Everyone’s favorite dying patient, the theater,struggles on. The problem is that what we remember as the theater has turned into a tourist industry. The fabulous invalid trundles on through thick and thin. Ticket prices are ridiculously high so that even if there is something worth seeing,which there is occasionally, who can afford to go and see it? Yet we all have visitors from afar, so what is a poor villager to do? Doesn’t anybody care about the ancient theater lover, culture hound or harried host?
The best place for a ticket break is still the Theater Development Fund’s half price TKTS Boothin Times Square; more precisely, Duffy Square at 47th Street and Broadway. You go the day you want to see a show, stand on line, usually at least two hours before curtain time. The booth opens at 11 am. You pay two for the price of one, or for tickets at a substantial saving, for the available shows. It’s worth the waitand the best deal in town. Theater for all the talk about art is, like most everything else, about profit. Producers control the distribution of tickets for their shows and it depends on the marketing plan and how well the box office is doing. There is no uniform policy. No regulation. It is all geared to bums on seats and at the producers’ discretion. “What about the seniors?” you ask. The elderly,the handicapped? Some producers and theater organizations do make provisions for them. You have to call the individual theater housing the show you want to see, or send an emissary to the box office and ask. They are not shy and will tell you what you can expect and what is available.
As far as other outlets for discount tickets, George Capsis, our illustrious leader and publisher of the WestView News, ever helpful, even inspirational, e-mailed me that senior discount tickets for shows were available at Greenwich House. By extension, I would imagine all other community and senior centers should have them. Clubs, organizations, and associations also often have senior discounts as well as discounts for ordinary folk. You might also look for discount tickets “twofers” often tacked to a board at you favorite watering hole or coffee shop.
A good hunting ground is the internet. A number of sites are listed that carry senior and everybody discount tickets, goldstar.com being one of them (sign up for half price entertainment offers), tdf.org/tktstdf.org/tkts, mentioned above; theatermania.com and many more.It takes some doing, that’s all.
Can we ever get away from this “dying patient” falsehood, and just celebrate how the theater is growing? When I got to nyc in ’81, we’d never think of taking a job in a show in Brooklyn, god forbid Queens or the Bronx. But now, indie theater is all over the 5 boroughs.
We may have fewer theaters in Manhattan, but in nyc overall there are far more theaters, doing more diverse work, directly in the communities were people live. We no longer have to “go into the City” to see a great, professional play.
And back then, it was unheard of for our resident theaters to have Broadway houses, but now we have Roundabout with 2 of them and other theater have them, too. We lost 2 great Broadway theaters in the ’80s, but gained even more since then.
And the Off Broadway theaters like Signature that don’t have Broadway houses now have multiple theaters that are as nice as anything on Broadway.
Enough with the pity party; lets celebrate just how much the theater scene has grown in the past quarter century.
Dear Ralph Lewis, thanks for taking the time to comment on the “dying patient” piece about the ailing health of “Broadway.” The place that most “visitors” to New York want to go. Your point about diversified theater is well taken. I agree with you. In fact I am doing a feature review of a significant new theater complex in Brooklyn, the new home for Theater for a New Audience. Watch for it.