Playbill and the History of Broadway Theater

Paper Summary:

The paper explains the nature of a Playbill, a kind of reference guide to the show of the evening, summing up the cast list, the cast biographies, and also giving theatergoers a bit of advice about places to go in New York before and after the show. The paper examines the role the playbill plays in encapsulating the consumerist, capitalist nature of Broadway theater. It also explores the influence wielded by Showboat's playbill.

From the Paper:

" "Show Boat," originally produced in 1926, and later revived at the Gershwin theater in 1994, has often been called the first modern Broadway musical. The image on the cover of the show's Playbill during its most recent incarnation on Broadway is a sentimental picture of a turn of the century family of three waving at a large, smoking Riverboat show boat ship. This Playbill artifact encapsulates, perhaps more than any other example of the modern, New York Broadway theater, the nature of Broadway's form of theatrical, musical entertainment. The Playbill is a nostalgic commodity that reduces the show to a singular theme, and attempts to encapsulate within its covers, in as non-threatening a fashion as possible, the nature of a show that has proved disturbing to many viewers."

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