the allure of broadway
We always leave a beloved place to return to it sometime. Broadway in New York City is such a place for me, and I return to it as often as I can. Sometimes I take a flight to JFK or LaGuardia airports and then a cab to a hotel in nearby Manhattan or on Broadway; other times I return to her in my heart and in my writings.
Broadway has inspired many poets. From the old school, Sandburg has the pessimistic look when he says: “Hearts that know they hate you /… Cursing the dreams that were lost / In the dust of your rough and trampled stones.” Walt Whitman’s moving and dynamic words describe more of what I feel about this plot of New York City: “Florida of blood, pensive, enraptured with musings, burning with passion, / Sensual with perfume, with loose and loose clothes”. In fact, Broadway is and has been the theater district of not only the United States but possibly the entire world.
Broadway, today, stretches from 34th to 56th streets, east and west of the avenue called Broadway with Times Square at its center. Broadway is most famous for its stage shows. The longest-running Broadway shows to date are The Phantom of the Opera, Cats, Les Miserables, A Chorus Line, Oh! Calcutta, Beauty and the Beast and Rent.
The fact that Broadway became a theater district dates back to the time before the Revolutionary War. In the mid-18th century, when two actors wanted to bring the staging of Shakespeare’s plays to Manhattan, the seeds of Broadway were sown. The first theater in Manhattan was on Nassau Street. Later, PT Barnum operated an entertainment complex on Broadway and Prince Street. During the early years, a variety of shows entertained the working and middle classes. When the Astor Place Theater opened, these theatergoers rebelled against the upper-class audiences.
The first performance to add dance and music to a play was The Black Crook, in 1866. It lasted five and a half hours. This musical attracted such an audience that musicals became high-quality entertainment. In the early 20th century, some of the earliest musicals included Cakewalk, George Washington Jr., A Trip to Coontown, The Fortune Teller, Little Johnny Jones, and 45 Minutes from Broadway.
The Twentieth Century brought Babes in Toyland, Naughty Marietta, and The Red Mill. Since colored lights didn’t last long, white lights were used at the time; thus, Broadway took on the nickname “The Great White Way”.
It was feared that the advent of the film industry and the Actors Equity Association strike would bring Broadway to a halt; quite the contrary, during the Roaring Twenties, Broadway flourished and added serious drama to its light-hearted repertoire and Ziegfeld reviews. Oklahoma was the first hit of its kind. At that time, Noel Coward, Rudolf Friml, Sigmund Romberg produced memorable work alongside the eternal Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, and Rodgers and Hart.
Then, in 1947, the Tony Awards were established to recognize the best performers and performances on the American Theater and especially on Broadway. Today, most shows are put on for profit by the many theatrical establishments in the area, although some are produced by non-profit organizations such as the Roundabout Theater Company, the Manhattan Theater Club, and The Lincoln Center Theatre. On average, musicals last longer than non-musicals, and some of the successful musicals and plays tour other cities in the off-season or after the curtains close on Broadway.
In addition to the Broadway theater district, smaller off-Broadway theaters between 57th and 72nd streets offer less publicized, less expensive, but more experimental and edgy plays. Occasionally, a successful Off-Broadway show will later appear on a Broadway stage. Rent, Little Shop of Horrors, Godspell, Chorus Line, and Sunday in the Park with George are among such works.
Then in Manhattan there are Off-Off-Broadway theaters with less than 100 seats for staging smaller amateur shows, like the Flea Theater in TriBeCa. After KW Bromley referred to Off-Off-Broadway as “Indie Theatre” when accepting an Innovative Theater award in 2005, Off-Off-Broadway shows are sometimes referred to as Indie Theater shows.
The biggest rival to Broadway shows today is television. The best plays and musicals and the most talented stage actors have to compete with the cheesiest TV shows for audience recognition, mainly due to the high cost of tickets and the number of people a theater can hold. Seeing a live show, serious play, or musical is a thrill that cannot be matched by movies or television.
For me, the streets of Broadway add to the excitement of its theaters, musicals, comedy clubs, and movie theaters. Broadway and Times Square is where I can get in and out of two to five star hotels, coffee shops like Starbucks, coffee shops and gourmet restaurants; or where I can browse inside all kinds of shops but especially gift shops that sell theater paraphernalia like costumes, masks and props; or I can wander around and soak up the excitement of other pedestrians, corner preachers, and store lights as I watch limousines taking actors to performances and actors signing autographs in front of theater buildings, or a tout casual that sells last. Minute tickets to shows with the corner of your eye keeping an eye on the whereabouts of the police.
Like Whitman, so am I, “get up, respond, descend to the sidewalks, merge with the crowd and watch”, because with all its flirtation, Broadway spins life around our drama of existence.