Broadway consists of the 40 professional theaters scattered across New York City’s Theatre District, including the Ambassador, Imperial, Majestic, and Shubert Theatres, among others. Collectively, the theaters are quoted to bring in over $900 million dollars a year. Theatre in New York got its foot-hold during the mid-to-late 1700s, at which time The Park, The Bowery, and The Astor Place Theatres were established. Originally focusing on the works of Shakespeare, Broadway moved in the musical direction during the mid-1800s with productions of “The Black Crook,” and the Gilbert and Sullivan “H.M.S. Pinafore,” among others. Actors on Broadway make a big distinction between their profession on what they call the “legitimate stage,” and other more variety oriented acts like vaudeville and burlesque.
Current masterpieces to hit Broadway for the 2009-2010 season include “Chicago,” “South Pacific,” “Wicked,” “Hair,” “Phantom of the Opera,” “The Lion King,” and “Jersey Boys,” to name a few.
How does Broadway play to American audiences? According to a demographic report on theater audiences by The League of American Theatres and Producers, there was 2.4 percent growth in attendance among domestic audiences in 2006-07, which translated to an estimated 6.1 million homegrown theatergoers. That was almost double the...
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Broadway ticket sales showed a welcome improvement for the week ended Feb. 10, with box office receipts reaching $14,567,001, up $1,306,119 over the prior week and higher than this same period a year ago. The frontrunners are the usual suspects: Wicked, Jersey Boys, The Lion King, The Little Mermaid...
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The hit Broadway musical “Wicked” will be flying back into Portland, OR for a five-week engagement in the spring of 2009. The national tour, which previously made a two-week, sold-out stop in the city in 2006, will appear at the Keller Auditorium from March 4-April 5. Tickets to the...
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Of the ten plays and twenty-one musicals currently on Broadway, only two, Wicked and Jersey Boys passed the million dollar mark for the week ended Feb. 3. Coming in a distant third and fourth were The Lion King and The Little Mermaid. Young Frankenstein is still not reporting ticket...
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The week ended Jan. 27 was a quiet one on Broadway with only two productions officially making the million-dollar mark, Wicked and Jersey Boys. Variety estimates Young Frankenstein’s unreported ticket sales at about $1.19 million, down a bit from previous weeks. Interestingly, Sunday in the Park with George, in...
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By Carol-Ann Rudy Certainly, after last week’s cold chill, it is nice to report an increase in attendance and ticket sales on the Great White Way, though still meager, for the week ended Jan. 20. The box office tally was $16,271,060 compared to the previous week’s returns of $15,474,354....
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By Carol-Ann Rudy The World Premiere of Shrek, The Musical, will take place on the stage of The 5th Avenue Theatre in Seattle August 14 to September 21. It is scheduled to arrive on Broadway in November. This is the first project for legitimate theater by DreamWorks Animation, following...
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By Carol-Ann Rudy Nine hundred thirty thousand, one hundred eighty minutes… Based in part on Puccini’s opera “La Boheme,” Rent, the phenomenal production playing at the Nederlander Theatre will close its curtains June 1 of this year. It has made history as the seventh longest-running Broadway show, opening to...
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By Carol-Ann Rudy Always dreamed of being in a Broadway show? Here’s your chance. The producers of the new Broadway musical adaptation of Catch Me If You Can are inviting male actors in their 20s to audition for the role of the real-life character Frank Abagnale Jr., the master...
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By Carol-Ann Rudy More than snow hit Broadway this week. The mid-winter blues have set in: attendance and ticket sales for the week ending Jan. 13 dropped by about 25 percent overall. Even the perennial winners Wicked, Jersey Boys and The Lion King saw dollars fall by 6, 5,...
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