YouTube Helps [Title of Show] Land on Broadway

How do you make it to Broadway? YouTube, YouTube, YouTube!

Composer-lyricist Jeff Bowen and librettist Hunter Bell have been working on [Title of Show] for a great many years. It is story about two playwrights [named Bowen and Bell] who write a musical about two playwrights who are writing a musical.  It first surfaced at the New York Musical Theater Festival in 2004. Over the next few years versions of [Title of Show] resurfaced all over the East Coast. It looked like the show's swan song was going to be an off Broadway run in 2006. 

Bowen and Bell would not let [Title of Show] die. They created a short YouTube video named the “[Title of Show] show” about characters from [Title of Show] who started plotting the shows revival on Broadway. It got more than 14,000 views.  Lots of old fans tuned in and recommended it to their friends.  So they kept on making more YouTube episodes.  All-in-all 26 episodes were produced, each one a little more off-the-wall than the last. [I liked the Christmas special with puppets and the show in which Hunter mistook the "Broadway strike" show for the "Broadway streak" show.] 

The [Title of Show] show never became a huge Internet hit, but with five to twenty four thousand viewers per episode it kept the musical fresh and built up a sizable base of new fans. Eventually a Broadway producer figured they would give Bowen and Bell what they were asking for. Last week [Title of Show] made its debut on Broadway at the Lyceum Theater. Check out the musical slideshow  published by the New York Times for a taste of what it is all about.

 The stars of this version of the show? You guessed it, Jeff Bowen and Hunter Bell.