Broadway on a Budget

 I am a huge fan of musical theatre. I say this without having seen a huge number of productions, not in comparison to real musical theatre junkies. Having said that, this is largely because Australia just doesn’t have the kind of scene that you can find in London or New York City. But I love everything about theatre, I love the way that an amazing musical can overtake your body and soul and fill you with glee. My favourite part of London is West End, I love wandering around midtown in New York and taking photos of the various billboard posters and the theatres. However the life of a theatre junkie isn’t cheap, because professional musical theatre performances are expensive.

This year after Boston, I headed back to New York City, and the primary focus of this time in New York was Broadway – on a budget.

I genuinely believe that seeing a show at some point while you’re in New York City is essential to the experience, whether you’re into theatre or not. There are a plethora of options, from Broadway to Off-Broadway and even Off-Off-Broadway. If you don’t care to spend the big bucks, you could look at one of the latter two options to go out, have a night at the theatre and see a show on the cheap. However if you’re wanting to have a real ‘Broadway’ experience, then you’re looking at coughing up the cash, or hunting around to get a cheaper ticket.

Buying directly from the box office

I generally assume that if you’re reading my blog then we are related, you are either my friend or you’re interested in budget travel. Whichever category you fit into, I generally presume that paying full price at the box office isn’t something that most people in this crowd would do, if there is a cheaper alternative available. However, this is sometimes your most logical option, as you will find out when you read below. Some of the most popular shows simply don’t have cheaper options available – they don’t need to offer discounts to fill their audience to full capacity. Sometimes it is a matter of paying for the convenience – time is money, and the time you spend trying to obtain a cheaper ticket is time you could spend lazing about in Washington Square Park or shopping for bargains on Canal Street. If you have the money and would rather just buy the ticket direct and not worry about the hassle of scouting cheaper options, you can buy tickets directly from the box office at full price, either via their website or in person. Each show has its own theater, each theater has a box office. Opening hours are usually from about 10am - 7pm, however avoid in the hours surrounding  a show time.

 Sometimes you can get cheaper tickets which have various levels of ‘view restrictions.’ I saw a show at the Hammersmith Apollo in London which was restricted view because it was the front row of the balcony, and the barrier of the balcony was supposedly the restriction. However it wasn’t at a height that would affect anyone but a very, very short person or a child. This same restriction at the Victoria Apollo for Wicked in London had everyone in the front row of the balcony having to lean forward to see. Sometimes it might be a seat on the very side which will lead to you not being able to see an element from the very side of the stage. If you’re buying in person, generally, if you are upfront with box office staff, they’ll be honest with you about the extent to which the restriction will impair your view. Tell them that you’re a budget traveller, in town for a short period and want the best experience possible spending the least amount of money.

Online discounts

Just type in ‘Broadway discounted tickets’ into Google and you’ll find a whole series of options become available. This may be an option to get a cheaper ticket if you don’t have the time available to hunt around for better prices and deals in person, via the options I will list below. The problem with doing this is that you get less control over seeing where you may be sitting, and you have less of an ability to gauge whether the discounted ticket may be partial view. However you can compare to the prices listed on the official website for the same time and performance, gauge if you’re getting a good deal, and still save time in comparison to hunting around New York City on the day of the performance to get a cheaper deal.

Half price/discount booths

At the back of the steps lies access to all your Broadway dreams!

In New York City, the main TKTS booth is in Times Square, ‘under the red steps.’ Essentially, the way it works is that on the day of the show, the theatres look at how many tickets they have left to sell. Depending on how full they are, they will then allocate their discount. For example, if it is three hours before a performance and only half the theatre is sold, they might give seats away at 50% off. It’s all a gamble – if you really want to see a particular show on a particular day, but you have a price range you can afford, you cannot rely on TKTS. You just may not be able to get what you need on the day you want it.

The main booth only sells tickets in the hours leading up to a performance. There are other booths – one downtown, one in Brooklyn – but all the action is at Times Square. The other booths also offer discount tickets the day before a performance, however, the discount may not be as good s you cn get on the day of the performance. In London, the equivalent is one of the many half price/discounted booths you’ll find around the Leicester Square region, and they operate in a similar fashion to NYC – best deals available on the day of the performance, because the theatres hang onto their tickets until the day and see how many they need to sell and therefore, how low they can go with their prices.

In New York City, if you go to the Times Square booth, a TKTS rep near boards which list the shows that they are selling tickets for and what the discount is, who can answer questions for you. There will also be reps from some other discount agencies around. In my experience they’re all really nice and if you speak to them like they’re humans, they’ll be upfront with you. I saw that Once (which won the 2012 Tony for Best Musical and is currently the ‘hot show’ in town, and very expensive) actually was on the TKTS board, which rarely happens. I said out loud, in earshot of the TKTS rep “Wow, Once is being sold discounted. Wonder how shit the seats are?” and he answered me – “They’re terrible. Don’t do it.” I was chatting to one of the other reps and told him I can only really afford rush ticket prices and he put in some calls to try and get me a ticket for The Newsies in my price range, even though it was pretty much a pointless battle. He had a conversation with me about what kind of shows I enjoy (musical theatre, poppy, funny, bright ) and gave me some suggestions about options on Off-Broadway that would fit my ‘type’ of show, and would also be in my price range.

If you aren’t particularly attached to seeing a particular show, or won’t be phased if you miss out completely, then you can gamble and show up at the TKTS booth maybe an hour or even half an hour prior to doors opening – if theatres haven’t sold house tickets, sometimes they will drop to a lower discount, or house seats (read: the best seats) that were only being sold at full price will be available discounted to try to get rid of it last minute.

In general, I would recommend TKTS or one of the similar discounted agencies if you’re not attached to seeing a particular show and you have a little bit of extra cash to spend. Have maybe a list of five shows that you’d go see, and you can compare prices/seats available. Be prepared to wait in line, especially over summer, school vacations and on weekends.

Rush Tickets

Rush tickets are, essentially, cheap tickets available on the morning of a show. Rush tickets are sometimes for students only, sometimes they are general rush.  Normally you’re looking at from $20 - $30. You queue up in the morning and the tickets are available when the box office opens, typically at 10am. Typically they offer about twenty tickets or so, but this can vary. Most shows, each person can purchase two tickets. So, effectively, you’re aiming to be among the first ten people in line.

How early you need to queue up is dictated by the popularity of the show, the day of the week, and to a certain extent, the weather. I was told that for Once you would normally need to arrive at about 6am and possibly earlier – I got there at 8am on a rainy day and I was about the 25^th person in line, so I promptly left – under the assumption that there are about twenty tickets and that the people in front of me would buy more than one, I was going to miss out.  For Hairspray in London, before I knew that they did rush tickets, I went to the theatre at about 2pm to enquire in general about tickets and was told that they had a front row ticket for thirty pounds available for that night. I blinked in shock – and then later learnt that they just hadn’t sold all their rush tickets. For Bring It On: The Musical during preview, there was only one other woman and I there waiting prior to box office opening. But I could see a bunch of people waiting across the street at Memphis. I have a friend who queued for rush tickets to see How to Succeed  while Darren Criss did a limited run of just a few weeks, and she had to camp overnight  - in February.

There are a few different shows which, instead of/as well as rush tickets available on the morning of the show, there is a rush lottery available. A couple of hours before the show, you arrive at the theatre and put an entry into a barrel. They have a set number of tickets available for the lucky winners of the lottery, at a discounted price. Sometimes these tickets are in the front couple of rows, sometimes they are variously scattered around the sides of the orchestra.

Entering her name into the lottery.

When they draw the lottery, there is an exciting process in itself, with people cheering and clapping and chanting. At Peter and the Starcatcher there was a big group of people who were all going to see the show. Apparently they’d gotten cheap tickets through some other means and they had a handful of people in the group who needed a ticket. All twelve of them entered into the lottery even though they only needed three tickets. About half of them got drawn out, so there were three times where the person would call back “don’t need it!” and the whole crowd would break into cheers - it meant they would redraw.

What I and a bunch of other people did, was enter the lottery for The Newsies – the barrel opens 2 hours and 30 minutes before a performance, with the lottery drawn 2 hours prior. The drawing takes about ten minutes. If you are unsuccessful, then Peter and the Starcatcher does its lottery with the barrel opening 2 hours prior and the draw 90 minutes – so you rush the four or so streets uptown to try your luck a second time. I tried The Newsies lottery twice and Peter and the Starcatcher once and was unsuccessful each time. I must admit, I was very heartbroken but just going through that process, running madly through the streets and waiting in anticipation, was a surreal experience in itself, and  whole lot of fun. If you’re totally set on seeing a show even though you’ve missed out, this is the point where you head to TKTS and see what is available last minute.

The location of seating for rush tickets varies for show to show. I got tickets for Hairspray on West End and for Bring It On: The Musical on Broadway via rush and was in the first/second row – you have to sit with your neck craning up but you are so close to the action that the rush is unbelievable. I was told by the woman I was talking to at Bring It On that the rush tickets for Once are all really terrible seats. At the Peter and the Starcatcher  lottery, we were told that the majority of the tickets were single and double sets of seats on the far sides of the orchestra – so for the price, a fantastic deal, though you do have a side view.

The best website I’ve found which offers an up to date summary of the shows that offer rush tickets (both queuing and lottery) is: http://www.playbill.com/celebritybuzz/article/82428-Broadway-Rush-Lottery-and-Standing-Room-Only-Policies However note that it is susceptible to change and I would recommend checking on the website of the show itself to confirm that nothing has changed.

Standing room only

I’m not someone who would opt for this, largely because I’m not good at standing still for long periods of time. However if a show is sold out, they will often have standing room only tickets available, for places at the back of the orchestra. These are generally at a discounted price. You will need to queue to get these tickets – I saw people queuing several hours before the show began at The Newsies, probably an hour prior to the lottery. They were in a group, they held the place of their friend while they each went forward to enter the lottery, and then came back to the standing room line. If they won the lottery then they would pay for the cheap seat, if not, they had their back up available of standing room tickets.

Which option is best for you?

The best option for you depends on your budget, your attachment to seeing a particular show and how flexible your time is. I was staying at Equity Point Hostel which is in midtown, actually next door to the Nederlander Theatre where The Newsies is showing. If you were in New York City for a whole week and you were staying in midtown, then you could potentially play the field, give different shows a go with rush and lottery tickets. Wake up early, go check out the queues – if one looks realistic at a show that interests you, then you’re sorted. If the queues are all insane, you go back to your accommodation and back to bed/to go on about your day. You could do the lottery circuit every single day for a week and surely, surely, at some point you would strike the jackpot. If you’re a serious Broadway junkie then basing yourself in midtown is the best thing to do, so that you’re close to where you need to be and not hauling yourself in from accommodation on the upper west side or Brooklyn or Queens to find out that you’ve wasted your time and it’s 6am and you could still be in bed. If you succeed with morning rush tickets, then you’ve got the whole day to yourself to explore. If you win a lottery, then it’s a perfect amount of time to grab food and then head to the show.  If you don’t want to rely on gambling or really aren’t a morning person, then the ticket booths might be the way to go, allowing for the fact that you may need to spend a couple of hours lining up.

Whatever you decide, embrace the experience, because there’s nothing quite like the amazing feeling of seeing a brilliant show and being utterly delighted by the music, the dancing, the costumes, and every enthralling moment.