What is Reddit's opinion of Showtime: A History of the Broadway Musical Theater?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Thank you for taking the time to provide such detailed feedback. I agree that many of your bullets in the end are great points that I missed. Maybe a more comprehensive guide is in my future. :) I do have a couple quick comments in response.

​

>I don’t want to criticize too much, but I feel like this Whole section is a bit “gatekeepy”.

I tried very hard to avoid this, and I'm sorry it came across that way. From the bottom of my heart, I swear that I believe theater to be important and inclusive, and I want it to be accessible no matter where you live. This is why I started by defining "Broadway"—not to gatekeep those who use the term but rather to set expectations on what I was writing about. The term can absolutely mean "theater" or "musical theater" in many contexts as I stated in the original post. But this post was not intended to be a guide to theater in general; it's specifically intended for people visiting a Broadway theater in New York City.

​

>Ehh...there’s a lot of discussion about this, but I think really boils down to that these forms of entertainment [musical theater and opera] emerged from two different cultures and theater traditions.

Sure. I hedged my language ("there's an argument to be made...") and cited my source. I debated including it at all since I didn't know how helpful of a tangent it would be for anyone. Your overall point is valid. I will note, however, that I don't totally agree that the two forms "emerged from two different cultures." I think their paths of development, especially musical theater's, are more circuitous than that and continue to evolve. My source for that claim is Larry Stempel's 2010 book <em>Showtime: A History of the Broadway Musical Theater</em>.

&#x200B;

>I mean...technically, but to be a pedant again, most people seem to only really associate Broadway with musicals.

That may be, but again, I was writing a "guide to Broadway," not a "guide to musical theater." Given how I defined Broadway, I think it would be incorrect to only count musicals. I'll note too that this subreddit includes a ton of posts, photos, and discussion of nonmusical plays.

&#x200B;

>Some of those things I would agree to some extent, though anything more experimental, you will need to be “in the know”. But every major city will have many of those things if you know where to look. Also, universities tend to be good places to look for these kinds of things.

Yeah, I'm leaving finding theater outside of Broadway as an exercise to the reader. And there is great theater to be found all across the country—no question. That said, a report from the Actors' Equity Association on theater in the U.S. begins with the assumption that NYC is the best place for theater, followed by Los Angeles and Chicago, and then... everything else.