Announcing the Broadway Hackathon 2016

By Douglas Reside, Curator, Theatre Collection
February 19, 2016

Dear actors, designers, directors, playwrights, producers, and stage managers:

We’re pretty sure there’s been a time when you’ve thought, “There’s gotta be an app for that,” searched on Google Play or iTunes, and found yourself sad and disappointed.

We want to make you happy again.

Dear app developers and designers:

As Alexander Hamilton once sang, “You strike me as a group who’s never been satisfied.”

We know you’ve always wished you could work together with theater professionals and fellow developers for, like, two days in a cool exhibition gallery with free food.  

We want your top notch brains, and we’ll make it happen.

On Monday April 18 and Tuesday April 19, the Billy Rose Theatre Division and MASIE Productions are hosting the second Broadway Hackathon at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center.  Teams will spend Monday morning imagining apps aimed at helping theater professionals of all kinds.  Then teams combined with creatives, incubators and developers will have 24 hours, from 1 PM on Monday to 1 PM on Tuesday to develop either a sketched out map or prototype to demonstrate in a public presentation on Tuesday afternoon. The most promising applications will be selected for a longer incubation process leading to full releases.

This year, in honor of the 400 years of Shakespeare’s legacy, we are especially interested in applications supporting the production of Shakespearean plays, though this focus should serve as an inspiration rather than a restriction.

If you’ve read this far, you’re cool.  And cool people should be at this event.  So hurry over to our EventBrite and sign up before people less cool than you take all the spots!