THE ICEMAN COMETH?!

If you had told me when I woke up yesterday morning that just five hours later I'd find myself on my back lying under the countertop of the star dressing room of the Booth Theatre...I wouldn't have believed you. In "pinch-me" moments like these where I find myself in these "secret" Broadway locations, I have an overwhelming sense of "how did I get here?" And almost always the answer is that I've somehow convinced the humans who spend their waking hours inside our glorious Broadway theaters to let me in to root around for a bit!

When I first started this company fourteen years ago I had no idea where it would take me. I began the research for our tours with a master spreadsheet. I'll start as macro as possible, I thought. I'll list the year each theater was built. Who the architect was. What shows played there. And then I'd zoom in a little more. Why was each theater built in the location it was? Who performed in those shows? I kept zooming in closer and closer, and before I knew it, I found myself journeying down some niche rabbit holes into what I have come to call Broadway's "nooks and crannies." 

To me, these nooks and crannies are the less-trod areas of Broadway history: if the air conditioning system of the Lyceum Theatre in 1903 was cooled by blocks of ice - where was that ice stored? And could the ice chest still be there 121 years later?

I had to find out!

Thanks to a few key individuals who were willing to indulge my ice-chest curiosities, to the basement of the Lyceum Theatre we went! As it turns out, underneath the stage of the Lyceum is a labyrinth of hallways that all emanate from a main trap room where the original owner Daniel Frohman would store sets for his repertory company. And down one of these hallways, built into the brick wall, was a metal door with a small plaque that read AN ICEDAIRE SYSTEM. Behind this metal door was an empty room that once housed the ice that cooled the auditorium upstairs. The ice chest was, indeed, still there! 

My air conditioning fascination didn't end there: I had read that during performances of A Chorus Line at the Shubert Theatre, director / choreographer Michael Bennett didn't want to hear the air conditioning system turning on and off. During Paul's emotional monologue, he wanted the theater to be absolutely silent. The problem was that Donna Mckechnie needed a cooler theater for her iconic "Music and the Mirror" number just before that. So, towards the conclusion of her number, I read that a crew member would head through a door in the basement of the Shubert that led to the basement of the neighboring Booth Theatre where the air conditioning controls were - and would time the system shutdown so it would happen under cover of the applause from the audience overhead. A door in the basement that connected both theaters?! Could this secret doorway still be there?

I enlisted the help of my friend Rebecca at the Booth Theatre to take me to the basement yesterday. As we descended the steps among the white-painted bricks of the 1913 foundation into a twisting-turning collection of staircases that seemed to go in every direction - suddenly there in front of me was a metal door with TO SHUBERT THEATRE spray-painted on it. The door was still there! 

And so, on this Broadway visit, that's how I found myself yesterday morning lying on my back in the dressing room of the 111-year-old Booth Theatre. There's a Broadway tradition that cast members adorn the underneath of their dressing room table with their signature and the date on the closing performance of their run. And with Kimberly Akimbo having closed last week, I was curious to see those signatures and the other ink that still lingered in those dressing rooms. Rebecca humored my sleuthing as the finishing touches of the load-out of the show swirled around us. As we walked from dressing room to dressing room, I could feel the energy of all the icons that had filled those walls. 

And with the next show on the horizon, The Roommate starring Mia Farrow and Patti Lupone, the Booth will only have a few weeks of quiet before those dressing rooms, that stage, the lobby, and the marquee will be overtaken by this new production. Their energy and magic will fill the corners of those hallowed halls...down to the nooks and crannies.