Posts filed under Inspiring Friends

Have a Hit Holiday Party with BNHM & TrivWorks

What does your company party look like every year? Less than inspiring? Or a riot that is fun to top year and year? Either way, BNHM has teamed up with TrivWorks to bring you a holiday party that you will still be talking about on St. Patrick's Day!

We asked TrivWorks creator and CEO David Jacobson some questions to give you the info you need to make this holiday party a hit!

What would a TrivWorks/BNHM party look like?

Companies who bring in TrivWorks/BNHM to produce their office trivia party will first partake in a very brief (10 minute) advance customization call, so that we may tailor both the trivia as well as the overall experience to the specific group in attendance. After researching/writing original questions, we will arrive to the event with a troupe of master improvisers/musicians, as well as a professional corporate event emcee, who will conduct orientation and host full-room rounds of raucous team trivia. In between rounds while score sheets are tabulated, BHNM will take fictional song titles directly from the audience, and spontaneously perform those songs on the spot! The event culminates with a formal awards presentation, followed by a grand finale performance. The entire event is 1-2 hours, and can easily be integrated with cocktails, appetizers, or even a full seated meal.

What’s the number of people that this format works best for?

We can produce hybrid trivia/improvisation holiday parties for groups as small as 15, to 1,000 or more! 

How do you handle pricing?

Pricing is very competitive with other forms of corporate party entertainment; our trivia/improvisation events are available in a variety of formats, to accommodate to a range of entertainment needs and price points

Tell us more how you can tailor the event to our company? 

During our customization call (referenced above), we will utilize a proven process to tailor the experience precisely to the culture of the group in attendance, which requires minimal commitment or time investment on behalf of the client/planner. When crafting trivia questions, we will take into account the group’s age range, gender ratio, nationality, employment duration/managerial level and other key factors, as well as incorporate fun facts, inside jokes, past shared experiences, messages, etc. We will also make sure we know which specific topics to avoid; clients can rest assured there will be nothing political religious, controversial or otherwise inappropriate for a company event setting. For holiday parties, we will also want to know whether spouses/significant others will be in attendance, as we want to ensure they feel welcome and included as well!

What kind of companies have you done parties for in the past?

TrivWorks has produced company holiday parties in NYC and beyond every year since being founded in 2009 (in fact, our first event EVER was a company holiday party!) These have ranged from small businesses/departments with 15-20 people, to Fortune 500 companies with 200+ people.

What are people saying about past parties?

Planners love TrivWorks trivia holiday parties not only because they’re fun, laugh-filled and highly customizable, but also because they’re flexible/adaptable to virtually any venue, and can be done indoors, day or night, snow or shine! They also enjoy the fact that it’s interactive/engaging, and highly social – which is essential for a festive holiday party atmosphere! We also strive to make them turnkey, and as easy as possible for the organizers.

A final note from David Jacobson:

Our holiday parties are a truly unique offering, which groups will almost certainly never have experienced before. If companies are looking to “spice things up” at their annual celebration, this is an extremely compelling, highly professional option which people will be talking about long after the event is over.

Broadway's Next Hit Musical at the Tony Awards Trivia Night!

You know who wrote the lyrics to My Fair Lady. You know who has hosted the Tonys the past five years. You can easily rattle off at least three Idina Menzel credits. Congrats! You are a musical theatre geek and we want to see you on June 7th! Broadway's Next has teamed up with TrivWorks and the Tony Awards for a very special event!

The Tonys Awards Meets Trivia Meets Broadway's Next Hit Musical

The Tony Awards happen in the early summer. To create buzz around the broadcast, The Tony Awards reached out to TrivWorks - a company that creates trivia nights for corporate and public events. David Jacobson of TrivWorks was looking to create New York City's biggest Broadway trivia night ever and knew a great way to do that was to get Broadway's Next Hit Musical involved. So voila! A match made in Tony/trivia/Phony heaven!

Trivia, Prizes, Improv

TrivWorks is pulling out all the stops to make this event HUGE for Broadway fans. The Tony Awards has supplied some phenomenal prizes - including two tickets to the dress rehearsal of the Tonys Awards! Did you hear that? Two tickets to the dress rehearsal of the Tony Awards! We'll be there making up songs throughout the night, too, and emceeing. Just doing our regular craziness. It's going to be such a fun night!  

Get Your Tickets and Your Team Together

Now is a good time to get your tickets to the event. We recommend buying at least four so you can get a good solid team together. After that, pay attention on your newsfeed to the people who are constantly posting about Hamilton, snapping pictures of Playbills before curtain, and sharing BroadwayWorld articles. Those are your new teammates. Now go forth and study! #tonytrivia

 

 

 

 

Less of a Disaster, Thanks to Seth Rudetsky

The company with Seth Rudetsky and Tony nominee Dick Scanlan. 

The company with Seth Rudetsky and Tony nominee Dick Scanlan. 

No one loves Broadway like Seth Rudetsky loves Broadway. He is one of those icons who just live and breathe the Great White Way. And we love him for it. We were lucky enough two summers back to have him lead a workshop for us so we can  capitalize on the Broadway in Broadway's Next

We're happy to say now that he is appearing on Broadway with the show that he co-created Disaster. It opened this week and is getting great reviews. 

Know Your Genre

One of the reasons reviews have been so good is that the creative team behind the show truly understand the genre of disaster movies. That theme of knowing your genre was clear when he sat in our rehearsal. If the show is about Broadway then it's vital to know musical theatre. Seth constantly dropped references to musicals, big players in the industry, and theatre terms when he watched us work. Sure, some of us are huge Broadway nerds and  already knew those references, but many of us come from more of an improv background. We didn't have that kind of theatre knowledge. Having him in the workshop showed us we had some catching up to do, and specifically where the holes were. 

Since then we've had workshops centered around musical theatre composers, listened to many Original Cast Recordings, and worked on projects like the #CutSongsFromTonyNoms to keep us in the know. 

Disaster Musical

Understanding genre has clearly worked for Seth Rudetsky's newest project. On Tuesday night Disaster opened on Broadway. Seth is a performer and co-creator of the show which combines disco music with disaster movies. There are singing nuns, Farrah Fawcett-inspired 'dos, earthquakes, and people stuck inside very cramped spaces. When we asked him how he knew so much about the disaster movie genre he tweeted to us, "I grew up in the 70s!" Charles Ishwerwood of the NY Times said that it provides "a rush of giddy nostalgia." The clothes, the music, the hair: if those elements aren't right then the show falls flat. The show straddles knowing disco songs (it's a jukebox musical) and getting inside that inescapable movie trend of the 70's. 

Getting It Is Irrelevant

What if we throw out references and the audiences don't know them? Do people in Auburn, WA have any idea who Susan Stroman is? Do they know the term eleven o'clock number?  What if Disaster's audiences haven't seen The Towering Inferno. Will it still work?

We insist that, yes, it will. Audiences can tell when someone has a command over something and when they're just shouting out the buzzwords - even in comedy. It reads. 

When the show has theatricality to it, when the references are grounded in authenticity the audience feels it. If they get the joke, great! If not, it's still fun to watch people onstage clearly committing to the subject. They know that what they're seeing is the real deal and that makes for a richer experience.

It's a win/win.  

Tweet Us More

Find out more about  Disaster here. Have you seen it? Tweet at us and tell us how knowing (or not) the references made for a better show. 

 

Posted on March 11, 2016 and filed under Inspiring Friends.