Broadway is the epicenter of the American theater world

Broadway is a theater district in New York

There are 41 official Broadway theaters in New York City, all within a few blocks of Times Square, a key contributor to the area's prestige and economic success. These theaters host the productions eligible for Tony Awards.

Broadway grosses over $1B annually

The famous but relatively small geographic area is responsible for a relatively enormous economy, thanks to high demand and high ticket prices.

Broadway's nickname is 'the Great White Way'

Thanks to the advent of electricity, by the middle of the 19th century, theaters in the Broadway area were illuminated by lampposts and marquees. The nickname “the Great White Way” describes how it looked at night. The term is still used today.

Broadway employs tens of thousands of people in various roles

While we often just think of the actors and directors who take top billing, Broadway productions operate as distinct businesses employing numerous people in various roles: stage managers, sound designers, house managers, ushers and more.

Off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway are about more than location

A Broadway theater is located in Manhattan and seats more than 500 people. Off-Broadway theaters have 100 to 499 seats, while off-off-Broadway theaters house up to 100.

Plenty of excellent shows take place far outside the Big Apple

Regional theaters like the La Jolla Playhouse often act as testing grounds for Broadway, allowing audiences to witness groundbreaking world premieres before they hit the Great White Way.

Broadway's superfans unite at BroadwayCon

Like ComicCon for theater lovers, BroadwayCon convenes annually in New York and offers panels, meet-and-greets, and, of course, singalongs. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

The best Broadway oral histories

What do you get when you combine elite performers, spectacular sets, and tons of rehearsal time? Maybe an award-winning show, but definitely drama. This list of Broadway-based oral histories spans from RENT’s groundbreaking depiction of the AIDS crisis to the lasting impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on live theater. There’s even a retelling of how TikTok helped bring a musical version of Ratatouille to the stage for a one-night-only streaming exclusive.

Nonprofit theaters are incubators for new theater

Unlike commercial Broadway theaters, ticket sales account for only a fraction of nonprofit theaters' income. This lets them take chances on new playwrights and innovative shows, including Lin Manuel Miranda's "Hamilton" and Stephen Sondheim's "Sunday in the Park with George."

The awards focus on three categories: performance, show and technical, and special honors

While marquee awards like best musical attract the most attention, the Tonys award the many elements that contribute to American theater. This video breaks down the various award categories, including the ones retired over the years, as well as eligibility requirements, how nominations are decided, and, of course, how the winners are selected.

'Hair' helped redefine Broadway theater

"Hair" rewrote the rule book, bringing politics, race, and, yes, nudity to Broadway. Plenty was going on backstage, too, with the young, revolutionary cast embracing the countercultural life they portrayed onstage.

Broadway's songwriters began experimenting in the 1920s

Broadway’s early decades were heavily influenced by opera and vaudeville, but songwriters in the 1920s began exploring more narrative-based songwriting and psychologically complex characters. That trend would continue in the following decades, though it would evolve in even more nuanced ways.

The Tony Awards were founded by Brock Pemberton

A Kansas boy who went on to become a groundbreaking Broadway producer, Brock Pemberton is also the founder of the Tony Awards. He went from a prodigious Midwestern newspaper reporter to a New York drama critic and quickly caught the attention of a local producer, who offered Pemberton a job and kick-started his decades-long Broadway career, which included cofounding the influential American Theatre Wing.

Shakespeare’s American productions have often reflected the state of the country

Shakespeare’s works have been used to interpret moments in US history, from the Astor Place Riot in 1849 and Lincoln’s frequent quotations of “Macbeth,” to the use of Shakespeare in nationwide classrooms today.

What is Silicon Alley?

The term "Silicon Alley" refers to an area in New York City once known for its high-tech startups, especially during the dot-com boom. Silicon Alley ran from New York City's Flatiron District through Soho to the Financial District. After the dot-com bubble burst, tech companies spread out through the rest of Manhattan and Brooklyn. Learn more about the area and how it compared to Silicon Valley in this article.

The evolution of New York City

Originally founded as New Amsterdam, this interactive timeline lists out and provides deep dives on the major events that shaped New York City as it became America's foremost cultural and economic hub.

A Spider-Man musical became one of Broadway's biggest flops

Once hyped as a revolutionary stage production with music by U2's Bono and The Edge, and direction from Julie Taymor of "The Lion King," "Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark" became one of Broadway's most expensive flops.

New York City's five boroughs each function as a separate county under state law

Each of New York City's five boroughs—Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island—corresponds to a separate county under New York State law, forming a layered government structure that is unique among major American cities.

Theater of the Absurd brought existentialist ideas to the stage

In the 1950s, playwrights horrified by the events of World War II and inspired by existentialism’s response to it began staging plays that brought many of the philosophy's ideas to center stage. Critic Martin Esslin coined the term “Theater of the Absurd” in 1960, citing the plays of Samuel Beckett, Arthur Adamov, and Eugene Ionesco as indicative of a new theatrical style that rejected realism and standard plot.

Learn how the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade comes together each year

The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is essentially a huge theatrical production spanning several long blocks in New York City rather than a stage. Naturally, organizing it is a complicated process. This podcast episode explains how the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade comes together each year.

Disney keeps one street in Burbank pristine for shooting suburban scenes

Nearly every home on Keystone Street is owned by Disney and is often used when the company shoots movies set in idyllic suburbs. Even non-Disney projects, like the horror classic "Halloween," have used the street for filming.

Madison Square Garden and Madison Avenue are indirectly named after James Madison

Madison Square Park was named for James Madison in the 1800s. Madison Avenue later took its name from the park, and Madison Square Garden was named after Madison Square, indirectly linking both landmarks to Madison.

The stock market, explained in 3 minutes

The stock market consists of a set of exchanges and other venues where shares of public companies are bought and sold. The Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange are two of the most well-known exchanges in the US, while major exchanges also operate around the world, including in Tokyo, Shanghai, London, and São Paulo.

Avenues are typically wider than streets

Generally speaking, avenues are roads with buildings or trees on both sides. This article further details the differences between lanes, streets, circles, drives and more.

Nollywood is Nigeria's booming film industry

With storytelling roots in the Yoruba tradition of traveling theater troupes, Nollywood has slowly expanded its influence—and the world is taking notice. Over the last decade, Netflix invested more than $23M in the Nigerian film industry.

The US dollar is the most widely circulated currency in the world, and is involved in nearly 90% of global transactions

The distributor behind 'Rocky Horror' pulled the film from its scheduled national release, believing it would be a failure, though it eventually amassed a dedicated fanbase through midnight showings, a trend that continues over 50 years later.

Netflix profits when you're not watching, and its movies are designed that way—read a detail-rich critical essay exposing lesser-known Netflix takes

Existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre coined the famous phrase 'Hell is—other people' in his play 'No Exit'

According to the physics of black holes, our 4D reality may be a hologram—a projection of information coded on a 2D surface on the edge of the universe.

A century of Billboard issues documenting the evolution of popular music.

The Nasdaq's 'Magnificent 7' companies are responsible for roughly 40% of the Nasdaq 100 index's gains, while the remaining 93 companies account for the other 60%.

Dorothy's famous entrance into Oz in 'The Wizard of Oz' relied on analog tricks, including a body double and sepia-toned paint, as much as it did on technology

Explore an interactive map of battles from the American Revolution, along with detailed summaries of each engagement

The syncytiotrophoblast is the outer layer of the placenta and the largest human cell, spanning an area about twice that of a king-sized bedsheet.

When a Paris department store hesitated to sell Estée Lauder's perfume, she 'accidentally' broke a bottle, causing the smell to spread throughout the store and shoppers to start asking to buy the scent.

'Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone,' a work by American painter Thomas Moran, inspired Congress to establish Yellowstone National Park.

Louisiana's 'Cancer Alley' is infamous for having some of the highest industrial pollution, toxic air emissions, and cancer risks in the US.

Stars appear to twinkle because turbulence in the motion of molecules in Earth's atmosphere causes light to bend and wiggle rapidly on its way to the surface—a phenomenon called scintillation.

Discover the catastrophic consequences of a failure of the US electrical grid—something that is more likely than many Americans think.

See how Budweiser's famous Clydesdales spend their days at Warm Springs Ranch, where roughly 70 to 80 of the beer brand's giant horses can be found at any given time.

Explore the history, structure, and species of Australia's Great Barrier Reef with this interactive journey narrated by Sir David Attenborough.

An initial public offering or 'IPO' is the process of a private company becoming public by putting shares of the company on the stock market for purchase.

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

A small portion of The Winstons' 'Amen, Brother,' an obscure '60s gospel record, is the basis for thousands of hip-hop tracks, making it one of the most sampled records ever that's informally known as 'the Amen break.'

Explore a list of the 100 best novels of all time, compiled by some of the world's best living writers, including Salman Rushdie, Stephen King, and Jennifer Egan.

Ebola species have historically been named after where they were discovered, stigmatizing residents who live there, including Bundibugyo, in Uganda.

Read a deep dive on the 'all-purpose healing' peptide BPC-157.

Gerrymandering works through two techniques: cracking opposing voters across districts to dilute their power, and packing them into a few to waste their votes in lopsided majorities.

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.