviews, promotional videos and, coming in December, our first ever webisode on The Making of Women Behind Bars, a new production scheduled to open at the Brooklyn Heights in early 2011. Our desire is simple: to bring our readers and viewers directly into the world of local theatre!  We want them to see it, feel it, know it, hear it and experience it as if they were actually there. As of this writing, we have added close to 10 new videos and mini interviews and the response has been incredible and positive!

We also made the move to include more content on the ever popular entertainment artform of Burlesque! Burlesque is growing in leaps and bounds and a few sites and facebook pages are dedicated to promoting these types of performances, but we felt there was room for greater visibility and an interest in seeing it grow even more.  Just a few weeks ago we added an expanding section to LocalTheatreNY.com by creating BurlesqueNY.com.

We hope you enjoy the new changes and we encourage you to comment on our videos and become active participants in our effort to bring together all forms of theatre under one roof. Point groups, actors, and theatre lovers our way.  Join us on Twitter, Facebook, Vimeo and YouTube and help us grow as we help theatre and live entertainment continue to flourish in the NY area.

It is great to have you here with us!

Roger Gonzalez,

Editor & Publisher

LocalTheatreNY.com  | BurlesqueNY.com