Reading Observations Post 1
February 12, 2018, by Sara
Broadway-Bowery Dichotomy
In the chapter entitled “The Lights” in Luc Sante’s Low Life, the author further addresses the split between Broadway and Bowery, but this time more specifically in terms of shows and productions. Sante writes on the bottom of page 72 that although some of these distinctions between Broadway and the Bowery “may appear to be of an innocuously practical nature, each of them also exemplifies the assumption of the standard of official culture by one party and the challenge to that standard by another.”
Last week in class we talked for a long time about the distinction between the two streets. This discussion primarily addressed the less tangible. We focused on “the look” and “the feel” of the two streets, especially in regards to how we see them today.
This chapter in Sante’s book examines these ideas by taking a survey of the theaters, performance venues, and other various productions that existed in the two areas from around 1800 up to the early 1900s.
The Theater The theater is a production venue and it is a fitting start for Sante because it is probably the most tangible to a modern audience. On page 73, Sante establishes The Park as “the city’s first important theater.” He also grounds it firmly within the scope of the Bowery. Sante writes that that the theater at this time was primarily based in Shakespeare. Based on my knowledge of the rowdy crowds at the Globe that operated around 200 years prior, I can see the resemblance. Today, I believe that the general association with theater exists primarily within the realm of Broadway. Even outside of New York, “Broadway Theater” connotes a relatively high degree of class, production value, and perhaps most importantly, cost.
The Park Theater, at least in the beginning, seems to have gone against every single one of those “rules.” The decorum now required at most productions wasn’t present at all. While the pit was an “exclusively male domain,” the aspect of Sante’s description that most intrigued me was his quote about visitors witnessing the areas where families were seated.
“Apples oranges, and ginger beer were sold throughout the theater at all points of the show, and families brought their own suppers, Foreign visitors were aghast to see mothers of families gnawing bones up on balconies and discarding them over the sides where they would bounce off the hats of the pit audience.”
The Circus Sante also tackles the existence and evolution of the circus. He writes that the first “permanent” circus in New York City was located at Broadway and Worth Street. The circus as we know it today is generally pretty gimmicky. These shows often tour and are in town only temporarily.
Sante covers the morphing of the circus and a number of what essentially seem like spinoffs of the idea. This section of “Lights” was especially interesting to me given the recent release of the Hugh Jackman movie-musical The Greatest Showman. The actual story of P.T. Barnum, as one might expect, is less dazzling and all-inclusive than Pasek & Paul would have audiences believe.
Dante describes Barnum as the man who made the dime museum – the likes of which later became his circus – as “the mane who made it into an institution.” The point was to show curiosities, or oddities. However, a huge portion of it was really just a scam to make money. Sante writes on page 97 that Barnum got his start “in 1835” by exhibiting an ancient black woman named Joice Heth, who, he alleged, was 161 years old and had been George Washington’s wet nurse. This exploitative mission debuted in on the Bowery. Although Barnum graduated to Astor and then eventually broadway, until he go to what is now known as Madison Square Garden. These works relied on the ever present fact that human beings are morbidly curious about those they view as different from themselves. Circuses and dime museums were paid-for rubber necking and they led some men to immense fortune.