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 BroadwayThe 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

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.

Broadway Beginning’s :The 1800's

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 record-

breaking 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 populartypes of entertainment in North America for several decades .

Unlike a Broadway musical or play with a script to follow, Vaudeville was a series ofacts 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 ever-

changing 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

1917 - 1920 – The Great War

Broadway’s Rival and World War: The 1900’s-1920

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 Nazismin 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 thechorus 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 SuperstarIt 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 Whizan 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 WebberAndrew 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

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.

An Oscar is to HollywoodAs a Tony is to Broadway

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.”