American Theatre Wing

Historian Martin Schefter argues that Broadway musicals, culminating in the productions of Rodgers and Hammerstein, became enormously influential forms of American popular culture and contributed to making New York City the cultural capital of the world.

The Tony Awards, presented annually by the American Theater Wing and the Broadway League, recognize excellence in live Broadway theater and are the American theater industry's highest honor.

New York City's first significant theater was established in the mid-eighteenth century around seventeen fifty, when actor-managers Walter Murray and Thomas Keane established a resident theater company at the theater on Nassau Street in Lower Manhattan, which held about two hundred and eighty people.

They presented William Shakespeare's plays and ballad operas such as The Beggar's Opera.

Some shows, especially those Disney produces, change their performance schedules fairly frequently depending on the season.

This is done in order to maximize access to their target audience.

Most Broadway producers and theater owners are members of the Broadway League, formerly the League of American Theaters and Producers, a trade organization that promotes Broadway theater as a whole, negotiates contracts with the various theatrical unions and agreements with the guilds, and co-administers the Tony Awards with the American Theater Wing, a service organization.

While the League and the theatrical unions are sometimes at loggerheads during those periods when new contracts are being negotiated, they also cooperate on many projects and events designed to promote professional theater in New York.