Once Upon a Time in the Land of NYC: Our First Adventure in the Big Apple

The story of our adventures in New York City does not begin in the city itself, but rather with us waiting in the cold, early morning hours for a bus. It wasn't as if we were waiting for the NJtransit or some other bus line like that, we were waiting for a chartered bus whose driver had apparently been infinitely confused by the winding streets surrounding the South Campus of Moravian. Eventually, however, he was successful (though it take nearly an hour...which means we all got up before 6:45 for seemingly no reason) and we were on our way!

The ride through Pennsylvania and into the city was really nice...I took a two hour nap. Though I was awake to see the rare sight of an almost empty tunnel. Upon our arrival into the city we were split into groups and sent on a mad quest across the theater district. I was placed on team "August Wilson" with Emilie and Lexis. We sped through the city in search of answers to the clues we had been given. Some answers we knew right off the bat, such as the longest running show in Broadway history, but others we had to actually go to the location in order to figure out the answer. Each of the questions had something to do with theater...which shouldn't come as a shock as we were not only looking for answers throughout the theater district but we cam

e with our "Broadway and Beyond" seminar class.

Our hunt took us quite literally up and down Broadway and to almost every theater, well-known and otherwise, in the theater district. This is no small task. There are a LOT of theaters in the theater district. Some are new, some old, some with big hits such as Wicked, The Phantom of the Opera, and Book of Mormon playing inside, others with nothing. All in all it took about four-five hours to complete the survey so I'll just give some the high-lights (most of which were ironically not actually on the scavenger hunt but rather we just ran into).

Let me begin with the finding of Andrew. We had been told at the start that our Junior Fellow, Andrew, would be hiding somewhere in the theater district. Anyone who has ever been to just Times Square will realize how impossible a task this is. It's like real life Where's Waldo...but at least Waldo had a striped shirt and hat...and wasn't in Times Square where everyone was moving around. Emilie, Lexis, and me had all but given up with finding Andrew along the way and went to grab a break on the steps above the TKTS booth. As we settle in suddenly Emilie shouts "ANDREW!" Sure enough, there was Andrew, sitting in wait on the big red steps in the middle of Times Square. Talk about a convenient hiding place.

After lunch was over and our excitement died down enough for us to walk, we were off on our quest once more. Along our travels we found multiple theaters, an awesome plaque for Les Miserables outside of the theater it opened, a huge crowd outside of the Book of Mormon theater (still not sure what they were doing though), the amazingly incredible Harry Potter Exhibition (which I had to be dragged away from...literally), incredible cheesecake, and we saw DANIEL RADCLIFFE.......at least in poster form.

As the day drew on and we came closer and closer to 1:30, our mission of exploration drew to a close. We met up with the rest of our class outside of the Marquis Theater so that we could take our seats for Follies. As we entered the theater you could not only see, but also hear the ghosts of the follies as they glided elegantly on stage. The spirit of the theater was alive and the show was about to begin.