From “Hair,” a product of the hippie counterculture, to “The Lion King,” celebrating its 25th birthday, New York wouldn’t be New York without its musicals. Now, a museum explores this genre in the heart of the cultural lung that is Broadway.
Despite the plethora of museums and cultural offerings in the American megalopolis, there still didn’t exist a place entirely dedicated to the history of Broadway and its theaters, which have shaped New York’s identity and produced an average of $30 million in ticket revenue. week.
“The idea is that we stand on the shoulders of those who came before us,” theater producer Julie Boardman, co-founder of the museum, which stands on three levels a stone’s throw from Times Square and its neighborhoods, told AFP. giant screens.
Indeed, the Broadway museum tells about 200 years of the genre’s history and reviews more than 500 productions through posters, period costumes, portraits of its former glories or even the reconstructed cafeteria of an old theatre. .
Some rooms are dedicated to works that have marked the history of musicals, such as “The Phantom of the Opera” (which will drop the curtain in New York in February 2023 after 35 years on stage, a longevity record), “The Lion King” , “The Wizard of Oz”, “Rent” (inspired by Puccini’s opera “La Bohème”), “Hair” or “Show Boat”.
At the end of the course, “go behind the scenes” to discover the production of a show and “its different professions,” explains Julie Boardman.
The Covid-19 pandemic, which has brought New York to its knees and forced the quarantine of Broadway theaters to close for 18 months, has taken a toll on the industry. But for a year the rooms have been filling up again.
According to the professional organization Broadway League, about 270,000 people crowded into one of the 34 shows presented last week, compared to just under 290,000 during the same period in 2019, the year before the pandemic.
And some musicals, such as the “Phantom of the Opera”; “MJ the Musical,” a biopic of Michael Jackson; or “Hamilton,” Lin-Manuel Miranda’s huge hit that revisits the birth of the United States, are sold out.
