For actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, summer might last 500 days –– but tickets for his Nov. 18 Bailey Hall performance remained available for less than 30 minutes Thursday, organizers said.
The quick sell-out made Gordon-Levitt’s show one of the fastest selling in the Cornell University Program Board’s history, according to executive chair Tajwar Mazhar ’13.
“Not in recent memory has a show sold as fast as this one,” Mazhar said. “This might have been the fastest.”
Mazhar said CUPB did not expect that the tickets would sell out as quickly as they did.
“We knew it was going to sell out. We just didn’t know it would happen so fast,” she said.
At the show, an event led by professional production company HitRECord, Gordon-Levitt will direct and perform with audience members in live sketches and musical performances.
Previously, tickets for Seth Meyers’ March 27 show in Bailey Hall held the CUPB’s record for the fastest selling show, with all tickets sold in about two and a half hours, Mazhar said.
Some Gordon-Levitt fans were disappointed to be left ticket-less Thursday morning.
Tara Azamian ’14 said that the ticketing process was “way worse” Thursday than for any other Cornell event she has tried to purchase tickets.
Though Mazhar said the ticketing website experienced few technical difficulties, Azamian said the site functioned “so slowly” Thursday morning.
“I set an alarm to get these tickets. I went on the site and it wouldn’t even let me log in,” she said. “I was tired, so I went back to sleep. Thirty minutes later, they were sold out.”
Skylar Sylvester ’14 said she had a similar experience.
“I signed on the [website] at 8:45 a.m.,” Sylvester said. “Every time, the page didn’t load. I tried [unsuccessfully] for 30 minutes, even on my phone.”
Although Mazhar, who is also a staff writer for The Sun, expressed high hopes for the success of Gordon-Levitt’s show — calling the actor a “wonderful talent” who will likely host an “engaging evening” — Azamian and Sylvester, along with many other Cornellians, will be unable to attend the performance.
“I’m obsessed with JGL,” Azamian said. “I wanted to go [to this show] way more than Avicii.”
Jonathan Dawson contributed reporting to this story.
Original Author: Kerry Close