Television is crowded these days with fictionalpresidents, on shows like House of Cards, Scandal, Madam Secretary, and State of Affairs, but nearly every one of the 43 actual U.S. presidents has been portrayed by name on Broadway.
Most recently, Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad) played President Lyndon Baines Johnson last season in All the Way, but even such obscure historical figures as presidents John Tyler and Rutherford B. Hayes have gotten their moment on a Broadway stage — both portrayed by Gene Wilder in a 1964 play entitled The White House that crammed in 24 of the presidents between John Adams and Woodrow Wilson.
With Broadway this season focusing on royalty (The King and I, The Audience, Wolf Hall), the presidential action on stage is happening Off-Broadway.
Clinton the Musical begins performances at New World Stages on March 25, featuring three Clintons — Hillary, “WJ” (“the wholesome, intelligent” Bill Clinton), and “Billy” (“the randy, charming” Bill Clinton). But the biggest buzz in New York theater right now surrounds Hamilton, the musical opening February 17 at the Public Theatre about Alexander Hamilton, written and starring Lin-Manuel Miranda, the Tony-winning creator of In the Heights. Even before its opening, praise for it emanated from such musical theater royalty as Stephen Sondheim (“I was knocked out”) and Andrew Lloyd Webber (“It raises and changes the bar for musicals”).
Alexander Hamilton was never the president, but the show includes three other founding fathers who were: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison. You can say that a fourth president played a part in the show, although he is not a character in it: The seeds for Hamilton were sown six years ago as a single rap song that Miranda sang in the White House at a performance attended by President Obama and the first lady.
Hamilton’s depiction of revered figures in American history may not be precisely what we are used to — the performers are people of color, and the characters sing R&B and engage in rap battles — but in many ways itfits right into a theatrical tradition of stage presidents that began more than a century ago.
Making Heroes Human
“I think presidents are a natural topic for the stage,” says Bruce Altschuler, professor emeritus of political science at SUNY Oswego and the author of Acting Presidents: 100 Years of Plays About the Presidency. “There is usually built-in name recognition and often passions for and against them. In our celebrity culture, we want to know more about what is really happening, either behind the scenes politically or in their private lives.” And, as he explains in his book, “often, by depicting past presidents, the authors hope to teach a lesson to contemporary audiences.”
At the same time, though, Altschuler concedes, “it’s not easy to write a good play about a president.” Almost any nonsatirical show about these heads of state poses the same challenge: How do you breathe life into characters whose faces are carved in mountains and whose birthdays are celebrated (collectively) as a national holiday?
Many of the most critically and commercially successful shows about presidents, at least in the first half of the 20th century, attempted to humanize these men by presenting them before they became president. Dore Schary’s Sunrise at Campobello, which ran on Broadway for 16 months and won four Tony Awards in 1958, including for best play, chronicles Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s battle with polio and his return to politics. The play ends a decade before he becomes president. Similarly, Robert Sherwood’s Abe Lincoln in Illinois, which won the 1939 Pulitzer for Drama, ran for 14 months and was revived on Broadway in 1993, begins with Abraham Lincoln’s childhood. It ends with Lincoln saying goodbye to his friends in Springfield and leaving on a train to assume the presidency. Most of the plays about George Washington focus on his time as a military commander rather than on his presidency, although none of these dramas achieved the same success as the best about FDR and Lincoln.
Indeed, Washington is a distant runner-up to Abraham Lincoln as the most popular presidential subject on Broadway. Lincoln has been the star of more than a dozen Broadway plays, starting with Benjamin Chapin’s Lincoln in 1906; the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth in 2009 produced several Off-Broadway. If Washington’s mythic stature may be inhibiting, Lincoln’s appeal as a dramatic subject is experiencing something of a resurgence — perhaps in part because of his more accessible story (his amiable storytelling gift, his struggles with depression, his tragic end). Lin-Manuel Miranda has said he was planning to make a musical about Lincoln, based on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s bestselling biography Team of Rivals, but gave up on the idea after the book was used as the source of Steven Spielberg’s 2012 film Lincoln (whose screenplay was written by Tony Kushner, best known as the prize-winning playwright of Angels in America).
Presidents as Villains, Buffoons, or . . . Complicated
Beginning in the 1960s, the trend in stage presidents was no longer primarily to attempt humanizing portraits of heroes from America’s past, but to ridicule and/or disdain flawed current or recent chief executives. Richard Nixon was a target of caustic satire while still in office in Gore Vidal’s An Evening With Richard Nixon, which ran on Broadway for just two weeks in 1972, and features the ghost of George Washington excoriating not just Nixon but what America has become. You’re Welcome America: A Final Night With George W. Bush, written and performed by Will Ferrell, was a more gentle and juvenile satire that began performances on Broadway the day in 2009 when Bush left office.
Much of the most pointed political satires never made it to Broadway, but the presidents on the Great White Way were seldom heroic anymore. Nixon, who has become a frequent subject on stage, is a shaded (and somewhat shady) character in Frost/Nixon, Peter Morgan’s 2007 dramatization of journalist David Frost’s television interviews with the president that took place three years after he resigned from his office in disgrace.
Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson, a 2010 musical by Alex Timbers and Michael Friedman, brought a campy downtown sensibility in its depiction of the seventh president of the United States as a combination of sexy rock star, immature populist, and killer. They build in an ambivalence toward Jackson’s legacy with the metatheatrical device of including a character who is a historian commenting on that legacy — until Jackson kills her halfway through the musical.
Most often during the past few decades, the presidents on Broadway have been making cameos in shows that focus on something else. This is especially true of musicals, from FDR’s second act appearance in Annie and Theodore Roosevelt’s in Newsies to the roles of presidents Gerald Ford and James Garfield as targets in Assassins, the musical that Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman wrote in 1990 about the presidential assassins and would-be assassins; it took 14 years for a production of this controversial musical to be mounted on Broadway.
Both the success of All the Way and the prediction of an eventual Broadway transfer for Hamilton could presage something of a return to the admiring presidential portraits of the past. The drama by Robert Schenkkan, which won the Tony Award for Best Play, was a measured attempt to dramatize LBJ’s efforts on behalf of civil rights. It is in sharp contrast to the 1967 savage satire of LBJ, MacBird, which never made it to Broadway but helped set the tone for decades of political stage comedies. As for Hamilton, the hip-hop musical with the nontraditional casting shares much with traditional Broadway fare about the founding fathers. Intended to be neither campy nor anachronistic, Hamilton features three of the same presidents, and some of the same historical incidents, as Sidney Kingsley’s 1943 Broadway historical drama, The Patriots. A 1917 play, cowritten by its star George Arliss and featuring both the third and fifth Presidents of the United States, was also titled Hamilton.
Privacy Policy
Last updated and effective as of January 14, 2019
Introduction and Your Acceptance of These Terms
Broadway Direct ("Us", "We", "Our") knows that your personal information is very important to you, and We respect your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains how your personal information is collected, used, and protected and the choices available to you with respect to Our handling of your data. This Policy applies to all visitors to Broadway Direct.com, Our mobile services, services available via telephone, and those transactions that take place in person, by postal or electronic mail. (Collectively, the "Site"), including ticket sales, comments on articles, and any information provided to Us.. By visiting this website, you consent and agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy and to the collection, use and storage of your information by Us. From time to time, We may change this Privacy Policy. When We do, the “Last Updated” line above will be revised. You are responsible for regularly reviewing this Privacy Policy. Your continued use of this Site following the posting of a changed Privacy Policy indicates your acceptance of the changes. Unless We provide you with specific notice, no changes to Our Privacy Policy will apply retroactively. Please also refer to our Terms of Use and Lottery Terms & Conditions. If you require any more information or have any questions about Our privacy policy, please feel free to contact Us by email at [email protected].
Information We Collect
Information we collect directly from you: Your provision of your personal information to Us is completely voluntary; it is not a statutory or contractual requirement. Personally Identifiable Information (“PII”) is information that is uniquely identifiable to you, such as your name, address, email address, phone number, credit card number and other personal information that is not otherwise publicly available. Certain features of Our website may require that you provide Us with your personal information, including:
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To use these features, We may require you to provide your email address, mobile number, name and/or address and certain demographic information. When you give Us PII to use the features above, you expressly consent to Our collection, storage, use and disclosure of this information as described in this Privacy Policy. We may use your personal information to communicate with you about:
Your use of any of the features above;
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Responses to your questions/comments to us; and
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We may use your demographic information for in house statistics, advertising and marketing target information. Our processing of your personal information is necessary for the performance and fulfillment of the contract between us and to provide you with Our services. We will also process, transfer, disclose and preserve personal information when We have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary, to resolve disputes, enforce our agreements and otherwise required by law. You can always opt-out of receiving future promotional communications from Us; see the Choice/Opt-out section below.Information We Collect Automatically: Even if you don’t use any of the features above, when you visit Our website, We may collect certain information about you.
From your Browser. For example, Our servers keep an activity log that tracks all visitors to the website. The information in the activity log does not identify you individually. The information collected may include among other data: your IP address, your registered domain or home server, time of access, date of access, web page(s) visited, number of clicks, software crash reports, type of browser used, session identification number, search terms, search results, access times and referring website’s address. We use your IP address to help diagnose problems with Our server and to administer Our website. Your IP address is also used to gather broad demographic information, such as country of origin and geographic location. We use such data in the aggregate to run internal analyses to improve upon your experience on Our website.
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You may occasionally get cookies from third parties with links on Our website. We do not control these cookies, and these cookies are not subject to Our Privacy Policy. You have the ability to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but, if you prefer, you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies. Please note, if you chose to remove or reject cookies, this could affect the availability and functionality of Our Site. If you need help with this, contact Us at [email protected]. For more information on cookies and how to disable them, you can consult the information provided by the Interactive Advertising Bureau at www.allaboutcookies.org.
Tracking Tags (also known as “web beacons,” “action tags” or “single-pixel gifs”). Our website may also use tracking tags. Tracking tags are invisible graphics embedded in the pages of Our website that are programmed to collect non-personal information about your use of Our website. Like cookies, tracking tags provide overall usage patterns for Our website that We use for analysis and to provide personalized services and advertising content.
We comply with the Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising set forth by the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA). You can opt-out of targeted advertising from certain providers at www.aboutads.info/consumers.
How We Use Your Personal Information
The personal information We collect allows Us to keep you posted on updates to Broadway Direct. It also helps Us to improve Our services, content, and advertising. If you don’t want to be on Our email list, you can opt out anytime by clicking the “unsubscribe” button or sending an unsubscribe email to [email protected]. From time to time, We may use your personal information to send transactional emails, such as communications about purchases and changes to Our terms, conditions, and policies. Because this information is important to your interaction with Broadway Direct, you may not opt out of receiving these communications. We may also use personal information for internal purposes such as auditing, data analysis, and research to improve Broadway Direct’s services, and customer communications. If you enter into a sweepstakes, contest, or similar promotion We may use the information you provide to administer those programs.
Information Collected By/Shared With Third Parties
Other than as provided in this Privacy Policy, we do not share your personal information with third parties.
Advertising. We partner with advertising companies who may use information from cookies and the tracking tags they place on our website to provide you with targeted advertisements about goods and services that may be of interest to you based on your use of our website and to track the effectiveness of ads served to you. These advertising company partners may anonymously track your Internet usage across other websites in their networks beyond our website. Any information that these advertising companies collect via cookies and tracking tags is generally not personally identifiable (unless, for example, you provide personal information to them through an ad or email message). You are welcome to browse the site in private/incognito mode, which means cookies will not be activated and previous cookies will not be tracked. If you need help with this, contact us at [email protected]. If you would like more information about the use of cookies and tracking tags and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, see the Network Advertising Initiatives consumer Web site at http://www.networkadvertising.org/consumer/.
Ticketing Partners. Your information may be shared with our ticketing partners (i.e. Telecharge and Ticketmaster) in order to fulfill your transaction and send you updates, special offers, and other information via electronic messages. For more information on our ticketing partner’s data collection and use practices, please review the Ticketmaster privacy policy and/or the Telecharge privacy policy. You can withdraw your consent for any promotional or marketing messages at any time by clicking “unsubscribe” on any promotional or marketing e-mails you receive or by contacting us directly at [email protected] and requesting to be unsubscribed from Telecharge or Ticketmaster.
Third Parties Doing Work for Us. Third parties have no rights to use any data We have collected on your behalf. However, We may employ other companies or individuals to perform functions on Our behalf, such as sending postal mail, email, and text messages, conducting sweepstakes/contests, prize fulfillment and promotional activities, analyzing data, providing marketing assistance, processing credit card payments and providing customer service. These outside suppliers, agents and vendors have access to your personal information only as needed to perform their functions.
Third Parties with Links from Our Website. From our website, you may be able to click on links to third party sites to buy tickets and merchandise and for other purposes. These third party sites may collect information, including personal information. We are not responsible for, nor do we have access to the information they collect. The collection of this information is governed by the privacy policies on the applicable third party sites.
Social Networking Services. Our website may integrate with social networking services. We do not control such services and are not liable for the manner in which they operate. While we may provide you with the ability to use such services in connection with our website, we are doing so merely as an accommodation and, like you, are relying upon those third party services to operate properly and fairly.
When necessary. We may also release personal information when we believe, in good faith, that such release is reasonably necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of Ourselves, Our clients, Our users, or others. We may disclose personal information about you to law enforcement, other government officials, or other third parties, as We, in our sole discretion, believe necessary or appropriate, in connection with an investigation of fraud, intellectual property infringement, or other activity that is illegal or may expose Us to legal liability.
Public Forums
Please be aware that when you disclose PII through the comment feature or message board on the Site, the information may become public and accessible to all or a part of the Site community, so it is important for you to exercise discretion and appropriate caution when deciding to reveal PII in these areas. In addition, when you choose to make a posting, certain PII may be available for other users to view. We urge you to exercise discretion and caution when deciding to disclose your PII, or any other information, on the Site. WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE USE OF ANY PII YOU VOLUNTARILY DISCLOSE THROUGH THE SITE VIA THESE FORUMS AND OTHER INTERACTIVE FEATURES. Please note that We reserve the right, but have no obligation, to republish content posted (including any PII contained therein) as further set forth in Our Terms of Use.
Co-Branded Pages
We may enter into relationships with “powered by” partners, business partners, sponsors, and co-branded sites (referred to here as “co-branded pages”). These might include, for example, pages that share our name and that of another entity. There may be a specific privacy policy on any such co-branded page. Any personal information that you provide when signing up at any co-branded page may be collected by, or shared with, our third party partner. We have no control over, and are not responsible for, our third party partners’ use of your personal information. If you want to learn more about other entities’ privacy practices, please review the websites of those third parties.
Transactions With Third Party E-commerce Partners, Vendors and Advertisers
When you provide personal information to one of Our Site’s third party e-commerce partners, vendors or advertisers (i.e. Ticketmaster.com, Telecharge.com), this transaction will occur in connection with the site of the e-commerce partner, vendor or advertiser, not on the Site, and, as such, the personal information you provide is collected pursuant to and controlled by the privacy policy of such e-commerce partner, vendor or advertiser. Broadway Direct is not responsible for such parties’ privacy policies and We encourage you to familiarize yourself with the applicable privacy policy of the e-commerce site with which you transact business or to contact the operator of such site for more information.
Delivery of Advertising and Other Content
In addition to ads and content that We may serve you directly, We use third-party advertising companies and marketing services companies to serve ads and other content when you visit Broadway Direct and elsewhere on the internet and in other media. Both We and these companies may use information about your visits to Broadway Direct and elsewhere to serve ads and other content to you. In the course of doing so, a unique third-party cookie may be placed or recognized on your browser by such companies. In addition, We and these companies may use Web beacons to help manage Our online advertising and content. These Web beacons enable Us and the third-party companies to recognize a browser’s cookie when a browser visits this Site and to learn which banner ads bring users to our website and to serve you ads that you may find of interest elsewhere on the internet and in other media. Both Broadway Direct and these companies may use information obtained from your visits to Broadway Direct or other websites, and information received from you offline in order to provide advertisements about goods and services and other content of interest to you across the internet and in other media. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used in this manner by Our third party advertising companies, please visit http://www.networkadvertising.org/optout_nonppii.asp and/or www.aboutads.info/choices. European users may opt out of receiving targeted advertising by visiting http://www.youronlinechoices.eu/. In addition, we may provide PII and Anonymous Information to marketing services companies. This may include information we received from you offline or online. These companies may combine information we provide (including PII and Anonymous Information) with personal and anonymous information they may have about you, using cookies they place or that We place on their behalf, as described in the section regarding “Cookies and Tracking Tags”. We require these companies to delete the PII we provide them. These companies may use the resulting non-personal information and such cookies for their own marketing purposes, and they may provide the same to their customers for their customer’s marketing purposes. Some of Our emails may contain tags that allow Us and Our advertisers and other partners to determine the types of content that may be of interest to you. Those tags may contain PII and may be shared with others to the same extent indicated in the section regarding “Cookies and Tracking Tags”. Those tags may not be deleted but you can opt out of receiving the emails.
Use of This Site by Children
The Site is not directed to individuals under the age of thirteen (13), and We request that such individuals do not provide personal information through the Site. If a parent or guardian becomes aware that his or her child has provided Us with PII without the parent or guardian’s consent by, for example, misrepresenting his or her age, that parent or guardian should contact us at [email protected]. If Broadway Direct determines that it has collected personal information of children under the age of 13, Broadway Direct will immediately delete such information and any accounts believed to be held by children under 13. In addition, we may not collect or process information from a citizen of an EU member state under the age of sixteen (16) without such person’s parental consent. If you are a citizen of an EU member state under the age of 16, please tell your parents that you are using the Site and have your parents email Us at [email protected] so that We may delete any information We may have collected about you.
California Visitors
California Civil Code § 1798.83 permits California residents to request information about whether we have disclosed personal information to any third parties for the third parties’ direct marketing purposes. California residents have the right to request in writing: (a) a list of the categories of Personal Information, such as name, email address and mailing address and the type of services provided to the customer that a business has disclosed to third parties (including affiliates that are separate legal entities) during the immediately preceding calendar year for the third parties’ direct marketing purposes and (b) the names and addresses of all such third parties. To make a request, please contact Us at the following email address: [email protected].
EU Visitors
If you are located within the European Union, you should be aware that your personal information will be transferred to the United States, the laws of which may be deemed by the European Union to have inadequate data protection. If you are located in a country outside the United States and voluntarily submit personal information to Us, you thereby consent to the general use of such information as provided in this privacy policy and to the transfer of that information to, and/or storage of that information in, the United States. We transfer Personal Information from the European Economic Area and Switzerland to the USA and other countries, some of which have not been determined by the European Commission to have an adequate level of data protection. Personal Information of EU residents will be transferred in compliance with the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”).
Rights of EU Data Subjects
If you are a resident of the European Union, under the GDPR, European Union residents, as data subjects, have the following rights:
Right to access – This right allows individuals to obtain confirmation as to whether or not personal information concerning him or her is being processed and provide access to such personal information. It also allows individuals to request details of the processing of his or her personal information, including, without limitation, categories of recipients to whom the personal information have been or will be disclosed and purposes of processing.
Right to rectify – This right allows individuals to rectify any inaccurate personal information about him or her.
Right to restrict processing – This right allows individuals to block or suppress processing of personal data under certain circumstances.
Right to be forgotten – This right is also known as the “right to erasure”. It is an individual’s right to have personal data erased or to prevent processing in specific circumstances.
Right of data portability – This right allows individuals to move, copy or transfer personal data from one place to another in a secure manner without interrupting the integrity and usability of the information.
Right to object to processing – This right allows individuals to object to certain types of processing, including direct marketing, profiling and providing for purposes of scientific or historical research and statistics.
An EU resident has the right to access his or her personal data that We hold and to ask that their personal data be corrected or erased and to port their data. An EU resident may also have the right to object to, or request that We restrict certain processing or to withdraw consent previously provided. If you would like to exercise your rights under the GDPR, please contact us at [email protected]. If you are an EU resident and have a concern about our processing of your personal data that we are not able to resolve, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Data Protection Authority where you reside. For contact details of your relevant local Data Protection Authority, please see http://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/article29/item-detail.cfm?item_id=612080
Security of Your Personal Information
Broadway Direct employs reasonable security measures consistent with standard industry practice, for personal information collected through this Site, including physical, electronic and operational measures to maintain security and prevent unauthorized access. While Broadway Direct takes all appropriate steps to safeguard personal information under Our control, unfortunately, no data transmission over the Internet or method of storing data can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As such, We cannot guarantee that personal information supplied by users will not be accessed on Our servers, or intercepted while being transmitted to Us over the Internet. We assume no liability for any damages you may suffer as a result of interception, alteration or misuse of information during such transfers.
Retention
We will retain your information for as long as your account or inquiry is active and for a reasonable time thereafter in accordance with Our standard procedures or as necessary to comply with Our legal obligations, to resolve disputes, and to enforce Our agreements. Even if We delete some or all of your Personal Information, We may continue to retain and use aggregate or anonymous data previously collected and/or anonymize or aggregate your Personal Information. Please note that We will not be liable for disclosures of your data due to errors or unauthorized acts of third parties.
Choice/Opt Out
This Site provides users the opportunity to opt-out of receiving communications from Us, at any time, by email at [email protected], or by clicking the unsubscribe link in any email communication. The Site gives users the following options for removing their information from our database, to not receive future communications or to no longer receive our service, at any time.
Users can send mail to the following postal address: Broadway Direct 1501 Broadway 14th floor New York, NY 10036
Users can call the following telephone number: (800) 223-6715.
Users can opt-out of receiving future newsletter emails from Us by selecting the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of our email. However, We are not responsible for removing your information from the lists of any third party who has previously been provided with your information or is collecting your information through their cookies. You have the right to withdraw your consent for Our processing for your personal information by contacting us at [email protected].
Correct/Update
This website gives users the following options for changing and modifying information previously provided, at any time.
Users can send mail to the following postal address: Broadway Direct 1501 Broadway 14th floor New York, NY 10036
Users can call the following telephone number: (800) 223-6715
Successors
In the event that We are, or any component of our operations is, merged with, or is acquired by, another entity, then any such successor or acquiring entity may become the successor to Our obligations with respect to the personal information that you have provided to Us, which would be necessary for the entity to effectively continue our business. By using this website, you consent to any transfer and use of such personal information by an entity assuming control of Our operations as a result of a merger, purchase of assets, or liquidation in bankruptcy or insolvency.
Contact Us
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, the practices of this website, or your dealings with this website, you can send an email to [email protected]. Our data protection officer can also be contacted at [email protected].