Robert Cohen - Theatre, Brief Version-McGraw-Hill Education (2016)

Theatre 287
Broadway’s 44th Street on an
evening theatre night: here you
can see, right next to each other,
the St. James (Something Rotten),
Majestic (Phantom of the Opera),
Helen Hayes (Dames at Sea),
and Broadhurst (Mamma Mia)
Theatres, along with the celebrated
Sardi’s, New York’s famous theatre’s
restaurant founded in 1927.
© Lorna Cohen
on temporary stages in rural churchyards and within
historic ruins; and, increasingly, at site-specific venues
such as a Manhattan apartment, a worker’s meeting hall,
a parking lot, or, as we saw earlier in this chapter, on a
moving streetcar or ferry boat. Theatre is everywhere—if
you know how to find it.
Finding Theatre in
the United States
The American theatre is one of the world’s most active,
and while it takes place in every state in the union, its
unquestioned capital is the small island of Manhattan, in
America’s largest city.
THEATRE IN NEW YORK
New York is the site of more performances, openings,
revivals, tours, and dramatic criticism than any half
dozen other American cities put together. The city’s
hundred-plus playhouses are a prime tourist attraction
and a major pillar of the local economy.
Moreover, in the minds of most theatre artists—actors,
directors, playwrights, and designers—New York is the
town where the standards are the highest, the challenges
the greatest, and the rewards the most magnificent. The
professional New York theatre, however, comes in three
different and quite distinct categories: Broadway, off-
Broadway, and off-off-Broadway.
Broadway When people talk about Broadway, they
refer to a concept rather than a place. Broadway is simply
the historic and commercial apex of the American theatre.
Known as the “Great White Way” (which refers to its
bright lights), Broadway provides the destination for tourists
from around the world. The designation “Broadway
theatre” is a technical one: there are forty-four theatres
that make up today’s official Broadway Theatre District,
all within a dozen blocks north of Times Square. The great
growth of twentieth-century American drama took place
right here: the Broadway district is where Eugene O’Neill,
Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, William Inge, and
Edward Albee premiered their masterpieces; where
George M. Cohan, Ethel Merman, and Liza Minelli sang
and danced their hearts out; and where Marlon Brando,
Barbra Streisand, Sean Penn, Meryl Streep, Robert Redford,
and thousands of others acted their way into America’s
hearts and, often, into Hollywood’s films. Broadway
flourishes now as never before, and in 2014 recorded its
highest ticket income (more than 1.36 billion dollars) and
highest attendance (more than thirteen million people)
in history. And Broadway touring companies extend the
“Broadway experience” to audiences almost as numerous
as those attending the same shows in “the Big Apple.”
The Broadway stakes are higher than anywhere else
in theatre and its energy is electric. Most excitingly,
its glamour is readily accessible: the TKTS Booth
(Broadway at 47th Street) and several websites sell
half-price tickets for many shows to make the Broadway
experience affordable for almost everyone. But
the Great White Way is no longer the place where new
plays routinely originate, as it was in 1947 when it
hosted the debuts of Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar
Named Desire and Arthur Miller’s All My Sons. Today,