Zuckerberg's sister to bring Broadway to the world via Facebook; Anti-romcoms on song

Alice Jones' Arts Diary

What can the theatre learn from Facebook? That was the question at the second TEDx Broadway conference this week.

Randi Zuckerberg, sister of Facebook founder Mark, and former marketing director of the social networking site, was a speaker at the day-long symposium, an independent off-shoot of the celebrated TED ideas conferences.

Tackling the theme “What’s the best Broadway could be in 2032?”, the media entrepreneur, who revealed that it had been her childhood dream to perform on Broadway, offered a Top 10 ideas to open Broadway up, including holding open auditions on YouTube, crowd-sourcing costumes and funding, online viewings at a fraction of the price of theatre tickets and encouraging stars to interact with fans. “The [Twitter] @ reply is the new autograph”, she said.

Last week she launched Zuckerberg Media Studios a production base “to create and distribute live innovative content for digital, social and traditional media channels.” Which explains her sudden interest in the theatre, and vice versa. “Why should Broadway be limited by physical space? By ticket prices? By the same shows, over and over?” she asked. “Instead of having just a small sliver of the world come to Broadway, why not bring a small piece of Broadway to the entire world?” she added.

Hollywood comedy? It’s just a big joke

His new film I Give it a Year is billed as an anti rom-com and director, Dan Mazer (the brains behind Borat and Bruno) was on fine anti-rom-com (and anti-Hollywood) form at the LOCO film festival.

“I realised that romantic comedies are neither particularly romantic nor comedic. Splitting up is funnier than getting together”, he said after a screening of his film. “Hollywood films don’t make me laugh. There’s only ever one funny film a year.

Take The Watch, which starred Ben Stiller, Richard Ayoade and Jonah Hill and yet they conspired to make it not funny. Spectacularly so.” Over to you, Hollywood.

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@AliceVJones