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Off-Broadway: Where to Find Real Theater Today
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12908 |
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THE ARTS
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5 / 1987 |
2,577 Words |
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Todd London
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Broadway theater is suffering from its greatest artistic slump in over a decade. Escalating costs have meant that only megahit musicals can afford to play this street, a fact that has scared off cautious and adventurous producers alike. Of the five new musicals to open this season, four - Rags, Honky Tonk Nights, Raggedy Ann, and Into the Light - have closed within a week, and the fifth, the new Marvin Hamlisch/Howard Ashman musical Smile, seems destined for a similar fate. Dramatic revivals on Broadway, the recent stagings of O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh and Long Day's Journey Into Night, for example, fade quickly; serious new dramatic work appears to be a thing of the past. In fact, only British imports, such as Cats and Me and My Girl, have been able to sustain life at the heart of American theater.
Broadway's death rattle in no way signals the end of New York theater, however. A thriving Off- and Off-Off-Broadway theater community offers the same diversity and wonder of which Broadway could once boast at affordable prices and in safe, easy-to-find places.
Theater of Variety
There are over 150 permanent, professional Off- and Off-Off-Broadway companies producing more or less full seasons in New York (as opposed to under twenty-five Broadway houses currently lit).They are as diverse in location and size as they are in the kind of theater they offer. These theaters can be found in every part of Manhattan and the adjoining boroughs, from Midtown to the West and East Villages, to the neighborhoods of the Upper East Side and the Yuppie haven of the Upper West Side. In fact, a short and safe four-block walk from the heart of Times Square ("Broadway") brings one to Theater Row, a string of Off-Broadway theaters on Forty-Second Street between Ninth and Tenth avenues. By developing community audiences and audiences interested in a specific kind of work, Off- and Off-Off-Broadway theaters celebrate diversity in the way that Broadway, looking for the widest possible audience, celebrates homogeneity.
Among the people working Off-Broadway are America's most experienced and proven theater artists. Some of the country's biggest stars - Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Marybeth Hurt, William Hurt, Glenn Close - began their careers Off-Broadway and return with some frequency to its stages. Many of our finest playwrights only work Off- and Off-Off-Broadway when in New York; Pulitzer Prize-winner Sam Shepard, for example, has never been produced on Broadway. Fine designers, directors, and choreographers choose Off- and Off-Off-Broadway because it is the most vital venue for their talents.
In recent years audiences, too, have turned to Off-Broadway. Although this arena has always had devotees, it has also had its problems convincing out-of-town audiences that Off-Broadway has come of age as the place where some of America's best theater happens. Among the reluctant audiences, many people have already found Off-Broadway, but they don't know it. They have seen successful Off-Broadway shows after they have moved to Broadway - the all-time hit musical A Chorus Line started Off-Broadway at Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival; after the plays have been filmed or televised - Off-Broadway's Manhattan Theater Club produced Mark Medoff's Children of a Lesser God before it hit the screen and Circle Repertory Company staged Lanford Wilson's The Fifth of July before it appeared on television; and after the works have shown
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