Today we’d like to introduce you to Jamie Rosler.
Hi Jamie, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Of course! I’m originally from New York and have always been interested and involved with all the elements that now make up Broadly Entertaining, the events business I co-own.
Having gone to college and graduate school with a focus on theatre (performance, creation, production), I spent most of my mid-twenties to mid-thirties working with indie theatre companies and improv troupes in New York City. In 2011, I met Giana DeGeiso (who is now my business partner and best friend) when she directed me in a short play for a now-defunct company for which I was on the producing team. We clicked immediately and started doing a lot of work together, from performing and producing for the stage to hosting trivia in bars around town to our first attempts at recording audio content.
In 2014 I had the honor of presiding over my brother’s wedding, which led to other people in my life asking me to preside over their weddings, which led to me finding out how much I love writing and officiating personalized wedding ceremonies!
By 2017 the time was right to officially stop working for other people and open our own company that put women first and focused on social justice in our content, our hiring, and our brand. Broadly Entertaining was born, and our throughline of feminism and entertainment has remained strong, no matter what else may have changed and developed in the meantime.
I moved to Austin with my Texan boyfriend in the summer of 2021, and have been slowly making connections, building a network, and meeting and marrying wonderful couples. I’ve done some improv with ComedySportz Austin and have been exploring the great variety of live performance options and opportunities. We finally launched The Broadly Entertaining Podcast, and though we are based in different states and across the country, Giana and I continue to build together and support each other as we grow our business and grow as people.
I also love dogs and all the hiking & biking trails that are so plentiful down here!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
From dealing with disrespectful clients who decided they didn’t have to pay us to adjusting our whole business model for a global pandemic, we have definitely hit some rough patches. We’ve smoothed out some, learned from them along the way, and encountered new ones that continue to challenge and educate us!
As people got vaccinated, and businesses & cities opened up, we faced the added challenges of un-pivoting but not returning to “business as usual”, as well as launching Broadly Entertaining in new markets, having left New York City as our home base and reestablishing a meaningful presence in Central Texas and in the Catskills region of New York State.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Our services fall under three general event categories. Game Nights, Weddings, and BE-sponsored Parties & Fundraisers.
Game Nights are great for professional team building, personal celebrations, and nights out in bars. Some offerings are Trivia, Bingo, Scavenger Hunts, Connect 4 and Tipsy Jenga tournaments and our versions of Pictionary and Minute To Win It (called Sketch a Doodle Do and Clock Blockers, respectively). We develop all the game content and serve as professional emcees to host and manage gameplay. A lot of the games can be customized, for example, trivia curated for a guest of honor or scavenger hunts featuring a requested theme. We also have Party Plusses, covering a wide range of entertainers that can be hired to supplement a given game, for example, live music between rounds of Bingo.
As ordained ministers with backgrounds in theatre production, writing, music, and hosting, plus a love for love, the owners of Broadly Entertaining create and officiate unique wedding ceremonies, are available for day-of coordinating all the way up to full planning and can provide or procure a variety of musical accompaniment and DJ options. If we can’t do it, we’re likely to know someone who can!
BE parties run the gamut from our “Party, Period.” (a dance party in support of menstrual equity and ending period poverty) to a variety of adult arts & crafts events to our Women Mean Business networking series & online group. These are usually ticketed events, and as often as possible we like to partner with (or at least donate a portion of proceeds to) a nonprofit organization working toward the progress we believe the world should be making.
Our SCOTUS Special for LGBTQ+ wedding ceremonies allows for 20% of the officiant fee to be donated to a queer-focused organization of the couple’s choosing.
Working in an industry that easily falls prey to single-use products that go directly from the store to the party to the landfill, we make a concerted effort to reduce waste, reuse supplies as much as is appropriate, and generally think creatively when we’re responsible for an event’s decorations, dining supplies, and so on.
Our motivation is to do good while having a good time. To share a passion for bringing joy, togetherness, and love for the earth and its people to everything we do.
Love is Love. Black Lives Matter. No Human is Illegal. Climate Change is Real. Women’s Rights Are Human Rights.
The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you and any important lessons or epiphanies you can share with us?
We have cemented our belief in the importance of gathering as a community, but have expanded our definition of “gathering” to include not being physically together. Despite the obvious drawbacks, this has increased our ability to stay meaningfully connected from a long distance, which also drives home the idea that a community can be global and that we are all so much more interconnected than we realize or acknowledge during our day-to-day existence.
From a creative business perspective, the constraints forced us to develop new ideas and allowed us to increase our reach and our catalog as we adapted to the new state of being.
There have sadly been some negative lessons about other people in that shared community, but we don’t need to dwell on those or let them deter us from doing the work of making the human world a more joyful and accepting place!
Pricing:
- Wedding Ceremonies, $300+
- Ticketed Events, $20+
- Private Game Nights (small), $495+
- Private Game Nights (large), $1,095+
Contact Info:
- Website: http://broadlyentertaining.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/broadlyentertaining
- Other: https://anchor.fm/broadlyentertaining
Image Credits
Pengcong Lin, Jeffrey Hurley, Rachael Solomon, Andrew Bisdale, Broadly Entertaining
