TKTS Line

I taught with a young fellow who asked me to help him organize a class trip to see WEST SIDE STORY on Broadway. You had to see the expression on his face when I told him it wasn't running!!

(I loaned him my copy of the movie)

EDSOSLO858 said: "Doesn’t TKTS also display the shows up for sale at each booth, in addition to the big red LED boards by the entrance?"

Yes they do

There are two signs - one on each side of the ticket windows..But there are also some TKTS employees talking to the people on line "helping" them decide what to see. A few of them are like bizarre...I have yet to figure out why you would recommend Kimberly Akimbo to an older non-american couple who barely spoke English and had no clue what it was about. This would not have been my first recommendation fo them... even though I personally loved it.

I get it, but is it dumbfounding? Or is it just not as important to them as it is to us?

We do live in a Broadway bubble. Not everyone who visits NYC once or twice a year (if that) keeps up with Broadway openings and closings. The last time I waited on the TKTS line, around 2007, the couple in front of me said they were hoping to see James Earl Jones in ON GOLDEN POND. I had to burst their bubble and inform them that it had closed two years earlier.

Dollypop said: "Just this past week I used an Uber to take me home from the train station. He was pleasant enough and asked how my day had been. I told him I'd been to a Broadway show that afternoon and he had NO IDEA what live theater was about. He couldn't fathom the idea of actors performing in front of audiences 8 times a week.

BTW: He was college educated and driving for Uber between job interviews."

Like he had never heard of the concept of a play? That I call BS on. Maybe I'm misunderstanding.

can you buy tkts the day before for the evening performance?

Broadway Flash said: "can you buy tkts the day before for the evening performance?"

no, only day before matinees.

A did a year-and-a-half stint as one of the show promoters at TKTS. And while, yes, sometimes it can be fun to joke about the wild misinformation and misunderstandings that makes their way to tourists, it's important to remember that Broadway is, in fact, a pretty niche, self-contained bubble.

I think the key thing here is that most of the show people have HEARD OF are long-running. So if you're unfamiliar with the system, it's not a huge leap to casually assume that most shows in general run for a long time. Even more understandable to casually assume a show that actually WAS long-running (Cats, Mamma Mia, etc.) might still be around.

Sort of reminds of when I was in Venice, and I heard that Di Vinci's famous Vitruvian Man sketch was located at the Gallerie dell'Accademia museum. I went through the whole museum (and enjoyed it), but didn't realize until the end that in fact, the Vitruvian Man sketch is LOCATED there, but isn't displayed for public viewing. Sure, I could've done my research, but was it so strange of an assumption to think that a very famous piece of art might be displayed in the museum where it was located? And in general, I enjoy going to museums, but I don't pay close attention to what's part of the permanent collection, what's temporary, what's out on loan, etc. So I might be a disappointed to miss a certain exhibit or painting, but I'll probably still enjoy what I do end up seeing. I'd guess that tourists coming to see famous, long-running Broadway shows think of it in much the same way. Like the permanent collection.

Planning to a trip takes a lot of time and energy, and there are SO many things to research when you're going to a new city. Some research things will fall through the cracks, so you make some assumptions, and some of those assumptions will turn out to be wrong.

Updated On: 4/23/23 at 11:38 PM