Information On Broadway

Broadway refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the forty large professional theatres with five hundred seats or more located in the Theatre District, New York plus one theatre in Lincoln Center in Manhattan, New York City. Along with London's West End theatre, Broadway theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English-speaking world. The Broadway Theatre district is a popular tourist attraction in New York City, New York. According to The Broadway League, Broadway shows sold approximately $943.3 million worth of tickets in the 2008-2009 season, compared to $937 million in the 2007-2008 season.

The first decade of the 20Th century was transformational in the history of our Broadway Performances. This dates back to 1882 and the construction of The Madison Square Theater at 24Th street. The Mallory's, who had built the theater, had employed a young actor-manager from San Francisco along with two brothers from the lower Eastside to help manage the theater. David Belasco, who had the distinction of appearing on stage with another unknown child, Maude Adams, in San Francisco in 1877, was soon to become a playwright theater owner and builder. The two brothers from the lower Eastside were, of course, Charles and Daniel Frohman. The first sign of the transformation occurred when producer Rudolf Aronson decided to build a theatre of his own. At the time, theatres were concentrated between Union Square and 24Th street.

Broadway's hit musicals quickly became popular all over the world. Many o the best Broadway musicals featured a man and a woman with great vocals and character, although some had only one or the other. Choral singing was often a part of the productions, but the soloists typically got the fame for the performance, if the musical became famous. Many Broadway musicals became so popular that they were also made into movies.

Today, the longest running show in Broadway history is still in production. The Phantom of the Opera debuted on Broadway in 1988.

As of right now the hottest Broadway shows are

• Jersey Boys


• Collected Stories


• Wicked


• American Idiot


• Mary Poppins


• The Addams Family


• The Phantom of the Opera


• Promises, Promises


• The Lion King


• La Cage aux Folles

I personally have never been to a Broadway performance before but I have been looking into seeing The Lion King. In The Lion King you will recognize the stage characters and songs from the Emmy award winning animated movie. The Lion King on Broadway has more than 40 actors playing the roles of the various characters. The Lion King won 6 Tony awards and was the best musical on Broadway in 1998 when it debuted and continues to entertain sold out audiences all over the country. In fact The Lion King is continuing to break box office ticket records at the Minskoff Theater, the theater The Lion King calls home during its run on Broadway in New York. As a kid, The Lion King was one of my favorite movies and I am in the process of getting tickets so I can go see the musical that I have read so much about.

If you are interested in going to see The Lion King musical, or any other musical that is being presented on Broadway it is very easy to get tickets. You can visit http://www.stubhub.com/ or you can simply do a google search. A ton of websites pop up that offer information about the numerous plays that are now being presented on Broadway and a link that will take you to a website to purchase tickets. I highly recommend seeing a Broadway performance if you haven't already seen one. I know I will be.

The Life Of Kristin Welk And How Theatre Ties Into It

Have you ever taken the moment to think about how theatre connects to your life? Most people probably have not; however, I was lucky enough to take a theatre class this past semester that enlightened me on the fact that we are all actors. Many people think of actors as the people who actually get up on a stage and play the role of another person, but in reality everyone plays different roles throughout their day. For example, I am a student, a daughter, a sister, a friend, and an employee. Depending on the environment and the people that I am around determines what role I play.

I strongly believe the fact that everyone is an actor in their everyday life by playing different roles is one of the best examples of how theatre relates to my life and everyone else's; however, you can relate it to so many other things that most people would never think about. Take something as simple as the Nintendo Wii. On the Wii you are able to design your own character that you use in the different games available on this system. You can make your character resemble yourself or you can make them look like someone completely different, say a celebrity you admire. You can even give them any name that you want, it doesn't' have to be your own. The fact that you are able to create a character on the Wii and become that character in the games relates back to theatre. In theatre, actors are continuously given different characters to transform into for the performance. This character could be someone completely unlike them just like the character that you might create on the Wii is completely different from you.

In my downtime I enjoy watching movies. For the longest time I thought that movies and theatre performances were very similar; however, I have recently seen a play that changed my mind about this. Theatre performances are live and as we learned in class no one performance is ever the same as the previous performance. For example, a main actor might get sick and you then have to have the under steady step in. This changes the entire play. The whole cast must slightly change their way of performing their character to make the play work with the under steady. Other changes that actors might make in a performance is possibly saying their lines different or speaking at a different pace. All of these minor changes make the performance different from the previous one. With movies, no matter how many times you watch them you will always see the same thing. The actors will always say their lines in the same manor as before. With movies you have rewind, fast forward, and pause. In the theatre once something has happened you will never be able to see it that way again unless you video record it but than isn't it a movie?


Besides watching movie's I also like to go to the beach during the summer and since summer is approaching very soon what better of a topic to talk about. While I am sitting on the beach I tend to watch the people who are around me. People watching, even though is somewhat creepy, is also interesting. People at all times are putting on performances for the people around them. For Example, you can always tell the new couples from the couples who have been together forever by their body language. Body language is a way of performing. You are performing your feelings through your body. Think about the last theatre performance you went to. The body language is key and makes you understand more about what is going on. For example, people who are in love have different body language towards each other than those who are just friends. Another thing that i tend to notice while people watching on the beach is the the little kids. Lets face it, little kids love attention and do anything for it. It is very entertaining to watch the little kids on the beach rolling around in the sand, burying each other, building sand castles, and playing in the ocean. If you ever notice while they are doing all of these activities they always are saying "Mom, Mom, look at what I'm doing". This is because they are putting on a performance through these activities and they want their parents to notice.


Overall, it is very easy to relate theatre to your life. The concepts of theatre are used in pretty much everything you do and it is very interesting to take things that you are passionate about and see just that.

The Relationship Between Theater and Business

You may be asking yourself "What do theater and business have in common?" Believe me, when I first started to think about this question I was certain that they had absolutely nothing in common; however, they do! To start off I would like to share a bit of information about business and theatre and then we will end by putting these two together to see how they complement each other in a positive way.

A business can be defined as an organization that provides goods and services to others who want or need them. When many people think of business careers, they often think of jobs in large wealthy corporations. Many business-related careers, however, exist in small businesses, non-profit organizations, government agencies, and educational settings. There are a wide variety of career areas that exist in business settings. Some of these include: Accounting, Business Management, and Finance.

On the other hand we have theatre which is a branch of the performing arts. While any performance may be considered theatre, as a performing art, it focuses almost exclusively on live performers creating a self contained drama. A performance qualifies as a dramatic by creating a representational illusion. By this broad definition, theatre has existed since the dawn of man, as a result of human tendency for storytelling. Since its inception, theatre has come to take on many forms, utilizing speech, gesture, music, dance, and spectacle, combining the other performing arts, often as well as the visual arts, into a single artistic form. The word derives from the Ancient Greek theatron meaning "the seeing place".

Now that we have a better understand of what business and theatre are lets take a look at how they can work together. Like any other business operation, theatres sell a product which is entertainment and they must use staff such as actors, technicians and administrators to reach their target market, the audience. Unlike most other businesses, theatres sell a product that is one of a kind every night. Not only do performances vary slightly due to the fact that it is live acting but a wide variety of backstage changes alter somewhat every aspect of the show.

A show starts with an Artistic Management Team. The job of this team is to work on the script. The script is subdivided between at least five design teams according to the scene, language, or character groups. If the show includes music, dance, or combat this requires more additional teams. When it comes the time for the actual performance to happen the theatre only needs four teams to operate: House/Box Management, Stage/Floor Management, Tech/Booth Management and Talent, which of coarse is the actors. Theatres, just like the typical business's that we see in everyday life, cannot function without effective teams and this is apparent through the amount of teams they use to put on a production.

Seeing as how both the theatre world and the business world both use teams it is important to know how to make sure your teams are effective. Effective teams have clear goals, relevant skills, mutual trust, unified commitment, good communication, negotiating skills, appropriate leadership, and internal and external support. Each of these characteristics applies to Theatre Management just as they apply to business circumstances that we are more familiar with.

Overall, theatre and business are more connected than many people tend to think. A well-run team can bring success to any organization, in this case a theatre production. It is important for theatre's to have a good background in business because good theatre teams can cut costs, increase sales and improve productivity. Many people usually only think about the actual production that theatres put on and tend to forget about the many administrative offices that are involved in putting on that show.