By Ken Greller
It’s no secret that kids these days with their punk rock music and their online MySpace sex have a rapidly declining interest — or worse, no interest at all — in the theatre. While some might blame bland and boulevard programming and a lack of “dick jokes,” I firmly believe there is one simple reason that when I go into a theatre I’m generally 1 of 5 people not attached to a respirator: crazy expensive tickets.
In 2001, noted Jew Mel Brooks, along with fellow bagel-eater Thomas Meehan, adapted Brooks’ hit 1968 comedy The Producers to Broadway and, thanks to an extreme accumulation of (albiet well-deserved) buzz, the producers of The Producers became the first to demand $100+ for a single ticket to the endlessly sold-out show. For the past 10 years on Broadway, these prices have become the standard, with smash-hits like The Book of Mormon demanding $300-$400 for tickets.
The truth is, as a poor New Yorker (well, not poor, but endearingly underfed inbetween checks from your parents), your best chance to see theatre without blowing all of your beer money for the next 4 months is as a student.While most Broadway student rush policies still ask for somewhere in the aggravatingly high ballpark of $40, there are a lot of (more interesting) off Broadway-venues that will gladly take your meager funds for their (better) shows. While it’s great to wait around for the occasional cheap/free offer for tickets from NYU’s own Ticket Central or the much better StudentRush.org (no, not that Student Rush), the real way to be a smart consumer of smart theatre in this 1%-ruled world is to go to theaters that actually care about making it accessible.
So if you’re trying to become more cultured, trying to sleep with someone in Tisch or (long shot) actually have a vested interest in the medium, there are some great ways to dip your toes in. While there are many great theatres around New York with cheap tickets and great student policies, here are three to keep your eye on:
Playwrights Horizons (with a Student Membership)
Located right on 42nd street, Playwright’s Horizons produces some of the best Off-Broadway Theatre in New York. Trading exclusively in new plays by American playwrights, they produced the smash hit Circle Mirror Transformation by Annie Baker in the 09–10 season, and this season bring us new plays by Kirsten Greenidge (the stunning Milk Like Sugar, currently running) Jordan Harrison (Maple and Vine) and Dan LeFranc (with his epic family drama The Big Meal, which you do not want to miss.) The theatre offers a Student Membership, in which you pay only $10 up front and are then entitled to $10 to each performance.
Lincoln Center’s “Third Space,” LCT3 has produced David Adjmi’s Stunning, Amy Herzog’s 4,000 Miles and currently Tisch-alumn Julia Brownell’s “Girls-Can-Play-Football-Too” play, All-American. Lincoln Center are the folks who brought you big, sexy hits like War Horse, South Pacific and Other Desert Cities, the success of which allows them to fund a program in which emerging and newly established playwrights are produced in a gorgeous space (LCT3 currently operates out of The Duke on 42nd Street, but an entirely new, LEED-certified space is in the works) with top notch artistic teams, and all tickets are only $20.
Like Lincoln Center, Roundabout is a big producing organization that stages both Broadway and off-Broadway productions, which allows them to maintain a theatre literally located beneath the earth, where such plays as Kim Rosenstock’s Tigers Be Still and (yet again) Tisch-alumn David West Reade’s The Dream of the Burning Boy have premiered. Their current show is Andrew Hinderaker’s Suicide, Incorporated and all tickets are, you guessed it, only $20.
Should it be this hard to find art that is economically accessible and (potentially, at least) intellectually engaging? Absolutely not. But here you go, aspiring Stella Adler kids. Get yourselves out into the world. Even if the show kind of sucks, you still won’t have broken the bank and I’m sure you’ll still be able to cull together some dough for The Muppets Movie.
