Student Blog: An Up-Close Look at Broadway Up Close

This past month, I had the opportunity to speak with Tim Dolan, the owner of Broadway Up Close, a company of storytellers who share stories to help visitors get a closer look at the world of Broadway. There are three different components that make up Broadway Up Close - Tours, gifts, and workshops. The tours are given both in-person and virtually, going over a range of different topics related to Broadway. Three of the tours ("Broadway's Beginnings," "Schubert Brothers & Beyond," and "Hippies, Discos, & Dogs, Oh My!") make up a 3-act tour of Broadway, going from 41st Street to 54th street. Another tour is dedicated entirely to the musical Hamilton, one is a not-so-spooky ghost tour, and another even goes inside a theater! Each tour is led by a member of the "Green Team," working actors and stage managers who share personal stories along with the history of the theatre world. The tour guides carry an iPad chock-full of rare photos that help enhance their stories.

The Broadway Up Close Gift Shop is located at 47th Street and Broadway, right next to the TKTS Red Steps. All of the items are designed by the "Green Team" and are created by hand at a facility in Herald Square. I personally love the custom souvenir stub, which lets you create your own wooden ticket stub complete with custom theater, date, time, cost, and seat number.

Along with the gift shop, you can check out the giant, handmade "BROADWAY" sign, an assemblage of marquee letters meant to symbolize different shows with its bright colors. The 6-foot sign is located next to the shop and is a wonderful photo opportunity for theatre fans and tourists alike! If you're unable to make it to Times Square in person, Broadway Up Close also has an online shop that ships anywhere in the world.

Broadway Up Close also offers workshops for groups as part of their "Broadway Up Close(r)" experience. Groups are given the chance to work one-on-one with Broadway professionals from different shows running on The Great White Way, giving people the chance to have a personal experience with artists and teachers. The Broadway professionals will share their knowledge with the group and then engage in a Q&A session, creating an up-close dialogue about the theatre world.

Enjoy the interview and stay until the end to get a preview of my experience on one of Broadway Up Close's tours!

Kat: How did you first get into the theatre world?

Tim: I was first dipped into the world of theatre when my grandpa would take me to see shows. I grew up outside of Detroit, Michigan, so I would see touring shows that came through. Detroit was my first kind of awareness that musical theatre was a thing. I started doing it in middle school - My first shows were South Pacific, My Fair Lady, Once Upon a Mattress, Anything Goes, the standard canon of high school musicals in America. And then from there, I realized you could do it for a living, so I moved to New York City! I got into a school called AMDA, which is a conservatory in the Upper West Side. It went great. Thankfully, I really liked it. And for the last 18 years, I've been doing shows here in New York City, on tour, cruise ships, filming TV, and lots of regional theatre around America. I've run the gambit of most of the mediums.

Kat: And what inspired you to start Broadway Up Close?

Tim: I've always had a love for history, a love for New York City, and certainly a love for musical theatre. A company like Broadway Up Close didn't really exist. And so I thought, if I can do this, then it's a way for me to tie together all the aspects of the things I love into one perfect little gift-wrapped package. After about six months of research on the 40 Broadway theaters, that got me to April 10th, 2010, which was the date of our first tour.

Kat: Speaking of research, as a History major, I'd love to know how you got into your own research!

Tim: Yeah, the research started with a big spreadsheet with 40 Broadway theaters, now 41, starting with nuts and bolts - The dates, who built them, any weird quirks about the buildings, major shows, people that I've I've heard of that acted there . . . And so starting from a very basic understanding of what these buildings were, the theaters were going to be the framework to tell the stories. And then there's a book I love that Playbill has called At This Theatre, and of course, there's the "At This Theatre" page in every Playbill. And so that was my first resource. Louis Botto, who originally wrote that "At This Theatre," seemed to know everything about life, or certainly the life of theatre and Broadway. And so then I just started to read any book I could get my hands on. I would reach out to people - The internet, photo archives, in-person archives in New York City, The Museum of The City of New York, the Shubert Archive, the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress. So a deep dive in every direction. The original tour was very bare-bones compared to what we do now, 12 years later. Now, it's very detail-laden - We've been telling this story for a long time, so you can incorporate all the questions people have asked. If someone asks a question and you're like, "Oh, that's an interesting thing that I never really thought about. Let me look that up!" Going forward, you can add that into your tour in case someone else has that question. So after doing that for 12 years, the stories are these fully fleshed-out narratives with details that no one in the world should care about. But after 12 years of telling these stories and falling in love with these buildings, it becomes very rich in detail. And you get the full story of each of these buildings and each theater's individual personality.

Kat: You mentioned in the descriptions of the tours that you get rare photos. Are those acquired through archival research, donations, or personal collections?

Tim: Friends and I have worked on shows with lots of archival stuff. We have a little more leniency when it comes to showing it on an iPad, than when we write for souvenir books. We have six tours so far, and I'm working on Book 5. When you're publishing anything, it's one thing to find it in an archive - It's another thing to track down who has the rights to it. Do they want to give you the rights to it? How much are those rights going to cost? That's something that any other business owner would have farmed out for someone to do, but I was like, "No, this is fascinating. I'm going to do that myself!" And so for every single one of our souvenir books, I've found the rights holders, done all the legwork of paying for rights, tracking people down, searching through the public domain. All of that nuance is a part of my research life. And so I have a better understanding of research, archives, copyright, and all of that from our souvenir books. The photos are sometimes just going through an online archive that is a bazillion photos and just knowing what to look for, or not knowing what to look for. And now when I'm looking for something I know where to go to start. I also have a lot of archivists in New York City who are aware of my very niche pursuits, so that expedites the process of things. It's a weird life, but it's a great life, bringing stories to life to make you feel connected to the past, to provide new insight into what is a very well-trod industry.

Kat: So once you have all of your research collected, how do you train your tour guides?

Tim: I'm going to put the cart before the horse. I've never gone on one of my tour guides' tours - I have never seen them in action. Things like taking notes stress me out, they stress them [the tour guides] out. I'm absolutely biased to my performance, material and stories, so I just realized that "I'm going to prepare you within an inch of your life, and then I'm going to trust you to go out to the world." Everything we do is reviewed, I get lots of feedback from people. In teaching them, there are bullet points and all the photos. They come on my tour, they come on another tour guide's tour, there are audio recordings. I give them a lot of the resources and materials that I discovered to build the stories. And then they go off in their own little world of research journeys. But for the most part, the bulk of everything that's on the tour is what I give them, and then I allow them to interpret it, or deliver the story in a way that feels similar to mine. But we're presenting the same information. Just like if you saw Wicked in 2003 with Kristen Chenoweth, or if you saw it recently with Ginna Claire Mason. It's the same lines, it's the same notes, but they are vastly different performances.

Kat: During the pandemic, you made the switch to virtual tours. How did that work? Do you see a future in virtual touring?

Tim: Oh my gosh, I just resisted! I really didn't want to do it for two months, almost three months. It's the live interaction that's important to me. That's where we thrive. It's like a show. You can watch a bootleg or a slime tutorial of Heathers, but it's never gonna be the same as sitting in a theater with people. But then Playbill reached out and said they were looking for some sort of online thing - Could we deliver tours in this virtual medium? I said I was happy to try, it's not going to work, but I'm happy to be proven wrong. And I was proven wrong. On the first tour, we had 77 people. The next week, we had 159 people. And then we got up to 400! They're from all over the world. People are up at 4 AM in Australia watching! And so it widened our audience and brought a whole bunch of new people in. I have people that have only done our virtual tours, who haven't been to New York City post-pandemic. And if people do all six of our tours, chances are they get me maybe once or twice, but they're getting different tour guides each time unless they request otherwise. But for people during the pandemic, I did every virtual tour - They've only done tours with me. I've never met them and I don't know what they look like, but their support has been unbelievable and amazing. I see their comments in the chat, they read emails, they buy things, and it's glorious. But it's a weird dynamic! I'm so used to talking to someone on a sidewalk, knowing their energy and who they are by the end. In this virtual format, especially with 400 people, there's no way to really know anything about anyone. And so I don't love it, but I enjoy the challenge of it. The stories still translate. I've gotten very good at it. It's a new special skill like auditioning - I've gotten a lot of practice, for better or worse. But it got me through the pandemic. Now we have a brand new in-person tour, which is the New Victory Theater Up Close, which is a deep dive into the oldest theater in Times Square. So that has been great. Anytime I do a new tour, it brings all my people who have done all the tours back out of the woodwork and they're like something new.

Kat: How did you develop the workshops that are a part of Broadway Up Close?

Tim: So we had a group from Virginia years ago who said we're seeing Hamilton and they said "We're going to see this show and we want to do a tour. Do you know anyone in the show? Can we meet them?" Yeah, I knew every single person involved with that musical, and was like, "Oh, that's an easy one. Do you want to dance with them, learn some choreography?" And so that was the first time we did it. And so then we started to build up this thing. A lot of people now do it during the pandemic. There are some incredible companies who bring this kind of thing and do a lot of group workshops. It's never really been my focus, but it's a part of the business that I love because I get to fawn over my very talented friends and be excited about them. We end every workshop with a Q&A, which is typically moderated by me or one of my staff, where we are like, "Let's talk about you as a human, what your journey was, what your struggles have been. For the most part, anyone the kids are talking to is successful at that moment, because they're in a show that the kids are seeing, which is why the workshop is happening. But it also gives us an opportunity to talk about the life of an artist. I'm obsessed with the human side of our business. We haven't brought these back in the last few years because of the pandemic. It's a part of my business that I love, but we always lead with the tours and gifts. Now, finally, the third part is coming back.

Kat: Do you have a favorite theater to give tours of?

Tim: You know, I love the one where we fully concentrate on the Hudson Theatre and its interior. We just reopened that a month ago and I love it. The history that's present is beautiful. You get to go inside, where a lot of the original building is still left. So that's one of my favorites. The Belasco's my favorite theater because of its weird history and the original owner. My French Bulldog's name is Belasco! And so that's my favorite theater, in general. It would be a dream come true to eventually do an entire interior tour of the Belasco, but I don't think it's gonna happen. They've been around for 122 years and they're not really open to the idea of some little kid coming along and going into their buildings. If anyone's gonna get inside, it's me, but I'm not holding my breath.

Kat: Finally, do you have any advice for people interested in learning more about the history of the theatre industry, especially Broadway?

Tim: There are lots of great books that are about different aspects of Broadway history. Most of the books you'll find are focused on the actual art form of musical theatre, Broadway, and shows. But there are a lot of great books about the actual history of the theaters themselves. One of my favorites is The Story of 42nd Street, a big deep dive into the theaters that were on that block. There are some great books that are on very niche things like Razzle Dazzle by Michael Riedel, who's known more for his gossip than anything. He really surprised me and wrote this incredible book that is very well-researched and detailed about the rise of Broadway, specifically the Nederlander and Schubert fight. And so it provides a lot of good details and context that'll get you excited to dig in more - It's a book that my staff and I often go back to when we're looking for something to reread.

After my interview, I had the opportunity to take one of Broadway Up Close's tours, "Broadway's Beginnings," with Morgan Kirner, one of the "Green Team" tour guides working at Broadway Up Close. The tour starts outside of the Nederlander Theatre, and we had great timing because the crew was loading in Mr. Saturday Night, Billy Crystal's new show that will be opening in March. It was a thrill to be able to see the stage from the street, and crazy to think just how close people walking on the sidewalk are to the action on stage!

Even though it was freezing cold, the tour was an absolute delight. Morgan was incredibly knowledgeable and would insert stories from her own experiences from the first national tour of Hello, Dolly! and other productions. The tour lasted for around an hour and forty-five minutes, with the walk being around half a mile in length. Morgan provided hand warmers for everyone, which was super sweet!

I really enjoyed learning about Broadway's early years and was surprised to learn quite a few facts that I had not known about the theatre district before! Learning how a Broadway show is created and getting to see how the theaters were built was an incredible experience, especially when being able to walk in the footsteps of such famous Broadway legends. My favorite part of the tour was learning about the Belasco Theatre and its fascinating owner. The tour ended in Times Square with a group selfie and individual photos to commemorate our tour together.

I can't wait to go on more of Broadway Up Close's tours, especially the Ghostlight Tour and the Hudson Theatre Up Close!

Special thanks to Tim Dolan and Morgan Kirner!