Broadway Theatre – a History

Broad means Theater Broadway is the longest street in novel York, com mencement in business district Manhattan, and running through town, crossing the Broadway Bridge, and continues to Bronx (Greiner, visit- new-york-city. com) Then why when people hear this street give, do they think of orbit? Thats because this street, commonplacely referred to as the Great White Way, has 36 theaters. These 36 theaters, along with 4 otherwise, make up what is called the Theatre District. Broadway history dates natural covering to the late 1600s, when a coffee house called The Kings Arms opened in 1696 on Broadway. some(prenominal) scholars think this may have held Manhattans earliest theatrical performance performances (Kenrick, J, musicals101. com). However, it isnt until declination 6, 1732, when the starting time professional performance of a specific command is recorded in unsanded York city. The play was The Recruiting Officer, and was performed by a group of actors from London, i n an empty building near Maiden Lane and Pearl Street. Performances continue in this unnamed place through the end of the decade. For it wasnt until 1750, when New York had round ten thousand citizens, that it received its setoff formal theater (Kenrick, J, musicals101. om). However, the theater was still non on Broadway, but slightly east on Nassau Street, which gave it the name Theatre on Nassau Street. This theater was a wooden, two story structure that could only hold ab kayoed 280 people. Walter Murray and doubting Thomas Kean presented Shakespeares Richard III on March 5, 1750. They also presented the prototypic put down musical in New York, which was John Gays The Beggars Opera, on December 3, 1750. Historians dont know overmuch about the Theater on Nassau Street, which results in nearly guesswork. In her book Theater In American, bloody shame C.Henderson said, May have been either a warehouse or a brewery (or both). . . probably fitted up with a stage at one end, be nches in front of it, and a raised gallery at the rear for common folk. Murray and Kean made a significant addition to their New York playhouse they added boxes along the side walls, non only to increase the seating (a sign that they de locomoter the goods a moderate success) but also to provide a particular(prenominal) place for the elect(ip) of the city. (Henderson, 237). Unfortunately, the theater was later sold and turned into computer memory space, and indeed was eventually torn down in 1754 to make way for a church (Kenrick, musicals101. om). In 1798 the citys first world- partitioning theater was make (Kenrick, musicals101. com). The Park Theatre could hold 2,000 people, had a spacious bench-filled pit, four tiers of cliquish boxes, and a top gallery. Lewis A Erenber talks about the Park planetary house in his book Steppin Out saying, All kinds of performances were housed under one roof, so that audiences in the 1830s might see drama, circus, opera and dance on th e resembling bill. New Yorks Park Theater, despite a reputation as an elite house, had a relatively large room that permitted the masses to govern the stage.Each class had its own part of the field of view, but all attended mechanics in the pit, upper classes and women in the boxes, and prostitutes, lower class men, and blacks in the balcony. The rowdy audiences a good deal yelled, stamped, drank and smoked during the performance. (Erenberg, 15). Admission for the theater was 50 cents for the pit, 25 cents for the gallery, and a luxuriant dollar for the boxes (Kenrick, musicals101. com). The behavior of the rowdy audience was often drowned out by the action on stage, though showers of nuts and fruits from the balcony were common.Prostitutes often conducted demarcation in the balcony, which led to much belief by the church that dramaturgys were foyers of hell. wiz of the next theaters to open, was the Bowery Theatre in 1826 (Kenrick, musicals101. com). It aimed at the upper class at first, but when new management took over, decided to cater to the running(a) class, by more action packed plays. According the Broadway partnership, it Presented varied popular have intercourse through the years, including spectacle, variety, melodrama, Italian vaudeville (c. 1915), and Chinese subject (1920s).Burned down (and rebuilt) quintet times 1828, 1836, 1838, 1845, and 1923until a June 5, 1929 fire closed the theatre for good. (Broadway League, ibdb. com) On the other side of the spectrum, for the upper class, The Astor office Opera House was built in 1847, by wealthy New Yorkers, with the sole propose of bringing Italian opera to the city (Broadway League, ibdb. com). These two theaters are commonly remembered for the Astor Place Riot, when in the rally of 1849, they were both performing the production of Macbeth.American Edwin Forest was directing the play along the midriff and lower classes at the Bowery, spell British William Macready appealed to the upper class at the Astor Place Opera House. As one source states, A explosive combination of press ballyhoo and widespread anti- British sentiment incited a claque of Forrests fans to disrupt a few of Macreadys performances. (Kenrick, musicals101. com). On the shadow of May 10, 1849 while the mainly upper class audience was enjoying their performance of Macbeth at the Astor Place Opera House, a mob of twenty thousand lower and working class men broke into a full-scale riot.When the violence got out of control, the police fired their guns directly into the crowd, killing at least twenty-two, while wounding more than 150 (Kenrick, musicals101. com). Robert W. Snyder says in the Encyclopedia of New York city that, After the Astor Place Riot of 1849 entertainment in New York City was divided along class lines opera was chiefly for the upper inwardness and upper classes, minstrel shows and melodramas for the middle class, variety shows in concert saloons for men of the working class and the slumming middle class. (Jackson, 1226).While there will al slipway be fighting between the classes, it never again was centered around a theatrical event. As New York City grew in population, more ways of entertainment were on the rise. Laura Keene became one of the first nationally recognized actress managers of the American Stage (Kenrick, Musicals101. com). She produced and starred in many comedies and musicals at 622 Broadway. She set Broadways first long-run record with a 50 performance hit called The Elves in 1857, and continued to astound everyone with her musical Seven Sisters in 1860, which had 253 performances.With the Civil state of war going on during this time (1861-1865), this vastly expanded and upgraded railroads, which made it much more easier and affordable for the theatrical productions to tour. It was during one of these tours, when Laura Keenes troupe came to Fords Theater in Washington, DC for the Spring of 1865, that President Abraham Lincoln was ass assinated while tending the performance of Our American Cousin on April 14. Even though Keene had no control over Lincolns assignation, her name because so linked to the tragedy, that it soon forced her into retirement.Charles Hoyts A Trip to Chinatown (1891) became Broadways long-run champion, with 657 performances (Kenrick, Musicals101. com). A Trip to Coontown was performed in 1898, and was the first musical comedy entirely produced and performed by African Americans in a Broadway theatre. In 1894, The Passing Show was the first Broadway revue. However, it received little attention, and revues would not really catch in popularity until Floren Ziegfeld introduced his Follies in 1907. (Zenrick, musicals101. om) Hundreds of musical comedies were staged on Broadway in the 1890s and early 1900s, but New York Runs continued to be relatively short, in comparison to London runs. In 1910, smaller off-Broadway theatre groups really took up. They would setup shop in smaller downtown venue s, with the purpose of promoting experiments works, with people who may not make it to the city to see them. Some of the first groups were The Washington Square Players (later renamed the Theatre Guild), The Provincetown Players, and The Neighborhood Playhouse (Zenrick, Musicals101. om). close of the first off-Broadway performances were Socially challenging dramas (Zenrick, musicals101. com), for it wasnt until later when musicals became a part of the off-Broadway scene. Since gaslight was not strong enough to be used with benighted filters, theatre soil advertising was dull through the 1890s. The first animated electric hoarding appeared in Times Square in 1903, with Victor Herberts musical The cerise Mill, installing a sign with carbon lights that imitated the revolving arms of a windmill.This sign used electric light, which was far brighter, and made advertising much easier. Soon, every Broadway show had some sort of electric sign, but since colored bulbs burned out too quic kly, at first white lights were standard. This is where Broadway gets its name The Great White Way, because the largest of these eletric billboards, oftenly called spectaculars, were actually stopping traffic with the night glow that they gave off. (Zenrick, musicals101. com) In 1927, neon lighting was introduced, which helped elongate shapes and bright colors.Broadways business peaked in the 1927-1928 season, as more ten 70 allow theatres housed over 250 shows, but then later dropped tremendously in the 1930s in the depression, some Broadway productions even had to file for bankruptcy, such as Lee Shuberts productions (Zenrick, musicals101. com). though eventually, World War II booseted the American economy, and many great musicals appeared in the 1940s, such as Oklahoma. Off-Broadway also increased, in small downtown theatres in Greenwich Village, and the Lower East Side that had been home to experimental theatre since the 1920s.Such shows such as The Fantasticks opened in 1960, Godspell (1971), Little Shop of Horrors (1982) Nunsense (1985) were born(p) off-Broadway, and were very successful (Zenrick, musicals101. com) During this time, marked the beginning of the Theatre Wings Tony Award. This award is theatres most prestigious and envy prize, designed to celebrate excellence in theatre (Tony Awards, tonyawards. com) The 1980s Broadway was took over by imported Mega-Musicals (Cats, Les Miserables), and the 1990s saw the rise of big corporations such as Disney (Beauty and the Beast, social lion King).These hits brought more people to Times Square, showing that the district had fresh commercial message potential. Big, new, hotels were built, and a series of corporations (MTV, ABC, etc) were now present in the neighborhood. (Zenrick, musicals101. com). For the book, New York, An Illustrated memorial states, By the late 1990s, a new Times Square had emerged cleaner, reform lit, and more wholesome than it had been in half a century, and busier and more p rofitable than it had been in decades. Each night as the sun went down, the district was change into a glowing, shimmering diaphanous dish of light. (Burns, Sanders, & Ades, 554). Unfortunately, As theatrical productions got more technologically advanced, and theatrical production costs continued to rise, so did the legal injury of tickets. Orchestra put that once went for $8 in 1965, were $45 in 1985, and up to $ one C in 2001, which is a much higher rise than the overall price of living (Zenrick, musicals101. com) Modern day Broadway shows that can very expensive. The production of the play Wicked, which is currently in its seventh year on Broadway, has grossed nearly $1. jillion dollars, and has been seen by nearly 23 million people general (Wicked Facts, newsobserver. com). The Phantom of the Opera is another Broadway play that has seen phenomenal success in its run. The show has received 7 Tony Awards, and been see by more then 10 million people. It has been on Broadway f or over 17 years, making it the most successful production in the history of Broadway. In conclusion, New Yorks theatre district is once again a prime tourist attraction, and the theatrical productions remain a huge factor in the citys financial well-being.According to the League of Theatre Owners and Producers, Broadway shows currently sell one and a half billion dollars worth of tickets annually (Zenrick, musicals101. com). Broadway Theater is a staple in live entertainment, and something that is amazing to be able to see. Works Cited Kenrick, John. Theatre in New York A truncated History. Musicals101. com The Cyber Encyclopedia of Musicals. N. p. , n. d. Web. 14 June 2010. . Henderson, Mary C.. Theater in America 200 Years of Plays, Players, and Productions. First Edition ed.New York Harry N Abrams, 1991. Print. Erenberg, Lewis A.. Steppin Out New York Nightlife and the Transformation of American Culture. Chicago University Of Chicago Press, 1984. Print. IBDB The authorised s ource for Broadway Information. IBDB The official source for Broadway Information. N. p. , n. d. Web. 14 June 2010. . Jackson, Kenneth T. (Edited). The Encyclopedia of New York City. New Haven Yale University Press, 1955. Print. Ades, Lisa, Ric Burns, and James Sanders. New York An Illustrated History. Exp Sub ed. New York Knopf, 2003. Print.Greiner, Julie. A Brief Early History of Broadway Plays. A Brief Early History of Broadway Plays. N. p. , n. d. Web. 14 June 2010.