Broadway: America’s Cultural Engine 

By Peter Royston, Theatre Direct

Imagine an engine. Roaring to life, it shoots off sparks in every direction, generating energy and potential. If American culture, especially American culture in the 20th century, has an engine, it has to be Broadway. American theater, music, dance, film -- all were sparked into life, in one way or another, on its stages, in its theaters, and on its streets.

In 1895, Oscar Hammerstein built the Olympia Theatre on Broadway between 44th and 45th streets, on Long Acre Square. No one thought it would last. A theater so far uptown? Theaters were doing fine in Union Square, Madison Square and Herald Square. Why take a chance on Long Acre Square, a sleepy neighborhood of brownstones and horse stables? But Hammerstein ignored all doubters, and his Olympia Theatre eventually led the way for more theater owners to make the jump uptown. In 1904, the New York Times moved into the square, and the city changed the name to Times Square. By the beginning of the 20th century, 70 shows per season were being produced along Broadway.   

The first decade of the 20th century saw a battle of sorts on Broadway. mainstream (read: wealthy) audiences were still going to see German and English operettas. But just under the radar, a new form of musical storytelling was developing. Born from burlesque, vaudeville and minstrel shows, patched together for the working class and the thousands of immigrants who poured into America at the end of the 19th century, this new sound scorned European stiffness and tradition. Brash, crude, quick moving and beautiful, this new sound took the operetta's combination of song and story and infused it with what George M. Cohan called "The American Idea."

Cohan himself led the charge to bring this new sound to larger audiences. Born into a vaudeville family, Cohan got his education on the stage. Composer, lyricist, performer, producer, theater owner, he nearly single-handedly created the idea of "Broadway" with his songs and style. Cecil Smith wrote about Cohan, "he reproduced successfully the hardness, the compensating sentimentality and swift movement of New York life." After World War I, the operetta lost its hold on the American public. Cohan and others were there to pick up the slack.

After Cohan, Broadway continued to explore "The American Idea." The list is nearly endless: the integration of song and story by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein; the presentation of American speech and ideas by such playwrights as Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, Neil Simon and Tony Kushner; the lyrical heights of Rodgers & Hammerstein; the dances of Agnes De Mille, Michael Bennett, and Bob Fosse; the acting of such greats as Katherine Cornell, Helen Hayes, Katherine Hepburn, Lee Cobb, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, Ethel Merman, and Dustin Hoffman. And, of course, the
promise of the future with such talents as Jonathan Larson, Andrew Lippa, Julie Taymor, Susan Stroman, Matthew Sklar and Chad Beguelin.

Broadway continues to surprise us. As we enter the 21st century, Broadway will continue to be America's cultural engine, looking to the past, shooting sparks into the future.

(Peter Royston is Educational Sales Manager for Theatre Direct, and the author of more than 20 study guides for Broadway, Off-Broadway and Touring productions, including The Phantom of the Opera, The Lion King, and Les Miserables.)

Peter Royston