User:Appo.20/Broadway theatre

History of theatre in New York
New York's first significant performance space was established in 1750, when actor-managers Walter Murray and Thomas Kean started a resident theatre company at the Theatre on Nassau Street, which held about 280 people. They presented Shakespeare plays and ballad operas such as The Beggar's Opera. In 1752, William Hallam sent a company of twelve actors from Britain to the colonies with his brother Lewis as their manager. They established a theatre in Williamsburg, Virginia, and opened with The Merchant of Venice and The Anatomist. The company moved to New York in 1753, performing ballad operas and ballad-farces like Damon and Phillida. The Theatre on John Street, established in 1767 by actor-managers Lewis Hallam and John Henry, as well as several other small theatre companies continued to perform throughout the late 1700s, but professional stage productions ceased operations during the Revolutionary War years. Theatre resumed in 1798, the year the 2,000-seat Park Theatre was built on Chatham Street (now called Park Row). The Bowery Theatre opened in 1826, followed by others.

By the 1840s, P.T. Barnum was operating an entertainment complex in Lower Manhattan. In 1829, at Broadway and Prince Street, Niblo's Garden opened and soon became one of New York's premier nightspots. The 3,000-seat theatre presented all sorts of musical and non-musical entertainments. In 1844, Palmo's Opera House opened and presented opera for only four seasons before bankruptcy led to its rebranding as a venue for plays under the name Burton's Theatre. The Astor Opera House opened in 1847. A riot broke out in 1849 when the lower-class patrons of the Bowery Theatre objected to what they perceived as snobbery by the upper-class audiences at Astor Place: "After the Astor Place Riot of 1849, entertainment in New York City was divided along class lines: opera was chiefly for the upper-middle and upper classes, minstrel shows and melodramas for the middle-class, variety shows in concert saloons for men of the working class and the slumming middle-class."

The plays of William Shakespeare were frequently performed on the Broadway stage during the period, most notably by American actor Edwin Booth who was internationally known for his performance as Hamlet. Booth played the role for a famous 100 consecutive performances at the Winter Garden Theatre in 1865 (with the run ending just a few months before Booth's brother John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln), and would later revive the role at his own Booth's Theatre (which was managed for a time by his brother Junius Brutus Booth, Jr.). Other renowned Shakespeareans who appeared in New York in this era were Henry Irving, Tommaso Salvini, Fanny Davenport, and Charles Fechter.

Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids
An American nonprofit organization that raises money and awareness for AIDS-related causes. Broadway Cares/ Equity Fights Aids (BCEFA) is on a mission to ensure direct support specifically through the social services and programs of the Entertainment Community Fund (formerly The Actors Fund) to all individuals in the entertainment industry affected by critical health issues, including, but not limited to, HIV/AIDS. Broadway has taken a stand by incorporating their professional actors to be the leading faces of the cause. The 2022 revival of the musical Funny Girl, featuring Lea Michele as Fanny Brice has taken it upon herself to auction off one of her dresses from her former 2010s hit television show, Glee. Broadway professionals also participate in the annual Red Bucket Fall Fundraiser, where they hold onto red buckets to collect donations after each of their performances. Some theaters even auction off merchandise from the production as a way to boost fundraising. BCEFA has been around since 1988 and has raised over $300 million for the cause.