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I have quite an admission to make. I have just spent the evening gorging on the first 8 episodes of Fox’s surprising ratings winner, Glee. I first read about the American musical comedy series on Ken Davenport’s blog, Producer’s Perspective, where he highlighted how good for Broadway the series was. Ken felt it was a great way of getting Broadway stars working in a high profile project as well as bringing musical numbers into line with pop songs and onto TV.

It would appear that the launch and marketing behind this musical theatre bonanza could not have been better primed. The pilot episode was premiered straight after an episode of American Idol in May, capturing a ready made audience of tweens, lovers of all things camp and those who appreciate a tight dance routine – the perfect musical theatre audience.

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No sooner was the idea of a London Fringe floated in the press yesterday than the soapboxes were quickly assembled and shouted from. The first article I read on the subject was in The Standard who obviously swallowed the London Fringe press release wholeheartedly, describing the idea of trying to run a large scale festival in London in August as “throwing down the gauntlet” to Edinburgh, an event with a 60 year history and international reputation.

Swiftly followed a Gruniad piece on the subject penned by Veronica Lee which pretty much covered my main concerns -  that trying to set up a fringe festival in direct competition to Edinburgh would be a fruitless endeavour because the majority of companies, arts journalists and dedicated fringe theatre goers will have made the 400 mile trip north.

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Twitter is only as useful as the people you follow. Here are 100 theatre people to follow on Twitter so that you know what’s going on and keep you up to date. You’ll be surprised the number of people who follow you back, engaging in conversation with you. Remember to retweet and @reply to be active in your online community

Update: Thank you for all of the feedback on who to include in the list. Harnessing the power of other people’s Twitter lists and suggestions you made the list of 100 has now swelled to 129. Enjoy.

London Theatres

Follow them all in one click with Twitter Lists

1. @NationalTheatre The National Theatre on the Southbank, with six or seven productions in repertory at any one time.
2. @OldVicTheatre Led by Artistic Director Kevin Spacy. Original home of the National Theatre company.
3. @NTLive The National Theatre’s initiative to broadcast live theatre to cinemas.
4. @TheRSC The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) based in Stratford-upon-Avon but perform worldwide.
5. @RoyalOperaHouse Home of The Royal Opera, The Royal Ballet and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House.
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There may be no business like show business but professional performers can certainly borrow techniques from other industries to promote themselves. Just like the real world, new media is all about building lasting relationships. Use the tips below to help turn the web from a way to while your time off to finding your next big gig.

Here are my top tips for how actors and professional perfomers should promote themselves using New Media:

1. Buy your own .com

Actors are increadibly lucky in the way that the industry protects stage names, with uniqueness guaranteed by Spotlight and Equity. Once you have your stage name registered, or even before you sign on the dotted line, check if yourname.com is available. If it is – jump on it! We’ll come back to what you should do with your domain name once you’ve bought it, but the most important thing is to make sure its you that controls it. There is a common misconception that domain names are expensive. They’re not! A .com domain can be bought from sites like GoDaddy.com for as little as £6.35 a year and are an invaluable tool for self promotion. For as long as you continue to pay an annual fee, you have complete control over that domain.

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Bringing a fantastically irreverant look at the West End to the West End, Jest End doesn’t miss a beat from start to finish. Having watched previews of the show online I knew Jest End was slick, taking well known West End numbers and replacing lyrics with a series of fast paced, tongue in cheek romps through musical theatre past and present.

Combining well choreographed chorus numbers with wonderfully witty solo performances the show doesn’t take any prisoners, unashamedly taking the mick out of Andrew Lloyd Webber, Cameron Mackintosh and just about everyone who has taken a part in a West End musical, or written one.

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My trips up and down the escalators to the Tube every morning changed slightly over the weekend with all the standard theatre posters being replaced with Christmas themed versions.

It’s the first time I’ve been in London for an extended period this close to Christmas but it does make perfect sense that West End producers are bumping up their advertising campaigns and planting the idea of a West End show Christmas treat in the minds of consumers. The number of high budget, highly advertised shows around London has also spiked in the run up to the festive period with Peter Pan transfering it’s tent from Kensington Gardens to the O2 arena. Panto is of course the other market factor to contend with as regional theatres just outside London, local to the train season ticket toting, high earning commuters who arrive in the city centre every morning.

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The issue of executive pay and expenses at the BBC has become a political football again today and I have read articles in both the Evening Standard and The Grauniad. I assume this middle class outrage is the most reasonable of the no doubt loud public outcry with the Mail and Express probably calling for mass deportations or lynchings over the issue.

I personally feel that the British do rather well out of their state funded broadcaster. Looking to other large scale democracies it is dissapointing to see the level of debate, particularly political, that comes from an entirely free market press. If you have any issues with this statement please see Fox News. In the same way that perhaps only NPR can be held up in The States, the BBC is a bastion of good journalism and public service content.

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I spent most of this morning slowly thumbing throught the executive summaries of applications for the Ideas Tap Innovation and Edinburgh funds. I say slowly thumbing not because there is a lot of reading to do, the summaries are limited to 100 words, but because the wesite really is a mess. The entire thing seems to be crippled by JavaScript. You can’t open summaries, or “responses” as they are called in some parts of the site, in different browser tabs because they are all tied back to original query meaning that trying to get any grasp of what the applications contain, there are 180 for the Edinburgh fund alone, is near impossible.

I did spend enough time on the site to see that there are some very interesting applications. I admit that I spent more time on the Edinburgh fund’s pitch page as the Innovators Fund offers applications from just about everything under the sun and seemed to include a lot of applications from the film and TV development side of the industry.

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