press

I have to ask myself, who is actually coming to see our show? Over the last few weeks there has been an onslaught of press events requiring the presence of the leads to the entire cast, in everything from full wig and costume regalia to jeans a white “42nd Street” T-shirts. Now don’t get me wrong, interviews and media events have been taking place since we arrived in China; TV appearances, answering questions at press conferences from Shanghai to Beijing, singing a duet here or there, you know, the sort of thing one might not think twice about. But recently our media adventures have taken a nosedive into the eccentric.

In Hangzhou, our previous city, about half the cast spent our first day at the theatre for a media ‘event.’ After we were paraded into the seats with our pre-recorded overture blaring and a video of the show playing on the stage that, in a few short days, the real thing would excitingly transpire, we sat for about half an hour and listened with gloriously amused faces (remember, cameras everywhere) to three speeches, one of which, in Chinese, sounded more like a rousing yet incensed call to battle than a welcome to Hangzhou. We smiled, watched as our two leads taught a tap step to a group of locals, continued to wave for the cameras, take pictures with the “locals” outside on the theatre steps, and get back on the bus, not to return until opening day.

But apparently that was not enough for Hangzhou and, even though three of our seven performances that week were corporate buy-out days, we still needed to promote the show by going to a national bank’s corporate dinner and perform a rousing rendition of “Lullaby of Broadway” for a moderately enthused crowd. Luckily our preceding acts, (you know, the child acrobats, pop dancers, and magician) warmed them up to receive us with open arms and polite applause.

And in Nanjing, our current residence, we first said our hellos to the city on a scorching 90-degree October afternoon, fully clad in oversized white 42nd Street T’s, at the Nanjing Olympic Stadium where some kind of….festivities…were underway. There were Chinese men doing a Russian dance, a man singing, clad in some kind of Indian-esq garb, and random kids rollerblading throught a coned-out course on the asphalt. And then us, with our matching get-ups, surrounded by countless photographers, video cameras, lenses big enough to see my nose hairs (I mean…um….my pores…), all filling up their memory sticks with shots of white people! Ooh! I happened to have my relatively professional looking camera with me, and a few photographers actually wanted shots of me taking pictures of other people. In the three months we have been here I have yet to see any of these pictures.

And then most recently, taking the big bus with almost the entire cast, once again dressed in matching 42nd Street ads, we made our most outrageous outing for a media event, this time heading to a theme park 45 minutes outside the city. Walking through the natural springs that formed the center of the park, we made out way past bumper cars and wooden rafts, families lounging in the shade sipping their coconuts (no joke), and made it to a grand opening circumscribed by hundreds of people in tents, cooking food (it didn’t smell like food, I’m just assuming), washing their hands at a central, communal…trough (with faucets and all), and onto the massive concrete stage backed by a forty-foot ad for 42nd Street.

Now I am not going to make too many assumptions here, but given that our tickets range from the equivalent of $13 - $100 US, and the average income of a citizen in China in 2006 was equal to about $2,000, why are we trying to sell our show to a gathering of theme parkers in tents, eating shish kebabs on an outing with their family? When we are not in charge, we are forced to put a certain amount of faith in those who are, regardless of how silly or successful their attempts may seem. From blogging to going to rooftop parties in Shanghai, having Secretaries of State come up on stage after a performance to performing a dance number in a theme park…I guess publicity is publicity, for better or for worse.