Marie Osmond, Elaine Paige, Sandy Duncan, and Betty White have all played the female lead in what classic 1950’s musical?
This was just a taste of the trivia competition that so engrossed nearly 40 players last night at Hurley’s for the inaugural event of the Young Patrons Committee (YPC) at Theatre Development Fund.
The recently formed group is composed of theatre lovers who are emerging to mid-career professionals. The group’s goal is to generate interest and attendance for theatre as an art form, supporting the TDF mission of encouraging and enabling diverse audiences to attend live theatre and dance in all their venues. They accomplish this through volunteer activities, special performing arts events for the New York young professionals’ community, and fundraisers supporting a wide range of TDF’s programs.
Last night’s kick-off trivia contest was hosted by Tony Award nominee Celia Keenan-Bolger (25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Les Miserables) and Sarah Saltzberg (25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Don’t Quit Your Night Job). The hilarious hosts led nine teams of players through 36 questions ranging from “oh please” to “oh no” in terms of difficulty, all the while interjecting question after question with their personal brand of humor and playfully mocking the “nerds” who knew the answers to even the most mystifying of trivia.
“This Tony Award-winning actress, currently portraying one of the most renowned opera singers of the 20th century, also portrayed ½ of a female cop team for seven seasons on CBS… fun fact, I loved that show!” came a gleeful shout-out from Sarah as she and Celia took turns interrogating the teams.
With 30-seconds on the clock and a whistle ready to call time, contestants feverishly muttered in hushed tones, collaborating on answers and, in some cases, merely passing scraps of paper between one another to avoid revealing their choices to nearby competitors. The cutthroat game continued on into a bonus round with an especially difficult question added at the last minute by the hosts… which turned out to be not so hard for some devoted Sondheim fans playing the game.
In the end “Team Winning,” made up of Rich Silverstein, Brian Johnson and Tony Award nominee Alex Timbers (Best Book of a Musical, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson), won the game and were each awarded a $50 TKTS gift certificate. In addition, a raffle was held and two more contestants were awarded gift certificates to the booths.
Food, fun and drinks were had by all and the very mixed crowd took advantage of the evening to meet and mingle with like minded young professionals.
Curious how you’d fare in the competition? Take the quiz yourself and come back next week to find out the answers.
For the official TDF Stages feature on the Young Patrons Trivia Night, click here.
And if you are interested in learning more about the Young Patrons Committee at TDF click here or email Chris Reichheld, TDF’s Individual Giving Manager. More YPC events are coming soon so stay tuned.
Tommy Karr 