Playbill On-Line: An overview of the venerable site
we just there?). There's also "Diva Talk" (news about women celebrities, written by Andrew Gans), "Bdwy Grosses," "Quizzes" (trivia, nonsense, and other games), and "League Notes" (an infrequently updated group of promotional blurbs from The League of American Theatres and Producers).
In the INDUSTRY section, you'll find a searchable or browsable list of "Casting and Jobs" -- although nothing deep enough to replace your subscription to Backstage. This is a small list of casting notices for actors, and job listings for musicians, technicians, directors, etc. "Newsletters" are basically periodic promotional items from Theatre Under the Stars, Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization, Music Theatre International, the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, TheatreWorks USA, and others. Oddly enough, in this area you'll also find a good-sized (although not quite exhaustive) database of colleges with theatre programs, including links to pages with greater detail about each.
A casual glance at the next section's sub-categories makes you question the title MULTIMEDIA. If you click on any of the sub-categories, however, you'll find that they're further divided to the point where the nomenclature makes sense. The "Books" area is sub-divided so that it includes "CD-ROMS" in addition to categories like "Theatre Books" and "Scripts." The "Recording" area features "Videos" along with "Cast Recordings," "Cabaret," and the like. The "Theatre Art" section has beautifully digitized (downloadable) jpegs of production photos and Playbill covers from selected shows. The "Audio Clips" area, despite the fact that it seems to be primarily a promotion for the short list of CD's the area displays, holds some short snippets of these recordings in .AU and .WAV format -- helpful in a way for those who may be considering a purchase or are just curious as to what some of these recordings actually sound like.
The next area, REFERENCE, has some serious data for theatre historians and trivia buffs. The "Awards" category is a searchable database of all of awards given in the Tony's, the Drama Desk, the Obies, the Outer Critics Circle, and the Pulitzer Prize. The database is searchable by name, production or year. Also in this category is the obligatory FAQ document ("Frequently Asked Questions") for the POL site.
The CELEBRITIES portion of the navigation list contains the "Transcripts" link (a list of interviews on file) and, oddly, a single link to the Betty Buckley home page. Also in this category is "Who's Who," which probably should have appeared in the REFERENCE section since so
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