Season's Greetings
Proctors Collaborative announces its exciting 2023-24 season (and bonus add-on!) at the Bash, a pre-Covid event that made a roaring comeback last night.
While the most anticipated show of the 2022-23 Proctors season is still on the horizon (Hamilton returns to the Electric City next week), a few thousand musical-lovers came out to the Schenectady theater to be the first to hear about the shows coming in the 2023-24 season. The Bash, an annual event Proctors hasn’t been able to hold since 2019, returned last night, and the excitement was palpable.
“There are shows coming that I didn’t even know were plays!” said Chelsea Moore, who handles corporate partnerships at Proctors, citing one particular top-secret season performance she definitely wasn’t supposed to tell me about. Chelsea happens to be my sister, so I won’t spill the beans, but I’ll give you the hint that Bash emcees John Gray and Lydia Kulbida of NEWS10 ABC gave the crowd last night: It’s about time. (One I can reveal: the kid-friendly Mrs. Doubtfire. Stay tuned for the big reveal of the “secret” add-on later this year.)
This year’s Bash had a circus theme, and when we arrived for the corporate cocktail hour (I told you, I’ve got an in) at 6, the lobby was already packed with patrons being entertained by a stilt-walker, juggler and harmless-looking clowns. (Regardless of the clowns’ friendly demeanor, some people were still spooked; later in the night, Gabby from M&T Bank jokingly threatened to pull her sponsorship money if Chelsea called one of them over.)
After the cocktail hour, at which Chelsea and Universal Preservation Hall’s Teddy Foster teamed up as the evening’s celebrity bartenders and were “serving hefty pours,” the corporate sponsors joined the masses in the nearly full theater for the main attraction. Throughout the hour-long presentation, John and Lydia announced the Broadway shows coming to Proctors next year as well as the productions coming to Capital Repertory Theater (theRep) in Albany, with performers from some of the shows coming on stage to sing songs as they were announced. The announcements were also broken up by John and Lydia’s banter in true awards show style; the two have spent enough time together on air to have an effortless rapport.
“Would you like a pretzel, John?” Lydia said when a circus pretzel cart serving real soft pretzels was pushed onstage.
“I’ll save it for later,” John said, putting it in his jacket pocket. “I’ll probably find it next year at the track.”
“You can feed the horses.”
While John and Lydia got a fair share of laughs, what the crowd really went wild for were the Broadway show announcements, which included one bonus show (can you guess? See below!) that no one expected. Here are the KeyBank Broadway Series shows coming to Proctors next year:
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