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Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 large professional theatres with 500 seats or more located in the Theatre District, New York and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan, New York City. Along with London's West End theatre, Broadway theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English-speaking world.
The Broadway Theatre district is a popular tourist attraction in New York City, New York. According to The Broadway League, Broadway shows sold approximately $1.037 billion worth of tickets in calendar year 2010, compared to $1.004 billion for 2009.
By the 1840s, P.T. Barnum was operating an entertainment complex in lower Manhattan. In 1829, at Broadway and Prince Street, Niblo's Garden opened and soon became one of New York's premiere nightspots. The 3,000-seat theater presented all sorts of musical and non-musical entertainments. The Astor Place Theatre opened in 1847. 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.
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 (which was managed for a time by his brother Junius Brutus Booth, Jr.). Other renowned Shakespeareans who appeared in New York in this era were Henry Irving, Tommaso Salvini, Fanny Davenport, and Charles Fechter.
Lydia Thompson came to America in 1868 heading a small theatrical troupe, adapting popular English burlesques for middle-class New York audiences. Thompson's troupe, called the "British Blondes", was the most popular entertainment in New York during the 1868–1869 theatrical season. "The eccentricities of pantomime and burlesque – with their curious combination of comedy, parody, satire, improvisation, song and dance, variety acts, cross-dressing, extravagant stage effects, risqué jokes and saucy costumes – while familiar enough to British audiences, took New York by storm." The six-month tour ran for almost six extremely profitable years.
(1866), considered by some historians to be the first musical]] The first theater 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." However, smaller vaudeville and variety houses proliferated, and Off-Broadway was well established by the end of the 19th century.
A Trip to Coontown (1898) was the first musical comedy entirely produced and performed by African Americans in a Broadway theatre (largely inspired by the routines of the minstrel shows), followed by the ragtime-tinged Clorindy the Origin of the Cakewalk (1898), and the highly successful In Dahomey (1902). 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 Gus Edwards, John Walter Bratton, and George M. Cohan (Little Johnny Jones (1904), 45 Minutes From Broadway (1906), and George Washington Jr. (1906)). Still, New York runs continued to be relatively short, with a few exceptions, compared with London runs, until World War I. A few very successful British musicals continued to achieve great success in New York, including Florodora in 1900-01.
In the early years of the 20th century, translations of popular late-19th century continental operettas were joined by the "Princess Theatre" shows of the 1910s by writers such as P. G. Wodehouse, Guy Bolton and Harry B. Smith. Victor Herbert, whose work included some intimate musical plays with modern settings as well as his string of famous operettas (The Fortune Teller (1898), Babes in Toyland (1903), Mlle. Modiste (1905), The Red Mill (1906), and Naughty Marietta (1910)). Beginning with The Red Mill, Broadway shows installed electric signs outside the theatres. Since colored bulbs burned out too quickly, white lights were used, and Broadway was nicknamed "The Great White Way." In August 1919, the Actors Equity Association demanded a standard contract for all professional productions. After a strike shut down all the theatres, the producers were forced to agree. By the 1920s, the Shubert Brothers had risen to take over the majority of the theatres from the Erlanger syndicate.
, Maxine Elliott's, Casino, and Knickerbocker Theatres on Broadway in 1920.]] The motion picture mounted a challenge to the stage. At first, films were silent and presented only limited competition. Nevertheless, by the end of the 1920s, films like The Jazz Singer could be presented with synchronized sound, and critics wondered if the cinema would replace live theatre altogether. The musicals of the Roaring Twenties, borrowing from vaudeville, music hall and other light entertainments, tended to ignore plot in favor of emphasizing star actors and actresses, big dance routines, and popular songs. 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. Typical of the 1920s were lighthearted productions like Sally; Lady Be Good; Sunny; No, No, Nanette; Oh, Kay!; and Funny Face. Their books may have been forgettable, but they produced enduring standards from George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Vincent Youmans, and Rodgers and Hart, among others, and Noel Coward, Sigmund Romberg and Rudolf Friml continued in the vein of Victor Herbert. Clearly, the live theatre survived the invention of cinema.
Leaving these comparatively frivolous entertainments behind, and taking the drama a giant step forward, Show Boat, premiered on December 27, 1927 at the Ziegfeld Theatre, representing a complete integration of book and score, with dramatic themes, as told through the music, dialogue, setting and movement, woven together more seamlessly than in previous musicals. It ran for 572 performances. After the lean years of the Great Depression, Broadway theatre entered a golden age with the blockbuster hit Oklahoma!, in 1943, which ran for 2,212 performances. Hit after hit followed on Broadway, and the Broadway theatre attained the highest level of international prestige in theatre.
The 1920s also spawned a new age of American playwright with the emergence of Eugene O'Neill, whose plays Beyond the Horizon, Anna Christie, The Hairy Ape, Strange Interlude and Mourning Becomes Electra proved that there was an audience for serious drama on Broadway, and O'Neill's success paved the way for major dramatists like Elmer Rice, Maxwell Anderson, Robert E. Sherwood, Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller, as well as writers of comedy like George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. Classical revivals also proved popular with Broadway theatre-goers, notably John Barrymore in Hamlet and Richard III, John Gielgud in Hamlet, The Importance of Being Earnest and Much Ado About Nothing, Walter Hampden and Jose Ferrer in Cyrano de Bergerac, Paul Robeson and Ferrer in Othello, Maurice Evans in Richard II and the plays of George Bernard Shaw, and Katharine Cornell in such plays as Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, and Candida
The Tony Awards were established in 1947 to recognize achievement in live American theatre, especially Broadway theatre.
In recent years, many shows have moved their Tuesday show time an hour earlier to 7 pm. According to an article by Mark Shenton, "One of the biggest changes to the commercial theatrical landscape - on both sides of the Atlantic - over the past decade or so is that sightings of big star names turning out to do plays has gone up; but the runs they are prepared to commit to has gone down. Time was that a producer would require a minimum commitment from his star of six months, and perhaps a year; now, the 13-week run is the norm."
In the past, stage actors had a somewhat superior attitude towards other kinds of live performances, such as vaudeville and burlesque, which were felt to be tawdry, commercial and lowbrow—they considered their own craft to be a higher and more artistic calling. This attitude is reflected in the term used to describe their form of stage performance: "legitimate theatre". (The abbreviated form "legit" is still used for live theatre by the entertainment industry newspaper Variety as part of its unique "slanguage.") This rather condescending attitude also carried over to performers who worked in radio, film and television instead of in "the theatre", but this attitude is much less prevalent now, especially since film and television work pay much better than almost all theatrical acting, even Broadway. The split between "legit" theatre and "variety" performances still exists, however, in the structure of the actors' unions: Actors' Equity represents actors in the legitimate theatre, and the American Guild of Variety Artists (AGVA) represents them in performances without a "book" or through-storyline—although it is very rare for Broadway actors not to work under an Equity contract, since most plays and musicals come under that union's jurisdiction.
Almost all of the people involved with a Broadway show at every level are represented by unions or other protective, professional or trade organization. The actors, dancers, singers, chorus members and stage managers are members of Actors' Equity Association (AEA), musicians are represented by the American Federation of Musicians (AFM), and stagehands, dressers, hairdressers, designers, box office personnel and ushers all belong to various locals of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employes, also known as "the IA" or "IATSE" (pronounced "eye-ot-zee"). Directors and choreographers belong to the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC), playwrights to the Dramatists Guild, and house managers, company managers and press agents belong to the Association of Theatrical Press Agents and Managers (ATPAM). Casting directors (who tried in 2002-2004 to become part of ATPAM) is the last major components of Broadway's human infrastructure who are not unionized. (General managers, who run the business affairs of a show, and are frequently producers as well, are management and not labor.)
The minimum size of the Broadway orchestra is governed by an agreement with the musicians union (Local 802, American Federation of Musicians) and the League of American Theatres and Producers. For example, the agreement specifies the minimum size of the orchestra at the Minskoff Theatre to be 18, at the Music Box Theatre to be 9.
The three non-profit theatre companies with Broadway theatres ("houses") belong to the League of Resident Theatres and have contracts with the theatrical unions which are negotiated separately from the other Broadway theatre and producers. (Disney also negotiates apart from the League, as did Livent before it closed down its operations.) However, generally, shows that play in any of the Broadway houses are eligible for Tony Awards (see below).
The majority of Broadway theatres are owned or managed by three organizations: the Shubert Organization, a for-profit arm of the non-profit Shubert Foundation, which owns seventeen theatres (it recently retained full ownership of the Music Box from the Irving Berlin Estate); The Nederlander Organization, which controls nine theatres; and Jujamcyn, which owns five Broadway houses.
Some Broadway shows are produced by non-commercial organizations as part of a regular subscription season—Lincoln Center Theatre, Roundabout Theatre Company, and Manhattan Theatre Club are the three non-profit theatre companies that currently have permanent Broadway venues. Some other productions are produced on Broadway with "limited engagement runs" for a number of reasons, including financial issues, prior engagements of the performers or temporary availability of a theatre between the end of one production and the beginning of another. However, some shows with planned limited engagement runs may, after critical acclaim or box office success, extend their engagements or convert to open-ended runs. This was the case with 2007's and 2009's God of Carnage.
Historically, musicals on Broadway tend to have longer runs than "straight" (i.e. non-musical) plays. On January 9, 2006, The Phantom of the Opera at the Majestic Theatre became the longest running Broadway musical, with 7,486 performances, overtaking Cats.
Total Broadway attendance was 12.11 million in calendar year 2010 compared to 11.88 million in 2009.
After (or even during) successful runs in Broadway theatres, producers often remount their productions with a new cast and crew for the Broadway national tour, which travels to theaters in major cities across the country—the bigger and more successful shows may have several of these touring companies out at a time, some of them "sitting down" in other cities for their own long runs. Smaller cities are eventually serviced by "bus and truck" tours, so-called because the cast generally travels by bus (instead of by air) and the sets and equipment by truck. Tours of this type, which frequently feature a reduced physical production to accommodate smaller venues and tighter schedules, often play "split weeks" (half a week in one town and the second half in another) or "one-nighters", whereas the larger tours will generally play for one or two weeks per city at a minimum. The Touring Broadway Awards, presented by The Broadway League, honor excellence in touring Broadway.
{| class="wikitable" class="sortable wikitable"
! Theatre || Current show || Address || Capacity || Opening
date || Closing
date
|-
| Ambassador Theatre || Chicago || West 49th Street (#219) || 1120 || 1996-11-14November 14, 1996 || Open-ended
|-
| American Airlines Theatre || The Importance of Being Earnest || West 42nd Street (#229) || 740 || 2011-01-13January 13, 2011 || 2011-03-06March 6, 2011
|-
| Brooks Atkinson Theatre || RAIN – A Tribute to The Beatles || West 47th Street (#256) || 1109 || 2011-02-08February 8, 2011* || Open-ended
|-
| Ethel Barrymore Theatre || Arcadia || West 47th Street (#243) || 1095 ||2011-03-17March 17, 2011*||2011-06-19June 19, 2011
|-
|Vivian Beaumont Theater (at Lincoln Center) || War Horse || West 65th Street (#150) || 1105 || 2011-04-14April 14, 2011* || Open-ended
|-
| Belasco Theatre || Fat Pig || West 44th Street (#111) || 1040 || 2011-04-26April 26, 2011* || Open-ended
|-
| Booth Theatre || || West 45th Street (#222) || 806 || ||
|-
| Broadhurst Theatre ||The Merchant of Venice || West 44th Street (#235) || 1218 ||2011-02-01 February 1, 2011* ||2011-02-20 February 20, 2011
|-
| The Broadway Theatre || Sister Act: The Musical || Broadway (#1681-@52nd) || 1761 || 2011-04-20 April 20, 2011* || Open-ended
|-
| Circle in the Square Theatre || Lombardi || West 50th Street (#235) || 776 || 2010-10-21October 21, 2010 || Open-ended
|-
| Cort Theatre || Time Stands Still || West 48th Street (#138) || 1102 || 2010-10-07October 7, 2010 || 2011-01-30January 30, 2011
|-
| Foxwoods Theatre || || West 42nd Street (#213) || 1829 || 2011-03-15 March 15, 2011* || Open-ended
|-
| Samuel J. Friedman Theatre || Good People || West 47th Street (#261) || 650 || 2011-03-03March 3, 2011 *|| 2011-04-24April 24, 2011
|-
| Gershwin Theatre || Wicked || West 51st Street (#222) || 1933 || 2003-10-30October 30, 2003 || Open-ended
|-
| John Golden Theatre || Driving Miss Daisy || West 45th Street (#252) || 805 || 2010-10-25 October 25, 2010 || 2011-04-09April 9, 2011
|-
| Helen Hayes Theatre || Colin Quinn: Long Story Short || West 44th Street (#240) || 597 || 2010-11-09November 9, 2010 || 2011-02-05February 5, 2011
|-
| Al Hirschfeld Theatre || How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying || West 45th Street (#302) || 1437 || 2011-03-27 March 27, 2011* || Open-ended
|-
| Imperial Theatre || Billy Elliot the Musical || West 45th Street (#249) || 1435 || 2008-11-13November 13, 2008 || Open-ended
|-
| Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre || That Championship Season || West 45th Street (#242) || 1101 || 2011-03-06March 6, 2011* || 2011-05-29 May 29, 2011
|-
|Walter Kerr Theatre || The House of Blue Leaves || West 48th Street (#219) || 947 || 2011-04-25April 25, 2011* ||2011-07-23July 23, 2011
|-
| Longacre Theatre || La Cage aux Folles || West 48th Street (#220) || 1096 || 2010-04-18 April 18, 2010 || Open-ended
|-
| Lunt-Fontanne Theatre || The Addams Family || West 46th Street (#205) || 1509 || 2010-04-08April 8, 2010 || Open-ended
|-
| Lyceum Theatre|| John Leguizamo's Ghetto Klown || West 45th Street (#149) || 943 ||2011-03-22March 22, 2011* ||2011-05-15May 15, 2011
|-
| Majestic Theatre || The Phantom of the Opera || West 44th Street (#247) || 1609 || 1988-01-26January 26, 1988 || Open-ended
|-
| Marquis Theatre || || Broadway (#1535-@45th) || 1615 ||2011-04-17April 17, 2011* || Open-ended
|-
| Minskoff Theatre || The Lion King || West 45th Street (#200) || 1710 || 1997-11-13November 13, 1997 || Open-ended
|-
| Music Box Theatre || Jerusalem || West 45th Street (#239) || 1025 || 2011-04-21April 21, 2011* || 2011-07-24July 24, 2011
|-
| Nederlander Theatre || Million Dollar Quartet || West 41st Street (#208) || 1232 || 2010-04-11April 11, 2010 || Open-ended
|-
| New Amsterdam Theatre || Mary Poppins || West 42nd Street (#214) || 1801 || 2006-11-16November 16, 2006 || Open-ended
|-
| Eugene O'Neill Theatre || Book of Mormon || West 49th Street (#230) || 1108 || 2011-03-24 March 24, 2011*|| Open-ended
|-
| Palace Theatre || Priscilla Queen of the Desert || Broadway (#1564-@46th) || 1743 || 2011-03-20 March 20, 2011* || Open-ended
|-
| Richard Rodgers Theatre || Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo || West 46th Street (#226) || 1380 || 2011-03-31March 31, 2011* || Open-ended
|-
| Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre || Motherf**ker with the Hat || West 45th Street (#236) || 1093 || 2011-04-11April 11, 2011* || 2011-06-26June 26, 2011
|-
| Shubert Theatre || Memphis || West 44th Street (#225) || 1468 || 2009-10-19October 19, 2009 || Open-ended
|-
| Neil Simon Theatre || Catch Me If You Can || West 52nd Street (#250) || 1428 || 2011-04-10April 10, 2011* || Open-ended
|-
| Stephen Sondheim Theatre || Anything Goes || West 43rd Street (#124) || 1055 || 2011-04-07 April 7, 2011* || Open-ended
|-
| St. James Theatre || American Idiot || West 44th Street (#246) || 1710 || 2010-04-20 April 20, 2010 || Open-ended
|-
| Studio 54 || || West 54th Street (#254) || 1,006 || ||
|-
| August Wilson Theatre || Jersey Boys || West 52nd Street (#245) || 1222 || 2005-11-06November 6, 2005 || Open-ended
|-
| Winter Garden Theatre || Mamma Mia! || Broadway (#1634-@50th) || 1498 || 2001-10-18October 18, 2001 || Open-ended
|}
* Annie - (theatre unknown) Enter Laughing - (unknown) Evita - (an unknown Nederlander Theatre) Funny Girl - (unknown) Hughie/Krapp's Last Tape double bill - (unknown) The People in the Picture - (American Airlines Theatre)
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Category:Broadway Category:Theatre in the United States Category:Musical theatre Category:Theatre
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