We officially have a performance date for NBC’s next musical event, Hairspray Live. Recently, NBC boss Robert Greenblatt announced that the holiday special will air on Dec 7 starting at 8:00 p.m. eastern. Greenblatt also announced a dream team of creative talent involved in the production. Check the report below for all the details.
NBC Entertainment chairman Robert Greenblatt recently released a statement to the press about the creative team behind Hairspray Live, saying (via US Weekly):
“In keeping with our desire to bring the best of Broadway to our live musicals, we’ve assembled the Broadway dream team of Tony Award winners for Hairspray Live. We’re thrilled to have director Kenny Leon, who knocked The Wiz Live way out of the park, and Jerry Mitchell, the original choreographer of Hairspray and … the director of two smash hit musicals running on Broadway right now."
Recently, Greenblatt spoke to Adweek about the possibility of adding a live audience to Hairspray, saying:
"I thought Grease was fantastic, and the live audience was great in a lot of ways, but it's not just as simple as having a live audience or not. We've done shows in the past where it would have been ludicrous to have extras in scenes laughing and applauding, like in Nazi-occupied Austria, Neverland or even in Oz. Should we have had munchkins or flying monkeys in the background going crazy after musical numbers? And if the audience isn't visibly worked into the scenes, then they're sitting in a big room somewhere and you just hear disembodied laughing and applause, which is when viewers at home would think we just added a fake laugh track. If we can work an audience easily into a show, as I think we can in a lot of places in Hairspray, we will."
