After locating our missing bus, my suite mates and I embarked on our first journey to the "Big Apple" together. Despite the calls for rain, we made it there with wonderful weather and started our scavenger hunt immediately. I can't imagine how I would have felt if I hadn't been to the city before.
Setting off into the theatre district located around Times Square, I was starting to learn a lot about the city I thought I knew so much about. For instance, I had no idea that there are so many thriving theaters in such a close range of each other operating today. Becoming aware of this fact, I became much more acquainted with the map of Times Square. I don't know how I missed it with all of the times I've been to this area, but almost all of the advertising there is for theatre shows.
As you can see in the above photo that I took of some Cirque du Soleil street performers (also advertisement for an upcoming show), the billboards and screens in the background are flooded with ads for upcoming theatrical events. It is amazing that someone could miss those huge signs for so long; however, I haven’t been much of a theatre fan as I haven’t seen much theatre in my life and the last show I saw on Broadway was the Lion King when I was much younger.
After the scavenger hunt, we met in front of the Marriott to see Follies. Needless to say, I had no idea what to expect this performance to be like. As I entered the theater, I could instantly tell that the audience was a few decades older than the people in our group. This made more sense once the show got going. THE SET WAS AWESOME. Even before everyone entered the theater and we got seated, we could look around and get a sense of what the setting was going to be for the play.
This amazing set was unfortunately one of the only things I liked about the show itself. The other aspect of the show that I knew I would like before seeing it was what the Follies girls were wearing. The costumes were outstanding and I wish there was more interaction between those characters and the main stage.
I am already excited for this Saturday when we will be seeing Traces. I look forward to our upcoming second attempt at the city and the theater!
I'm glad you liked the set and costumes—even if Follies wasn't really your cup of tea! Of course, I'll be eager to see what you think of Traces and Hair tomorrow. Both Stephen Sondheim and HAIR composer Galt MacDermot made quite a break from the conventions of the American musical theatre as they existed when these pieces were composed, but they did so in quite distinct ways that I'll be eager to discuss in class on Monday morning. By the way, your excellent photos illustrate your text beautifully.
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