THEATER DISTRICT

Description

Essentials about the Theater District in brief

For fans of musicals and theater, New York City is a paradise. No other place in the world has as many, as good and as famous theaters as here. And the great thing is that most of the theaters are concentrated in one neighborhood – the so-called “Theater District”. The neighborhood around Times Square, which stretches from 40th to 54th Street and between Sixth and Eighth Avenues, is the undisputed center of New York’s theater and musical scene.

The Broadway Theaters

The Theater District is often equated with Broadway. This has nothing to do with geography – Broadway, after all, extends well beyond the Theater District – but with the size of the theaters. A “big” or also called “Broadway theater” seats more than 500 spectators. There are 41 of them in the Theater District alone. Plays in smaller theaters are often referred to as “off-Broadway” to distinguish them from Broadway productions. This is in no way to be taken as a quality criterion, but merely an indication that the play is being performed in a smaller house.

Broadway theaters usually do not have a repertory system, but show only one musical or play at a time, and this daily, sometimes several times. The playing time of these plays is usually not fixed, but is based on critical and audience evaluation. Due to the generous lighting of the street and the square, Broadway is also called “The Great White Way”.

The history of the Theater District

The Theater District at the end of the 19th century

The history of Theater District began with the construction of the Empire Theater. The impresario Charles Frohman had the building constructed in 1893 with about 1,000 seats. It was located directly across the street from the Metropolitan Opera House, which opened in 1883, at its old location between 39th and 40th Streets. With Frohman, a new era began in many ways. Not only did he own six theaters in New York City in 1915, five in London, and over 200 theaters throughout the United States, he also changed the nature of the theater business. Along with other businessmen, he founded the Theatrical Syndicate in 1896. Whereas previously actors had arranged their tours of the U.S. on their own terms, since then theater managers, producers, and actors have been able to securely plan their schedules in advance. This allowed Frohman and the other theater owners to cast a play with actors according to their own ideas.

The Theater District at the beginning of the 20th century

Broadway saw a number of new theaters open between 1910 and 1930. The oldest continuously operating theater from this period is the Lyceum, which opened in 1903. It was also the first theater to have electric lights throughout the building, installed by none other than Thomas Alva Edison.

The Great Depression of the 1930s and the advent of talkies led Broadway into a severe crisis and demanded a reorientation of the theater. Under the so-called New Deal, there was financial aid in the tens of millions of dollars to fund more than a thousand productions between 1935 and 1939. The creation of the Tony Awards in 1947 illustrated the desire of Broadway theaters to improve the quality of their plays. In the 1940s, new Off-Broadway theaters in Greenwich Village were the first steps toward attracting new audiences.

The Theater District in the present time

In the 1980s, however, there was another theater die-off on Broadway. However, urban development measures and the commitment of big names helped to overcome the crisis. Broadway’s stage industry, traditionally the most important and highest-grossing in the country, has always been a major resource and testing ground for film material for Hollywood’s movie industry. Countless Hollywood screenplays are adaptations of successful Broadway stage plays. Also, many famous Hollywood actors, such as Robert Redford, Katharine Hepburn and Marlon Brando, began their careers as stage actors on Broadway.