What do you get when you take 20 thought leaders from various industries and add 400 Broadway Devotees who all want Broadway to be the best it can be?

You get awesome.

This Monday was our third annual TEDxBroadway and, as usual, it was an incredible day of imaginative ideas, positive theatrical spirit and two men in capes.  (Ok, maybe the men in capes don’t happen every year, but, you get the drift.)

As with each previous TEDxBroadway, a theme generally emerges on its own from the day . . . and this year we had two:  I heard the word “Magic” mentioned by no less than seven of our speakers, and at least that many of them interacted with the audience during their own talk.

Magic + Involvement = Modern Theater

See where that formula takes you.

For those of you who weren’t there, you’ll be able to see all these magical talks when we edit them down and upload them in a few weeks.  Until then, as I did last year and the year before, I’ve included a bunch of my top ten sound bites from the amazing speakers that let us borrow their brains for the benefit of Broadway.

So here they are . . . (Oh, and if you want to read more, click here to see the search results for our #TEDxBway hashtag – there were so many tweets, we trended on Twitter!)

1.  “Great theater inspires people to make their own art.” – Diane Paulus

2.  “Crowdfunding is like taxes.  People paying their own portion towards a common goal.” – David Drake

4.  “Times Square is the Theater Lobby for the Theater District.” – Craig Dykers

5.  “You can create a business with the same values you learned with community theater.” – Mark Fisher

6.  “A venue has four walls, but that doesn’t mean your entire audience has to fit inside them.” – Dan Gurney

7.  “The underlying theme of the variety arts is that nothing is impossible.” – Todd Robbins

8.  “Art gives us a vision of what life will be like.  Art inspires technology.”  – Ainissa Ramirez

9.  “Music is a form of magic that a musician can send out to communicate with other souls.” – Bobby Lopez

10.  “Theatre is a voyage into the archive of human imagination.” – Natasha Tsakos

Oh, and one super-duper important bonus takeaway just for you . . .

11.  “Come to TEDxBway 2015!”  – Ken Davenport.  🙂

Were you there?  What did you think?

(Got a comment? I love ‘em, so comment below! Email Subscribers, click here then scroll down to say what’s on your mind!)

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FUN STUFF:

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