Broadway
September
24th
3:20 pm 5:00 pm
What is Broadway
 A wide avenue in New York City, that runs the full length
of Manhattan
 Collection of 40 theatres in the theatre district commonly
known as Broadway
 Plays, musicals or special attractions performed on stage
for an audience
Where is Broadway
The area from W.41st Street, where the Nederlander Theater is located,
up to W. 53rd Street's Broadway Theater. Only four theaters are located
physically on Broadway, the Marquis at 46th Street, the Palace at 47th
Street, the Winter Garden at 50th Street and the Broadway at 53rd.
Broadway, Downtown Manhattan
Broadway Theatre District
Broadway's Beginning's: 1750
New York did not have a significant theatre presence until about 1750, when
actor-managers Walter Murray and Thomas Kean established a resident theatre
company at the Theatre on Nassau Street, which held about 280 people.
The old theatres of New York, 1750-1827. Second Park Theatre,
1830. Interior of the John-Street Theatre during the Revolution.
First Park Theatre. Interior of the Old Park Theatre, 1805.
Broadway's Beginning's: 1800’s
Broadway Beginning’s :The 1800's
• 1840 - P.T. Barnum
Phineas Taylor Barnum (July 5, 1810 – April 7, 1891) was an
American showman, businessman, scam artist and entertainer, remembered for
promoting celebrated hoaxes and for founding the circus that became
the Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus
“There’s a sucker born every minute.”
The American Museum 1842
The American Museum Opened on January 1st, 1841 on the
southeast corner of Broadway and Ann Street.
American Museum Advertisements
Admiral, There Be Whales Here!
Burning of the American Museum
The Lost Museum
Barnum’s New American Museum 1865 - 1868
“Barnum's Monster Classical and Geological Hippodrome”
Barnum’s last major endeavor in New York was the building of his Hippodrome, a new
performance venue, in 1871 at Madison Avenue and 26th Street. Hippodromes had been returning
to popularity around the 1860’s and 1870’s, creating a rise in entertainment that revolved around the
rings of a big top.
“Gilmore’s Garden”
Madison Square Garden 1879
Madison Square Garden Today
Broadway Beginning’s :The 1800's
1849 - Astor Place Riot
A riot broke out in 1849 when the lower-class patrons of the Bowery objected
to what they perceived as snobbery by the upper class audiences at Astor
Place: "After the Astor Place Riot of 1849, entertainment in New York City
was divided along class lines: opera was chiefly for the upper middle 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.
Astor Place Riot
Broadway Beginning’s :The 1800's
1860's - Shakespeare and the Brothers Booth
The plays of William Shakespeare were frequently performed on the Broadway stage
during the period, most notably by American actor Edwin Booth who was
internationally known for his performance as Hamlet. Booth played the role for a
famous 100 consecutive performances at the Winter Garden Theatre in 1865 (with the
run ending just a few months before Booth's brother John Wilkes Booth assassinated
Abraham Lincoln), and would later revive the role at his own Booth's Theatre.
Edwin Booth
Broadway Beginning’s :The 1800's
1866 - Birth of the musical
The first theatre piece that conforms to the modern conception of a musical, adding
dance and original music that helped to tell the story, is considered to be The Black
Crook, which premiered in New York on September 12, 1866. The production was a
staggering five-and-a-half hours long, but despite its length, it ran for a recordbreaking 474 performances. The same year, The Black Domino/Between You, Me and
the Post was the first show to call itself a "musical comedy
The Black Crook! 1866
Niblo’s Garden and the Black Crook
Broadway Beginning’s :The 1800's
1880 – Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment popular in the United
States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was
made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill.
Types of acts included popular and classical musicians, dancers, comedians, trained
animals, magicians, female and male impersonators, acrobats, illustrated
Songs, jugglers, one-act plays or scenes from plays, athletes, lecturing celebrities,
minstrels, and movies. A vaudeville performer is often referred to as a vaudevillian.
Called "the heart of American show business," vaudeville was one of the most popular
types of entertainment in North America for several decades .
Unlike a Broadway musical or play with a script to follow, Vaudeville was a series of
acts presented by comics, singers, acrobats and other performers.
Broadway Beginning’s :The 1800's
1885 - Transportation and impact of Thomas Edison's light bulb
As transportation improved, poverty in New York diminished, and street lighting made
for safer travel at night, the number of potential patrons for the growing number of
theatres increased enormously. Plays could run longer and still draw in the audiences,
leading to better profits and improved production values
Broadway Establishment :The 1900's
1900 – Tin Pan Alley
Hundreds of musical comedies were staged on Broadway in the 1890s and early 1900s
made up of songs written in New York's Tin Pan Alley involving composers such as
Irving Berlin George Gershwin, Scott Joplin , Cole Porter and George M. Cohan
Broadway Establishment :The 1900's
1902 - “The Great White Way“
One famous stretch near Times Square, where Broadway crosses Seventh Avenue
in midtown Manhattan, is the home of many Broadway theatres, housing an everchanging array of commercial, large-scale plays, particularly musicals. This area of
Manhattan is often called the Theater District or the Great White Way, a nickname
originating in the headline "Found on the Great White Way" in the February 3, 1902
edition of the New York Evening Telegram. The journalistic nickname was inspired by
the millions of lights on theater marquees and billboard advertisements that illuminate
the area.
Broadway shows installed electric signs outside the theatres. Since colored bulbs
burned out too quickly, white lights were used.
Broadway’s Rival and World War: The 1900’s-1920
1912 – Motion Pictures
The motion picture mounted a challenge to the stage. At first, films were silent and
presented only limited competition. By the end of the 1920s, films like The Jazz Singer
were presented with synchronized sound, and critics wondered if the cinema would
replace live theatre altogether.
The Jazz Singer
Birth of the Talkies
Broadway’s Rival and World War: The 1900’s-1920
1917 - 1920 – The Great War
Broadway and Roaring 20’s :The 1920's
1920 – The Ziegfeld Follies
Florenz Ziegfeld produced annual spectacular song-and-dance revues on Broadway
featuring extravagant sets and elaborate costumes, but there was little to tie the
various numbers together.
Ziegfeld Follies
Broadway and Great Depression :The 1930's
1929 – The Great Depression
The Great Depression had a big on impact on Broadway productions.
The 1929-30 season produced 233 productions. The 1930-31 season was reduced to
187 productions. It has been calculated that the talent that Hollywood absorbed from
Broadway was in the vicinity of 75%
In spite of the Depression, or maybe because of it, the decade of the Thirties proved
to be a rich experience for Broadway. While many of the theaters remained dark and
many actors migrated to the Golden Coast of Hollywood, Broadway managed to grow,
experiment and mature. Though the number of productions declined, the quality of
offerings was ever brighter, more polished and thought-provoking. The cry for
dramatic realism of the previous forty or fifty years was finally realized
Broadway and Rise of World War 2: The 1940's
The fact that Europe was at war was not lost on Broadway on the first two years of the
decade. Robert Sherwood's Pulitzer winning There Shall Be No Night about the Russian
invasion of Finland opened on April 29th, of 1940, starring Alfred Lunt and Lynn
Fontanne. Sherwood graciously donated his proceeds of the play to the American Red
Cross and the Finnish War Relief Fund to further their resistance to Russia.
As World War II approached, a dozen Broadway dramas addressed the rise of Nazism
in Europe and the issue of American non-intervention. The most successful was Lillian
Hellman's Watch on the Rhine, which opened in April 1941.
In 1943 Oklahoma! opened on stage . For the first time, music, comedy, drama, dance,
and staging were totally integrated to produce a single show: a musical in which the
chorus didn't appear until 40 odd minutes after the curtain went up; a comedy,
which rather violently killed off a major character. The show seemed an instant success
with fans outraged that scalpers were getting up to $12.00 for orchestra seats which
sold at the box-office for $4.40. It soon became apparent that a second cast would be
necessary to fulfill the tour engagements. Oklahoma! ran for five years at the St. James,
logging over 2200 performances.
Oklahoma!
Broadway and Post World War 2: The 1950's
Guys and Dolls - The premiere on Broadway was in 1950. It ran for 1200 performances and
won the Tony Award for Best Musical. The musical has had several Broadway and London
revivals, as well as a 1955 film adaptation starring Marlon Brando, Jean Simmons, Frank
Sinatra and Vivian Blaine.
The King and I - The musical was an immediate hit, winning Tony Awards for Best
Musical, Best Actress (for Lawrence) and Best Featured Actor (for Brynner). Lawrence died
unexpectedly of cancer a year and a half after the opening, and the role of Anna was played
by several actresses during the remainder of the Broadway run of 1,246 performances. A hit
London run and U.S. national tour followed, together with a 1956 film for which Brynner
won an Academy Award. In later revivals, Brynner came to dominate his role and the
musical, starring in a four-year national tour culminating in a 1985 Broadway run shortly
before his death. Both professional and amateur revivals of The King and I continue to be
staged regularly throughout the English-speaking world.
West Side Story - A modern day Romeo and Juliet whose largest and most culturally
significant themes throughout the play is racism/violence. This is expressed through the
conflict between the sharks and jets which comes to symbolize the conflict between Puerto
Ricans and poor whites in New York city during the 1950's and can be applied on a broader
level to symbolize racial tension in general.
Broadway’s Cultural Cynicism: The 1960's
1968 – Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical
Hair broke all the rules en route to creating a new sub-genre. The show's feeble plot is
like the string on which a bunch of pearls are hung. Outrageous comic vignettes.
Infectious, seditious songs. Hair was created by the ‘60s and the anti-war movement,
but it created the rock musical, a form continuing to be explored and expanded today.
Given the number of Top 40 hits that came out of the show, it’s safe to say Hair added
a new lane to Broadway.
West Side Story
Broadway and the Rise of the Rock Musical in 1970’s
1971 – Jesus Christ Superstar
It highlights political and interpersonal struggles between Judas Iscariot and
Jesus, struggles that are not in the Bible. The resurrection is not included. It therefore
largely follows the form of a traditional passion play.
1971 – Godspell
An adaption of the musical, in a modern-day song-and-dance recreation of the Gospel
of St. Matthew.
1972 - Grease
Good girl Sandy and greaser Danny fell in love over the summer. But when they
unexpectedly discover they're now in the same high school, will they be able to
rekindle their romance?
1975 – The Whiz
an all-black retelling of The Wizard of Oz, had a score brimming with rock and rhythm &
blues
Jesus Christ Superstar
Broadway Turns a Corner in the 1980’s
1987 – Les Misérables
The story of Jean Valjean, a burly French peasant of abnormal strength and potentially
violent nature, and his quest for redemption after serving nineteen years in jail for
having stolen a loaf of bread for his starving sister's child. Valjean decides to break his
parole and start his life anew after a kindly bishop inspires him to, but he is relentlessly
tracked down by a police inspector named Javert. Along the way, Valjean and a slew of
characters are swept into a revolutionary period in France, where a group of young
idealists make their last stand at a street barricade.
Les Misérables
Broadway and the Impact of Andrew Lloyd Webber
Andrew Lloyd Webber
Arguably the most successful composer of our time. He is best known for stage and
film adaptations of his musicals Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), Cats(1994),
Evita (1996), and The Phantom of the Opera (2004).
Cats
Phantom of the Opera
Disney Wants' to be King of the Broadway Jungle
Disney's Beauty and the Beast
An Oscar is to Hollywood
As a Tony is to Broadway
To be eligible for a Tony, a production must be in a house with 500 seats or
more and in the Theater District, which criteria define Broadway theatre. Off
Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway shows often provide a more experimental,
challenging and intimate performance than is possible in the larger Broadway
theatres. Some Broadway shows, however, such as the musicals Hair, Little
Shop of Horrors, Spring Awakening, Next to Normal, Rent, Avenue Q, and In
the Heights, began their runs Off Broadway and later transferred onto
Broadway, seeking to replicate their intimate experience in a larger theatre.
Now Universal is turning “Animal House” into a
musical, and “Back to the Future” and“The Sting” may be next.
Twentieth Century Fox is eyeing “Mrs. Doubtfire,” “The Devil
Wears Prada” and “Waitress.” Sony is
developing “Tootsie.” Warner Brothers has “Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory” in London and is talking to producers
about a possible musical version of the Channing Tatum
flick “Magic Mike.”