Is Broadway Dying?

“I’m the end of the line; absurd and appalling as it may seem, serious New York theater has died in my lifetime.” This quote was said by the famous playwright, Arthur Miller. He was not the only person thinking that Broadway’s end is near. Theater industry members, scholars and journalists believe that Broadway is going extinct. “Many belief that American theater is suffering an artistic death” (Wollman). Many people think that Broadway is dying. I strongly disagree with that opinion. Broadway is alive and well and appearing nightly in the Time Square area of New York City.

First of all, Broadway is the heart of the American theater. The only other theatre district in the world that compares to Broadway is the theater district in West End of London, England. Just how big is Broadway? “Located in and around Times Square, the roughly thirty-five legitimate Broadway theaters form the backbone of one of the most highly concentrated entertainment districts in the world along with London’s West End” (Simonoff). The city of New York has had a professional theatre district since the eighteenth century. As time went on, the district slowly moved uptown to Broadway. In the early 1900s, the Time Square theatre district had a total of seventy theaters. These theaters were “scattered roughly in the area between Thirty-ninth Street, Fifty-ninth Street, Sixth Avenue, and Eighth Avenue” (McNamara). Today, there are approximately thirty-five theaters in the Time Square area. It’s true that today, the number of present day Broadway theaters has been cut in half from the number of theaters there once were. However, this decrease in the number of theaters does not mean that Broadway is extinct.

Broadway productions are big business...

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