Artist: Bruce Eric Kaplan
Credit: Bruce Eric Kaplan The New Yorker Collection/The Cartoon Bank
Decisions
Author: Matt Kizer
Opportunity
Artist: Victoria Roberts
Credit: Victoria Roberts The New Yorker Collection/The Cartoon Bank
Quotable
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Theatre is a series of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.– Tom Stoppard
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I like the ephemeral thing about theatre, every performance is like a ghost – it’s there and then it’s gone.
– Maggie Smith
Organ Donar
Artist: Danny Shanahan
Credit: Danny Shanahan The New Yorker Collection/The Cartoon Bank
Broadway in Brief
- The Lyceum is the oldest, continuously operating Broadway theatre in New York City.
- Along with the Lyceum Theatre (both built in 1903), the New Amsterdam is the oldest surviving Broadway venue.
- The Lyric Theatre, (previously known as the Foxwoods Theatre, the Hilton Theatre, and the Ford Center for the Performing Arts) is the youngest. It opened on January 18, 1998.
- The Gershwin Theatre has the largest seating capacity of any Broadway theatre, with 1,933 seats.
- The Helen Hayes Theatre, originally known as the Little Theatre, is the smallest theatre on Broadway, with 597 seats.
- The Vivian Beaumont Theatre is the only Broadway Venue not in the Theatre District. It is located in the Lincoln Center complex on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, a good twelve blocks north of the rest.
- The Broadway venue that has housed the most Tony-Award winners for Best Play and Best Musical is the Richard Rogers Theatre, with Ten awards.
Truth in Advertising
The street in front of The Olympic Theatre
Source: Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, Vol. 1 No. 10 (Saturday, September 6, 1851), Boston, p. 152
In the year 1840, the following very clever advertisement was used to promote a production of 1940! or, Crummles in Search of Novelty. Continue reading
Cats
Artist: Bruce Eric Kaplan
Credit: Bruce Eric Kaplan The New Yorker Collection/The Cartoon Bank
Directions
Artist: Charles Saxon
Credit: Charles Saxon The New Yorker Collection/The Cartoon Bank
On Broadway
Festus Claudius “Claude” McKay (September 15, 1889 – May 22, 1948)
About me young careless feet
Linger along the garish street;
Above, a hundred shouting signs
Shed down their bright fantastic glow
Upon the merry crowd and lines
Of moving carriages below.
Oh wonderful is Broadway — only
My heart, my heart is lonely.
Desire naked, linked with Passion,
Goes trutting by in brazen fashion;
From playhouse, cabaret and inn
The rainbow lights of Broadway blaze
All gay without, all glad within;
As in a dream I stand and gaze
At Broadway, shining Broadway — only
My heart, my heart is lonely.
Doctor
Artist: Michael Maslin
Credit: Michael Maslin The New Yorker Collection/The Cartoon Bank
Quotable
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I want to give the audience a hint of a scene. No more than that. Give them too much and they won’t contribute anything themselves. Give them just a suggestion and you get them working with you. That’s what gives the theater meaning: when it becomes a social act.
– Orson Welles
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Broadway is a main artery of New York life – the hardened artery.– Walter Winchell
Sequels
