6 min read
Broadway, touring, regional, community: what is the difference?
Who makes the show, who is on stage, what tickets cost, and why a great night can happen at every level.
The same musical can open on Broadway, tour the country, be staged by a regional theater in a bold new way, and turn up at your local community playhouse a few years later. What changes from one to the next is who makes it, who is on stage, and what a ticket costs. Here is the map, from the biggest stages to the smallest, and what each one is best at.
Broadway
Broadway means a production in one of the forty-one large theaters in Manhattan's Theater District, each with at least 500 seats. The casts and crews are top professionals, the budgets are enormous, and the sets, costumes and orchestrations are as polished as anything in the world. Tickets are the most expensive in the country, although lotteries, rush and discount booths can bring them down. Most Broadway shows play eight performances a week in an open run, until ticket sales slow.
Off-Broadway and beyond
Off-Broadway theaters are smaller professional houses in New York, roughly 100 to 499 seats. Tickets cost less, the rooms are intimate, and the work tends to be riskier and newer; many shows later seen on Broadway began here. Off-Off-Broadway covers the smallest venues, under 100 seats, where experiments and first plays happen.
Touring Broadway
When a show succeeds on Broadway, producers often send out a national tour: a full production with its own cast and a set designed to be packed into trucks. It plays large theaters and performing arts centers across the country for a week or a few weeks in each city, usually as part of a local "Broadway series" you can subscribe to. Touring is how most Americans see big Broadway musicals, without the trip to New York.
Regional theater
Regional theaters are professional companies, usually nonprofit, based in cities outside New York. They build their own productions from scratch, with professional actors, directors and designers, and run a season of five to ten shows: classics, new plays, musicals, holiday favorites. Many develop brand-new work that later travels. The biggest belong to the League of Resident Theatres (LORT), but plenty of excellent smaller professional companies exist too. If you want to see first-rate theater at a fair price, your nearest regional theater is often the best deal in town.
Festivals, summer stock and dinner theater
Some theaters only run part of the year. Shakespeare festivals often perform outdoors in summer, sometimes for free. Summer stock theaters in resort and college towns put on a new show every week or two. Dinner theaters serve a meal before or during the show, with a ticket that usually includes dinner, and they are a relaxed way to introduce someone to musicals.
Community theater
Community theaters are local companies where the actors and crew are mostly volunteers: your neighbor, your kid's teacher, the retired engineer with the great baritone. Tickets are affordable, the audience is full of friends and families, and the pride in the room is real. Some community theaters have been running for a century and own beautiful buildings. The quality varies, and at its best it will surprise you. It is also the one kind of theater you can join; see supporting your local community theater.
Children's and youth theater
Children's theater (also called TYA, theater for young audiences) is professional theater made for young audiences, usually performed by adults, often an hour or less. Youth theater is theater performed by young people themselves, through classes, camps and productions. Both are wonderful, and they are different nights out; the taking kids to the theater guide explains which suits whom.
University and college theater
Theater departments stage full seasons with student actors, designers and technicians, often directed by faculty who are working professionals. Productions can be ambitious, tickets are cheap, and you may be watching a future star. They are open to the public, not just students.
So which should you choose?
Whichever is playing something you want to see, close enough to get to. A great night can happen at every level, and the level tells you more about the price than about how much you will enjoy it. Use the filters on the theaters and productions pages to see every kind near you.
Written by PlayhouseFinder. Dotted words open a short definition; the full glossary is here.