Broadway History

In the late 1860s, as post-Civil War business boomed, there was a sharp increase in the number of working- and middle-class people in New York, and the wealthier people desired entertainment. Theaters became more popular, and Niblo 's Garden, which had formerly hosted opera, began to offer light comedy. “The Black Crook” was at first simply a melodrama by Charles M. Barras that retold the Faust story and borrowed liberally from other plays with similar plots and themes. William Wheatley, who was the manager of Niblo’s was concerned that the play would fail. The script was poorly written and the acting was not much better. Then something oddly magical happened. There was a theatre fire at the Academy of Music in New York. A French ballet

By 1900, there were currently thirty-three legitimate Broadway theatres, and many more would be built over the next couple of decades to meet the demand of the growing audiences. The productions included those of drama, comedy and musicals, but legitimate theatre was not the only theatrical entertainment of this time. During this time a large group of entertainers travels from one small theater to the next, entertaining thousands with their simple song and dance, mini-comical skits, and different acts of entertainment. These people were known as Vaudevillians and their theatre circuit was known as Vaudeville.

Broadway was one of the first forms of entertainment. Before there were television programs, or movies, there was Broadway. Broadway originated in New York in 1750, when actor-manager Walter Murray built a theatre company at the Theatre on Nassau Street. A musical would show about once every weekend. The shows were very male based, and would commonly show a relationship between young boys and their fathers. Women were slowly integrated into Broadway, and as society changed its point of view on women, so did theatre.

Theatre and Musical Theatre has been a form of entertainment since before North America was “discovered”. Broadway shows have been dated back to the early 1920’s and 1930’s. By 2016, over 25,000 tickets are sold to Broadway shows in a week. Thousands of people enjoy the shows that are featured on Broadway but have no idea the work and process that brought it to life. The process of getting a show on to Broadway can be broken down into three phases: pre-production, staging, and performance/promotion.

In Chicago, the main plot revolves around women who murder the men in their lives that have caused some injustice. Each woman has a story to justify the reason why the men had to die. Billy Flynn is a charismatic criminal lawyer that has never lost a case for a female client. The proceedings in jail and in the courtroom are anything but legal and ethical. It is clear that the plot is not serious. This justifies the fact that the female prison inmates are allowed to interact with each other in song and dance. Also the so-called warden can also act as a contract agent to get the girls their own Vaudeville act. The main purpose of the show is to water down the book plot and add individual entertainers. This is done to integrate the Vaudeville quality within a musical. In doing so the courtroom and jail is paralleled with a nightclub scene. The main purpose to maintain the Vaudeville quality is suggesting the cliché "all the world's a stage." In

People were looking for a kind of variety entertainment. Furthermore, Tony Pastor’s idea floated around, managers quickly noticed the potential of the situation at hand and started to follow his footsteps. Thus, resulting in higher standards for vaudevillians and vaudeville theatres in the United States. Acts included but were not limited to magicians, acrobats, comedians, trained animals, jugglers, singers, dancers, plate-spinners, ventriloquists are more. Talented performers starting in the vaudeville region more than likely moved on to bigger things such as motion pictures and radio related things (singing, speaking, etc). Throughout the years, vaudeville was one of the most popular forms of entertainment. Consequently, it took a nail on the road and ended up with a flat tire. Notably, television was not a thing until 1927, near the time of vaudevilles downfall. Truly, technology changes who we are because after motion pictures came into light, vaudevillians either moved there or quit their job. Another reason for the collapse of vaudeville was the financial crisis and World War II. Vaudeville unfortunately completely disappeared after World War II

The theater was unused for a long time because of its unfortunate location as well as “fraying carpet” and “peeling paint.(Wollman 174-175)” The frugal theater not only saved cost but also perfectly fitted the musical’s grunge aesthetic (Wollman 175). Cameron Mackintosh, on the other hand, used another way to deal with the high cost in Broadway. He first staged the play in London where most theaters are government subsidized and more experimental. Once the audiences gave positive feedback, he moved to New york where the cost is three time of that of london(showtime 626-627). This way, he reduced risk to a minimum. To withstand the often negative critic reviews, he also used aggressive marketing campaigns to saturate the media with his logos of the shows, therefore made his shows “critic proof”(showtime

“Shrunken perhaps by the vicissitudes and exigencies of the times, Broadway presented itself admirably throughout the Thirties. It not only managed to preserve the best, but also nurtured and expanded them. At the brink of the new decade, Broadway stood smaller but brighter”

Working in American Theartre: A Brief History, Career Guide and Resource Book for over 1,000 Theatres starts out by giving readers advice from professionals in the theatre industry. These professionals range from being artistic directors to professors to actors. The some advices given to the readers is to find a mentor, learn as much as possible, do not give up on one’s dreams, be friendly, etc. Next the readers learn of the birth of theatre in America during the Revolutionary War. Theatre started out as shows with comedians, musicians, and actors. Over the years theatre turned into things like traveling plays and the circus. Everyone wanted to be a part of Theatre and thus came booking agents and The Syndicate. With all these new people

In 1974, a group of young high school actors started doing acting in plays at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, ultimately moving in the basement of church in Highland Park in Chicago. Afterwards they began on their journey to become one of the utmost protruding theatre companies in the whole world. Steppenwolf Theatre Company completely transformed the face of American Theatre with its inventive style that blends dynamic collaborative performance, authentic, acting and bold, stimulating stories to create enthralling theatre.

Scene and costume or outfit. Highlighting the splendor of landlocked Combining the fundamental importance of the creative music and dance that has evolved to suit the content of the story, including light, sound and technique of the scene. Changing Scene And live performances of the actors are talented in singing, dancing, making Broadway Theatre is impressive in terms of

Theatre started having a significant presence in New York beginning in 1750 when a resident theatre company was founded at the Theatre in Nassau Street. New York theatre slowly moved from downtown to midtown beginning around 1850. In 1870 theater was centralized in Union Square and by the end of the 20th century many theatre were centralized in Madison Square. Theatre did not arrive in Times Square until the 1900s, but did not begin to grow there until the 1920s-1930s. By the end of the 1920s Broadway had to begin to compete with movies. Many theatres went broke and were demolished or converted to movie theatres. In 1943 with the opening of Oklahoma! Broadway entered a golden age. In recent years Broadway has continued to boom causing tourist

Blackfriars: small, roofed, second-floor theatre.; built in 1596; specially catered to the wealthy and highly educated class. The Blackfriars soon became the premier playhouse in all of London. The price for admission was up to five times that of the Globe, and it seated about seven hundred people in a paved auditorium.

Two men are responsible for the beautiful architecture that is the Teatro Olimpico but neither of them worked on it at the same time. Both Andrea Palladio and his successor Vincenzo Scamozzi contributed their own ideas to the theatre. It is fact that Palladio had his hand in most of the design but it can be argued that the Teatro Olimpico would not be as it is today without Scamozzi.

Musical theatre performance, which presents fictional plots and impresses audiences with show-stopping dance and song, unites dramatic works across the globe. American musical theatre, specifically, draws inspiration from European straight plays, burlesques, and operas, while dramatizing American topics. Nineteenth-century musical comedies use entertaining situations, rather than plot, to frame performances involving song, dance, and humor. For example, George M. Cohan’s works, although inspired by European musical theatre, fail to please audiences as its unified music and book neglect the plot. By the twentieth century, however, pioneers such as Oscar Hammerstein II create musical