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[0:06] Dori Berinstein: Hi, this is Dori Berinstein, and you're listening to Deep Dive Broadway.

[0:12] Dori Berinstein: BroadwayCon is such a big deal in the Broadway community, and it takes just incredible effort to bring it to life. And today we're so fortunate to be able to talk to three of the key players in the BroadwayCon world.

[0:28] Dori Berinstein: Melissa Anelli, the co-founder of BroadwayCon, and the owner of Mischief Management. Also, we're talking with Kristopher Sandoval, who's the program director for Mischief Management and all things BroadwayCon. And finally, Jordan Edwards, who is the creative director for Mischief Management and who's been part of BroadwayCon for a very long time. This is really an exciting event. You're not gonna want to miss it, and you're not gonna want to miss this conversation. I have been such a BroadwayCon fan from day one. I have attended every single BroadwayCon, and I'm just constantly in awe of how you pull it off and what you do to bring it all together. So I have so many questions that I've been dying to ask for five years, six years.

So, you know, I think to ground it in just a little context, let's talk about Mischief Management because BroadwayCon is incredible, but you have been creating mischief in many, many different areas. And so, Melissa, why don't you give us a little context for the unbelievable life you lead?

[1:43] Melissa Anelli: Unbelievable is a word with many facets to it, and they all apply. Mischief Management started in, I guess you can say our first official event was in 2009, but it really started in 2007 when a bunch of Harry Potter fans at a Harry Potter convention thought we should do this, we should make one of these. And whenever people say, you know, how did you become an entrepreneur or whatever? I say, out of sheer stupidity, because I just said, sure, let's do it. That's fine. Nothing bad could possibly happen. And so I signed my name to a contract for LeakyCon 2009, and it could have really bankrupted me forever. And we just about skated through creatively; it was everything we wanted it to be. Obviously, first show, financially, it was everything we didn't want it to be.

But after that year, I mean, like our focus really was to make conventions that the fans themselves want to go to. We are all deep, deep fandomers. It wasn't just being at a Harry Potter con. We were like the deep core of the Harry Potter online fandom, all in person. And that comes, that's like a certain sort of personality trait. Like once you are one of those deep kind of fans, that carries over to everything you're interested in. So we started expanding LeakyCon, which was a Harry Potter convention. And then it went from 750 people to 3500 people. We've now done, I don't know, 15 of them, maybe. I can't, I can never keep track, all over the country and in England and Ireland. And then in 2013, while watching the Tonys, though the famous one with that incredible opening that Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote, at the end, they did this rap, Audrey came out and she dropped the mic, and I got a text from my friend at the time who said, "Has there ever been a Broadway convention?"

And I was literally in Anthony Rapp's house because he's a dear old friend because Rent was my first fandom. I was literally watching the Tonys at his house. And a couple weeks later, I said to him, "What do you think? You see what we do, you know what we do. What do you think about a Broadway convention?" And he said, "Whatever you need, I'm in." So that's how Anthony became a co-founder of BroadwayCon. And so I just walked into the Hilton at Midtown and said, "I'm doing an event." I can only tell one of you the name because I was so astonished that BroadwayCon didn't exist, you know? And they thought they made it winter event, and I had no idea whether or not it was going to work, but when we announced BroadwayCon, it really exploded.

So very luckily, that was the whole from the beginning of Mischief Management up to BroadwayCon. But basically, Mischief is about being your most authentic fan self and going to events that you would have wanted to create and making sure that there's like an improved space for fans themselves.

[4:50] Dori Berinstein: And you guys did Con of Thrones, didn't you do that too?

[4:54] Melissa Anelli: I did.

[4:54] Melissa Anelli: Yeah, Con of Thrones for a couple of years. We've done work with A&E Networks, we've done a couple of other events. We now work with somebody that big theater fans know, Patrick Hines from his old Today Tix show and his Theater People show, who is now a huge podcaster in the true crime space. We do an event for his fans as well.

[5:22] Dori Berinstein: Incredible. And I just, just going back to Harry Potter for a second.

[5:25] Melissa Anelli: Sure, yeah.

[5:26] Dori Berinstein: Being a Harry Potter fan, I just wanna, if you all don't know, Melissa wrote an incredible book that I have called Harry, a History: The True Story of a Boy Wizard, His Fans, and Life Inside the Harry Potter Phenomenon, which you were just like as deep a fan and all over that as it gets.

[5:49] Melissa Anelli: Yeah.

[5:50] Melissa Anelli: It was such, it was so core. Yeah. And Harry Potter, I mean, LeakyCon has now expanded to be more than just Harry Potter because as the world expands, as all of our interests expand, we found it important. We also found it important not to celebrate J.K. Rowling herself because of the terrible anti-humanitarian stances she's been taking. But yeah, Harry, but no matter whatever happens, Harry Potter is deep in all our bones. And I think a lot of us had that experience of starting in like a very, very specific subset of the community that, you know, I grew up overseas, and so I fell really heavy into Harry Potter. And then it becomes the next thing is, you know, Lord of the Rings or Stargate or whatever it happens to be, and then you kind of go and go and go and go, and then before you know it, 20 years down the road, you're in this very bizarre fan headspace where you're talking on the one hand about putting together this multifaceted Lord of the Rings Harry Potter thing, and then the other, you're singing your favorite songs from Rent or talking about Hadestown or like it's just this huge collective of fandoms.

And I think that's what really makes a lot of what we do special is that we have our heads just sort of exploded in all those spaces at once. And it really is just like an ocean of fandom expression and love.

[7:05] Kristopher Sandoval: That's Kristopher, and he's programming director for Mischief Management. Just a small little job, not much to do.

[7:13] Dori Berinstein: Oh my goodness. And just want to also shout out Jordan, who's your creative director for Mischief Management.

[7:22] Jordan Edwards: I was actually an attendee at Mischief's very first event, LeakyCon in 2009. I just was a reader of the Leaky Cauldron website that was sort of the online home of the community, and decided, hey, I'm gonna check out this event. It was the first fan convention I ever went to. I had the most incredible, amazing time, and noticed as an attendee that they didn't have as strong a branding presence as I would have done as a graphic designer. So I reached out and offered a logo, and it stuck, and I've been here ever since. So that was such a nice way to put it.

[7:58] Jordan Edwards: Yeah, I've been here, and it's been such a joy, and it's been such a roller coaster to sort of watch as Mischief grows and changes and adapts and lives through a pandemic and comes out bigger and better on the other side. So we're super excited for this next year.

[8:12] Dori Berinstein: So going back to when you're watching the Tony Awards with Anthony Rapp, amazing, and the idea comes up to do BroadwayCon, which shockingly, agree, how can it not exist? But to go from that inspired idea to actually making it happen.

[8:36] Melissa Anelli: Oh my goodness, it's easier said than done for so many reasons. Before we get to just the amazing BroadwayCon that you have coming up very, very soon, I'm eager just to get a little context for how you got it off the ground in the first place, and then what it takes to pull it off.

[8:58] Melissa Anelli: We've always been very DIY. In the first instance, it was literally Anthony introducing me to friends of his from Broadway and saying to them, "We're doing this thing, are you in?" And they would say almost 201, say yes. The very first person, the very first person to say yes to BroadwayCon was Jen Kalella. And Jen Kalella is a, I think last year was the first one she couldn't attend. She is a consistent supporter, an incredible, incredible person, an incredible ally of the convention. So yeah, it takes just, I don't think it's possible to encapsulate the amount of work and the amount of partnership that it takes. It takes, I went around to every single person working on Broadway that first year in 2015, just doing meeting after meeting after meeting, explaining to them.

And when I say like I couldn't believe it existed, it's because, as you note, it is so hard to put this thing together that there were people, other people in the community saying, "Why isn't there a Broadway convention?" But I think the right idea has to hit the right people at the right time. And I think that's luckily what happened with us. So I just started meeting with as many people as I could. People would become new friends of ours and introduce us to a lot of other people. I would just email random Broadway actors that I admired out of just out of the blue. I emailed Jonathan Groff. Didn't know him from Adam, but a friend said, "Here's his email address." And so I emailed him and said, "Hey, you want to come to BroadwayCon?"

And he was like, "Yes, yes, I do." And then it just all started to come together. There was at one point, right now we do everything with a lot of computer programs now, and everything's all digital. But in the first year, my, she was my assistant at the time. She became the programming director that preceded Kristopher, Sierra Fox. We had a foam core board that was basically the size of our little WeWork office, and we just had post-its and little index cards moving the people and the convention and the panels around because it was the only way we could like kind of like get our arms around what this was. But luckily we were met with one of the key reasons it happened is that we were met with such an influx of excitement and positivity from the Broadway community about it that we found ourselves with a lot to work with.

I think we still have a lot of that energy, and one of the great things about what we do is the best way I can put it is sort of that like punk rock DIY aesthetic. It's very much like, this is probably showing my age a little bit, but going back to like the 80s and 90s, this idea of having like a mass record, you know, mass thing on the TV and a huge billboard, like that wasn't really a thing in those scenes. It was zines and street teams and getting on the ground and getting your friends together and being like, "Hey, let's go rent the basement of this weird building and put on a cool punk show." And that's sort of the same aesthetic that we still have of like, you know, we all get into a room and say, "We're all fans of this thing.

What would we like to see? And then how do we make that happen?" And that feeling of it's almost like getting together with your friends and being like, "Hey, we really like this random band no one's ever heard of in our small town. Let's put together a zine and print it at the Kinkos and distribute it to all of our friends," is that same sense, but like in a much broader scale.

[12:18] Jordan Edwards: And it's really exciting and really fun. And one of the great things about BroadwayCon is especially is that we have not only are we celebrating the hot new show, whatever is the show on Broadway, off Broadway, but we also have decades of history that we can pull from and you know hundreds and hundreds of shows and think of the sing-alongs and all the possibilities that we can tap into in terms of reunions and deep dives into these niche topics. Um so it really is a wealth of opportunity for us, and it's been so fun to watch not only the mischief team be able to sort of explore this amazing space, but all the fans that help with our fan-led programming and all that be able to sort of geek out about these shows and topics that they love.

[13:04] Jordan Edwards: So BroadwayCon happens once a year. It's a three-day event. And so I hope you give yourselves at least a day to collapse and recover. Um, but when how far in advance do you start prepping for the next con?

[13:19] Melissa Anelli: I just want to answer what you just said, the day to relax and recover. That is official and it's codified. It's called SleepyCon. We close for two days and we call it SleepyCon. And depending on what our schedule for the summer looks like, we do the best we can to not do anything for those days.

[13:36] Jordan Edwards: Yeah, smart. And in terms of how soon we start planning, I mean, there's this whole other side of the process, which is you know, securing your venue and getting those contracts signed and everything. But I can tell you that literally on the flight home from the last BroadwayCon, I got on the Wi-Fi, opened up my Google Docs, and started planning this BroadwayCon. So it is very much, you know, to make something like this happen in three days. There's often this sort of almost like a fourth wall to call an artistic term into this. There's a very clear fourth wall for a lot of people where they don't see the sort of machinations behind the scenes, but it really does take an entire year to not only get all the shows on board to get all the people on board with people having different schedules all over the place, and some people are touring and flying in from Los Angeles, and then all the presenters are you know trying to make sure that they can you know take time off of work or get their kids babysat or bring their kids with them, get their cosplay set up, and that all requires support, and it really is a mass community uplifting, is really what it feels like. Everyone sort of surges up at the same time and says, Okay, we've had maybe like an hour to rest, we went and got some coffee, let's make this happen again.

[14:51] Melissa Anelli: I mean, we are planning, we have had many thoughts about next year already. Lots of to give you an idea.

[14:57] Jordan Edwards: Yeah.

[14:58] Melissa Anelli: Well, it feels like every time I'm there, it feels like you have everything organized to the last second. It's so meticulous, you know, and the planning and the effort and everything that has gone into presenting a BroadwayCon, you know, is so crystal clear. However, I know that you also have to improvise, and that there have been some crazy things that have happened along the way. And the first thing that pops into my head, and I'm sure there are 300 other things, is the blizzard.

[15:30] Jordan Edwards: Oh, yeah. Um, do you want to talk about the blizzard? And you want to talk about just like how you in the moment have to switch gears and do completely different things than what you anticipated. Are you too traumatized?

[15:43] Melissa Anelli: Yeah, I'm too traumatized to it and you do it. So it's like mythological at this point to just it is a bit the blizzard it's a part of our it's a part of our DNA for sure. So 2016 was the very first BroadwayCon and it also happened to be the year of a historic gigantic massive blizzard in New York City that was so large that it shut down the subway system. Um so at the last minute almost all of the special guests that we had slated to attend could not get on a subway to get into midtown. Um so that involved just a Herculean amount of pivoting and calling who we could people. Um just there was a certain group of people who just trudged through the snow in order to make it to the hotel. Um and Jonathan Groff is one of those Jonathan Groff being one of those people just walked through the walked through the weather to get to us and we're we were so grateful but it also was such an interesting bonding experience for the attendees because you're shut up in a hotel you can't go anywhere and it's a little bit of like trial by fire trial by snow trial by blizzard.

Um but it created such an incredible atmosphere of we're all in this together we're creating these incredible memories you know these fans are surrounded by some of their most favorite Broadway stars and legends and we're kind of we're doing this all together and the programming team had to just pull things out of a hat at the last minute who can we put on a stage to just entertain these people. Um one of my favorite memories is just getting up on stage we called it the BroadwayCon Blizzard party line because it's uh you know pulling pulling out our contact lists and who can we call and uh Melissa you were actually a part of that what was that like?

[17:31] Melissa Anelli: Oh, so I have a couple I have a couple of stories that you've got to hear about Blizzard now that you're talking. They're coming back to me. The blackout that's um one is that when we talk when we say that we're planning that we're like changing all the sessions, it was literally happening as I walked down the hallway. Everybody was on like our microphones and on our you know, our radios that we talk on and on phones, going, okay, this one could do that, this one could do that. I saw Jen Tepper in the hallway. I was like, hey, there's this panel, we lost our moderator. Can you go? She's like, I'm on it. And it's just very everything. It just all these months of planning, we just threw it up in the air.

And then um, I love this story. And uh David Alpert was our artistic director this first year, and I sent him a text that said, Hey, there's a cosplay panel going on right now. Can you go just like vamp for a second? We're trying to get somebody in there, et cetera. And he goes, sure. And then I got pulled on four different other fires, and 15 minutes later, there's a 45-minute panel. He texted me, like, hey, how long should I do this? I was like, uh, about 25 more minutes. He's like, I hate you. I'm like, I'm sorry. He's like, I know nothing about cosplay. He's like, just vamp, you got it, you'll be fine. So he just did. Um, and um then I was backstage at some point, and somebody came up to me and said, Who's in your contact book?

And I started, you know, listing a couple people, then they started listing a couple people, and we just said, All right, we're we're gonna do this party line because we weren't supposed to have the ballroom for a couple of hours on the Saturday night because there was like a sports dinner. But the sports dinner got canceled, and all of our people were trapped in a hotel together, and we're like, well, we gotta make something up. So we just made up this party line, and now we do it every year for those who can't come, which is really fun.

[19:12] Melissa Anelli: I want to say also though, about the Blizzard thing, one of the most incredible things about the Blizzard is that you know it's all happening, and it's all you're all sort of seeing it from like a third, like like you're floating over it, you know. And a very far thought in the back of my head was, oh no, we're going to have to give so many refunds, which for a small company is significant. So I was worried about that, and uh it turns out that about you know, I was expecting like 10-20 percent of people who couldn't make it, you know, etc. Uh we offered people like you know, hold your ticket for next year or whatever. Um, people were so supportive and so wonderful that I think we gave two refunds at the end of the whole thing. It was unreal. We couldn't believe it.

[19:57] Jordan Edwards: Well, you guys just improvised so magnificently. I remember that party line. I remember Patti LuPone was like, oh my gosh, seriously, and that was just an amazing moment, I think, for everybody in the audience because it was just everybody was in the same situation, and she was totally she was incredible.

[20:18] Melissa Anelli: The Patti story was great because uh somebody said, Um, we're just gonna we're just gonna call her. Um they came, they came in last second, and she was so confused about what we were all doing in this blizzard, and you could hear her on the phone go, Are you all okay? Do you need food? And the whole room started chanting, bring us pizza, Patti, bring us pizza, Patti. And so one of these days she's gonna show up with the pizza in her hand, it's just gonna happen.

[20:45] Jordan Edwards: That's right. No, you guys have to uh imagine it was a big ballroom, it was a big ballroom filled with people trapped because of the snowstorm. And you know, I don't know if Patti was aware that she was talking to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people, but it was so much fun. It was a core memory for sure.

[21:04] Melissa Anelli: Core memory for I love that you continued with that. Are there other moments over the many years that BroadwayCon has been with you that stand out both for the thrill and for the agony that come to mind?

[21:22] Jordan Edwards: Getting an email from Hal Prince right after the first one they sent. Yeah, that was a moment.

[21:28] Melissa Anelli: Wow.

[21:28] Jordan Edwards: Um, literally, we hadn't we had an email. I think I think we had tried to invite him and it just didn't didn't work out. But somebody he sent an email to somebody else, and it was forwarded on to us saying that he had been watching and he thought we did an incredible job. That was like the highest, you know, it's wild. It was wild.

[21:46] Melissa Anelli: There's one that pops to my head that actually happened last year where we were putting on an event in Columbus, Ohio, and there is apparently some sort of thing that floats in the air called Ohio Red Ragweed. Had no idea that it existed. Um I almost died. I crawled under the table and was like, guys, I can't hear anything, I can't see anything, something's happening. And the entire team like swelled up as one unit, and it was basically like me handing the binder to somebody. I don't even remember who it was. I was like, guys, I'm going to the hospital, like this is bad. And then immediately everyone just sort of dispersed and everything ran like so smooth and so perfect. And then I walked back in, I was like, nothing, nothing broke, everything went fine.

And like, oh yeah, it's fine. And it's just that like that groundswell. I think we really benefit from the fact that we as a team are individually fans of the things that we cover on. And so when you think about like if you are at a convention and something falls apart, everyone always has that thought of like, oh, well, I would have done it this way. Well, we are those people that say, Well, I'm gonna do it this way, and we're actually gonna make that happen. And that is such a like that short circuit to actually make that thing happen as a fan is so powerful. I love it. It's my favorite part of this.

[23:02] Melissa Anelli: One of my favorite memories from um from a BroadwayCon is actually from First Look, which is a program that we do that lets shows that haven't opened yet fully on Broadway, or you know, if they're relatively new, giving the attendees and fans at BroadwayCon a little bit of a sneak peek. And I believe this was in 2017, the year that we were in the airplane hangar of the Javits, and it was backstage, and um Christy Altamare from Anastasia was getting ready to perform, and she was looking out over this gigantic crowd of people, like thousands and thousands of people assembled to watch, and she said, This is the largest group that I've ever sung this song for. And it was such an interesting moment because they had been in previews or whatever, but like this for her was the most um the most people that she performed that specific song from Anastasia for at that moment in her life, which was really special to kind of watch. And obviously she was incredible and got up on stage and killed it, and it was just a really great memory for me.

[24:03] Jordan Edwards: A couple of quick highlights. Um Joel Gray hugging Chita Rivera on stage was just unbelievable. Surprise, total surprise moment. Oh my god. Jen Kalela doing the first um public sing of uh Me in the Sky, which has become a very special song in our group. Uh she also, when she kissed Jonathan Groff in the first year, that was a pretty hilarious moment.

[24:36] Kristopher Sandoval: Um, I had been such a huge fan of hers for so long, and nobody told me that she was coming. I had no idea. And I was literally backstage and I turned around and Paula Vogel was there. And I said, How did this it nobody told me? They said, Oh yeah, it happened last minute, sorry. And so I got to, you know, it's it's it's such an incredible thing, and is is sort of the core of what we get to do for fans is that you get to see other sides of people you admire, spend a little bit of extra time with them in a way that you really can at the stage door, and just get some time to be as fanish as you want to be.

[25:11] Dori Berinstein: Melissa, a moment that I'll uh never forget sharing with you is uh prepping you to go walk on stage to introduce Hillary Rodham Clinton.

[25:20] Melissa Anelli: Oh my god, I think I think I blacked out that was wild. And once that intro introducing Hillary Clinton was one of the great honors of my existence. I think I don't think it's like I don't I don't know how I'm gonna top that one. But what I loved even more is once that event, once that happened, that signaled the official start of Broadway Con. And it was our first, not just our first Broadway con, but our first event since the pandemic. And everybody that had been at Mischief since beforehand, uh, it was me and Tori and Jordan and Leia. Um, we kind of saw each other backstage and we all just grouped into this giant hug, like, oh God, we're back. We did it because there were so many days.

[25:59] Kristopher Sandoval: Yeah that yeah, so many days we didn't think it would happen. That was just a magnificent moment because I think everybody was feeling that, and it probably for so many people was the first time they were at anything like this with other people, you know, with kind of the pandemic winding down. It was it was a big moment for everybody to have that experience.

[26:21] Jordan Edwards: Yeah. Um, you know, I think one of the things that constantly amazes me about Broadway con is the range of the programming. There really is something for everyone and more than something, a lot of things for everyone. You know, because there are the, you know, obviously with cosplay and all sorts of other things, people bursting into song right and left. For the super Uber fans, you know, there is just a plethora of opportunity, but then there are all these deep dives about the behind the curtain with the the creators and Bill Berlone the dog trainer, uh, with you know, and all these um how to audition and you do you want to talk about how you put the program together in a way that really takes care of the just the giant range of fans out there for Broadway?

[27:14] Kristopher Sandoval: Sure. The thing with Broadway, especially is that there's multiple layers to it. There is that sort of like um awe and spectacle that comes with it, and everybody remembers their first show or the first musical that they saw, the first play. You can go down the list of of sort of your Broadway firsts. And so there's always that element of okay, what's the spectacle? What is the big flashy thing, the thing that people will walk away from and remember? But then as you sort of progress in your Broadway fandom and you have more experience in the industry and you go to off Broadway and regional, there are all there are these other things that start adding up. It is wow, how do they consistently apply this makeup every single night?

How how does that work? How do you do stage design? How do you do the the construction of of these pieces? Because a lot of these pieces, you know, for a Broadway show are not meant to last forever and ever and ever. And so moving them from city to city, that's an interesting logistical question. And then you get into the you know, further sort of technicalities of things and and the specificity of things of okay, well, you know, as an industry, how do we make sure that we are doing what we should for neurodivergent people and for people who have um different, you know, body types and different um styles of performance, and and how do we make sure we have advocacy um properly represented and how do we boost voices that should be boosted?

And so all of that is sort of what is going on in our heads when we first sit down and we say, okay, what should Broadway con look like this year? And it never starts with a like, okay, how do we make money or how do we get you know a flashy headline? It never starts with that. It always starts with as a fan of this thing, what would I like to see? And then for those of us with families, what we would would we like our kids to see five, ten years from now, because you know, BroadwayCon does have sort of a pulse and a long term feel to it. And so how do we get to where we want to be five years from now? That also comes into play. And we we try and do our best to make sure that we have representative programming and and programming for different people of of all types and and all um interests. And you know, sometimes we have a little bit more of that, sometimes we have a little bit less of that, but we always try and make sure that we include as many people as we can under the tent.

[29:21] Dori Berinstein: Let's talk about BroadwayCon 23. Uh obviously you've been working on this for almost an entire year. Um, and what what are the most exciting moments uh and some of the special moments that that uh everyone listening to this can anticipate?

[29:41] Jordan Edwards: There are so many. Um where to begin. There's some stuff we haven't announced yet that's still happening. I think the biggest thing for me is the Osdos ballroom. The this we the wicked is celebrating their year of the fan, they're in their twentieth twentieth year, and they are are throwing a dance party. And it has been at our other events, we do we do balls on the weekends on the Saturday night, and it's so incredible after meeting friends and doing going to all your panels, etc. etc. to just dress up and dance with your friends, and what a perfect way to do it being in the Osdust dancing through life kind of experience. So it's gonna be so special. It's a first for us. We're so excited about it.

[30:23] Kristopher Sandoval: Can everybody attend the Osdos Wicked Dance Party? Or how do you get tickets to attend?

[30:28] Jordan Edwards: Yeah, it's um actually this is the first event we've ever done that you don't actually have to be going to the rest of BroadwayCon to attend. So you can go just to Osdust or you can go to the whole weekend and Osdos and actually you get a you get a discount for it if you if you go to like full BroadwayCon plus Osdust. Um it is a dance party on Saturday night and there's gonna be special performances, there's gonna be giveaways, prizes. Wicked is really putting on something just for the fans. Um it's very cool. It's very cool. We've always wanted to do a ball or a dance party or something. There's something so special about um taking your your weekend and your learnings and your friends and everything that's happened to you, and then just getting into a fancy dress and dancing the night away.

So yeah, so you can go um BroadwayCon.com slash Osdust has all the details, or just on BroadwayCon.com, you go to the tickets page, you can get a you can get a ticket that way. Um it's gonna be a really special event. Now I will say for all the Wicked fans, Osdust is not the only thing that we are doing. We have so much great programming. Uh most of it has not even been shown yet. So we have some things that are really, really cool. Um, we have some some sneak peeks coming soon. So if you are a wicked person, I think you should look at the whole event because we uh we are really packing it to the gills.

[31:39] Kristopher Sandoval: Yep. I am really excited about the breadth of of both the reunions of older shows and the new things that uh I mean we are doing so many first look things that are so first look that they haven't even announced what they're doing yet. It's like we're coming next year, it's gonna be big. Um and j just that sort of like juxtaposition of hey, you know the show that like your mom and dad like um versus like hey, you know that show that you just literally heard about on Instagram like two days ago. Um having both of those in this space this space is really exciting. For me, I think um I you know I'm I'm the creative director. I love all of the uh seeing the creativity of our fans and our attendees.

Um I always love watching the cosplay competition. The sort of wild, ingenious ways that these fans bring their favorite characters to life through cosplay is such a a fun joy to watch. Um I've also gotten a special sneak peek at some of the performers for our Star To Bee talent competition, and they are like next level wildly crazy talented this year. So I'm very excited to see those folks take the stage and um see what our judges uh award is our next Star T B because that's always so fun to watch. Star to be is my baby. I love it. I I I oh man, it really these these performers, these amateur performers come and they just they just blow the they blow the roof off the place. It's exciting. Broadway con is not just panels, there's a ton of performance elements that go into this as well.

We have the first look performance, obviously, which is a bunch of new shows, new casts, um, all sorts of things that are being, you know, showcased there. We have uh an amazing cabaret for um trans non-binary and two spirit plus. Uh it is an amazing lineup. It's gonna be fantastic. Um and a bunch of our reunions are also doing little performances. So if you never got the chance to see a show, there may be a chance at Broadway Con that you get to see a little little slice of that, you know, 2004-2006 uh cast performing something. I'm super excited for all of our um sort of silly uh programming. So like our game show and feud, and um we actually just finally hit all of our hundred responses uh yesterday.

And uh there were some interesting things in there um and some funny memes came through that we were looking through this morning of like that's not a real answer, that's a meme, but I really appreciate it. Um so we're really looking forward to that. It really is. I I really love having people um both who you know live in New York who come to the show, and then also people who like this is the one time a year that they come to New York and they want to see all the shows and do all the things and party with their friends. It's just such a great vibe.

[34:23] Dori Berinstein: And where do people go to first of all, where do they go this year to attend Broadway Con? And where do they go and to get tickets? How do they how does it all work for somebody who wants to immediately know that they are going to be at BroadwayCon this year?

[34:40] Jordan Edwards: Uh a variety of ways. Broadwaycon.com is your guide to it all. Uh so you go to BroadwayCon.com and that's where the tickets are. That's where our link to our hotel block is. Um, it's at the Marriott Marquee. It's July 21st through 23rd. It's gonna be so fantastic. So you're if you if you want to see a show, which we hope that many people do, um, you're just steps away and you can kind of never leave the beautiful little BroadwayCon bubble as we're all uh gathered in Times Square this year.

[35:09] Kristopher Sandoval: How do you how do you get in touch and stay in touch with with BroadwayCon?

[35:13] Jordan Edwards: Yeah, so if you go to BroadwayCon.com, we have a sign-up form and you can uh receive our our email newsletter. We send them out several times a week now. We have so much news. Um, but also if you follow us on social media, we're all on all the channels at B WayCon, um except for TikTok, which we are uh BroadwayCon there. Um but if you search for us, you'll find us, and it's a great way to uh to celebrate and share and get excited because we're dropping new uh new things every day and new announcements and new guests. Um so we have a lot of things coming, and it's gonna be great.

[35:45] Dori Berinstein: Uh well I can't thank you enough. Uh counting down the seconds uh uh to attend the next BroadwayCon. What you all do is just so invaluable for our community, and thank you, really thank you, because uh it's just I I think elevated everything, not just for the fans, but for everyone in the community and the shows and the and the talent behind the curtain on stage. You know, BroadwayCon is such an important part of everyone's year. So we are all so grateful for all the hard work that goes into putting Broadway Con on.

[36:22] Kristopher Sandoval: And cannot wait to see you all at Broadway Con 23.

[36:26] Melissa Anelli: Mary Marquis, be there.

[36:29] Dori Berinstein: Thank you.

[36:31] Dori Berinstein: That's it for our episode on BroadwayCon. Thank you so much for listening to Deep Dive Broadway.

[36:39] Dori Berinstein: See you at Broadway Con.