Broadway

   1) This prominent street in New York City runs the length of Manhattan island from north to south. As early as 1735, a map depicts a playhouse on this street, but not until the modernist era did Broadway come to represent the New York commercial theatre as a whole. The word continues to be used thus broadly, although New York theatre after 1960 splintered, with theatres having fewer than 299 seats designated as "off-Broadway"* and, ultimately, even smaller theatres dubbed "off-off Broadway."*

   Broadway was the heart of the American theatre from 1880 to the 1960s. It was also known as "The Great White Way" because of the electric lights illuminating theatres and businesses along that street. Despite the thriving road as well as resident stock theatres established in various regions, a producer, playwright, actor, or scene designer was not considered to have succeeded unless he or she had worked on Broadway.

   In plays of the late 1910s and the 1920s, the terms "Broadway" and "Broadway style" were sometimes used pejoratively to refer to cheap taste or to flashy wardrobes associated in the public mind with chorus girls and street hustlers.

   2) "Broadway"

   George Abbott coauthored (with Philip Dunning) and directed the remarkably successful comedy-melodrama set backstage at a nightclub, mingling chorus girls, bootleggers, and a sweet romance. The 75-week (603 performances) run at the Broadhurst Theatre, opening 16 September 1926, helped to launch the producing career of Jed Harris. In 1987, at Great Lakes Theater Festival* in Cleveland, Abbott, then 100 years old, directed a revival of the play that went on to a brief run on Broadway.