Broadway at the crossroads: Urban planning and theatrical production in New York City in the 1950's

In “Broadway at the Crossroads,” I argue that existing scholarship about Broadway during the fifties has failed to examine the relationship between the theater and its urban environment, and for this reason the vibrant and vital role that Broadway played in constructing post-war notions of citizenship and community has been overlooked. During the 1950's, large-scale urban planning was widely embraced, particularly in New York City, and I argue that the changes wrought by this massive redevelopment were captured and explained to large, middle class audiences on Broadway's stages. Examining a variety of popular shows from the era including Death of a Salesman , The Seven Year Itch, and Bus Stop, I argue that many plays and theatrical practices both overtly and subtly addressed the changing urban conditions and the possible roles now available for the middle-class viewer. In a rapidly shifting world, Broadway actively and effectively provided a new generation of Americans both with road maps for navigating through reconfigured urban centers and with the etiquette manuals they would need for coping in the new suburban landscape. Flocking to the heart of Manhattan, this post-war audience turned to a theater located at “the crossroads of the world” in order to find new models of behavior that would aid them in their relocation to the suburban margins.; During the 1950's, however, two other theater complexes emerged in New York City—Off-Broadway and Lincoln Center—that responded to the shifting urban landscape in radically different ways, and their development, particularly when juxtaposed against Broadway, suggests that the theater can have any number of relationship to its environment. In the final chapter of the dissertation, I argue that these two complexes demonstrate that theater has the ability not only to reflect, but also to adapt to and transform its environment. This is a lesson that theater practitioners today need to remember. Urban landscapes continue to change, and this dissertation offers a reminder and a guide to a theater world that must be active in reacting to and anticipating such transformations.