When the Broadway box office opens Thursday for the Kander and Ebb musical “The Scottsboro Boys,” a limited number of tickets will be available for $19.31, the show’s publicists announced today.
The musical, set in 1931, tells the story of a group of African-American teenagers wrongly accused of raping two white women. It received good reviews when it played Off-Broadway earlier this year.
The $19 seats will be sold only at the box office and only on Sept. 2. They’re available for the mezzanine and balcony seats at the first preview on Oct. 7 and for balcony seats for performances through Oct. 14.
The Lyceum Theatre box office is located at 149 W. 45th St.
Last week, the box office for “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson” opened with a similar stunt, selling all tickets to the first preview for $20. Both “Brief Encounter” and “Mrs. Warren’s Profession” also offered $10 preview tickets for September.
It looks like September 25 is going to be the big day for oysters in New York City for 2010. That’s the day for oyster festivals in Midtown at Grand Central Terminal and downtown on Stone Street.
The annual Oyster Frenzy at the Grand Central Oyster Bar, from noon to 6 p.m., will feature 16 varieties of oysters, a professional shucking championship, a slurp-off eating contest and chef demos. Admission and some samples will be free.
In Lower Manhattan, the Stone Street Oyster Festival will start at noon on the same day. It will feature live bands and lots of beer.
The 20at20 offer, which runs from Sept. 7 through 19, allows anyone to walk up to the box office 20 minutes before curtain and buy a ticket for $20 (unless the show has sold out.) Buyers need to say “20at20” to get the deal.
The 20at20 website so far lists 26 shows participating in the program this season.
The vintage vessels — both are listed on the National Register of Historic Places — will be open for free tours Saturday through Monday from 1 to 5 p.m.
'Saturday Night Live' ticket lottery open through August
Long-shot lovers and underdogs of the world, August is the one time of the year you can apply to the lottery to obtain Saturday Night Live tickets for the upcoming season.
Send an email to snltickets@nbcuni.com with all your contact details but don’t hold your breath. (Update as of Aug. 31: NewYorkology’s Twitter followers are getting bounced e-mails from NBC, indicating the lottery closed a day early.)
“Saturday Night Live” also does stand-by tickets, but be warned that people tend to line up starting on Thursdays (as pictured up top.)
Tickets are free, though they have shown up in the past on sites such as Charity Buzz auction with an estimated value of $1,000.
Tickets to other shows taped in NYC are easier to come by, and generally they’re all free. Here’s an updated list of shows that tape in NYC and offer audience tickets:
Summer’s winding down and hotel deals are getting harder to find. New York hotels’ average daily rate climbed to $208, according to mid-August data from STR. Here are a handful of posted New York hotel deals below that price:
The come-out-and-play package at Morgans, from $179, includes two drinks per day and priority access to all of the hotel’s restaurants and bars.
The Hotel Pennsylvania, which developers plan to tear down and in its place build a skyscraper to rival the Empire State Building, currently has rooms from $189 this weekend.
The cheapest room at The Jane go for $89 until Labor Day weekend and then settle at $99 for fall and winter. The hip but tiny rooms come with free wi-fi and a shared bathroom down the hall. Pricier rooms offer more privacy.
NY Philharmonic open rehearsals rise to $18, one freebie
Individual tickets for the New York Philharmonic’s 2010-11 season are now on sale, including a big batch of morning open rehearsals.
The schedule begins with one free dress rehearsal on the morning of the season’s opening day. The free Sept. 22 dress rehearsal at 9:45 a.m. will feature Wynton Marsalis, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and Music Director Alan Gilbert. General admission tickets will be handed out that morning from 8 a.m. at Lincoln Center’s Josie Robertson Plaza.
All other open rehearsals cost $18 each, ($2 more than 2009,) plus handling fees.
All but two rehearsals start at 9:45 a.m. (The two exceptions are 1:15 p.m. rehearsals on Nov. 24 and May 3.)
NY Philharmonic’s open rehearsals for 2010-11:
Sept. 22 - Opening Day
Sept. 23 - Perlman Performs Mendelssohn
Sept. 29 - Alan Gilbert Conducts Mahler’s Sixth Symphony
Oct. 6 - Joshua Bell Performs Sibelius
Oct. 14 - Zukerman, Webern, and Brahms
Nov. 10 - Mendelssohn’s Elijah
Nov. 18 - Anne-Sophie Mutter Plays Mozart and Wolfgang Rihm
Nov. 24 - Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto and Stravinsky’s Firebird
Dec. 2 - Beethoven and Mahler
Dec. 9 - Elgar and Mozart
Dec. 14 - Handel’s Messiah
Dec. 28 - Alan Gilbert and Soloists from the Philharmonic
Jan. 6 - Mozart, Mahler, and a Thomas Adès Premiere
Jan. 13 - Bronfman, Schumann, and Brahms
Jan. 20 - von Dohnanyi Conducts Schumann and Dvorák
Feb. 10 - Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto and Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony
Feb. 16 - Branford Marsalis
Feb. 24 - Janine Jansen and Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony
March 3 - Mahler’s Fourth Symphony
March 10 - Hungarian Echoes I: Esa-Pekka Salonen and Pierre-Laurent Aimard
March 17 - Hungarian Echoes II: Salonen Conducts Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra
March 24 - Hungarian Echoes IV: Salonen Conducts The Miraculous Mandarin
March 31 - Anne-Sophie Mutter and Tchaikovsky’s Second Symphony
April 13 - Masur Conducts Liszt, Gubaidulina, and Brahms
April 27 - Mahler’s Symphony No. 5
May 3 - Batiashvili, Bartók, and Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony
June 2 - Mutter, Beethoven, Bruckner, and a Sebastian Currier Premiere
June 16 - Gil Shaham and Musorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition
June 21 - The Cunning Little Vixen
Michael Jackson birthday party set for Prospect Park
For the second year on a row, Spike Lee will host a memorial birthday bash for the King of Pop in Prospect Park. The Brooklyn Loves Michael Jackson event with DJ Spinna on Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. will be free to the public. The whole thing will be filmed by Lee’s production company, 40 Acres And A Mule.
The birthday party will be in Prospect Park’s Nethermead, the map.
$1 US Open water taxis from Manhattan's Pier 11, 35th St.
The New York Water Taxi again this year will be offering nearly-free ferry rides to the U.S. Open from Manhattan, according to their website.
Sponsored by Delta, the ferries will make two trips per day on most days. The boats are scheduled to depart Pier 11 (at Wall Street) at 9:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. All ferries will also make a stop at E. 35th Street on the way to the dock at the World’s Fair Marina.
The logistics are nearly identical to the free Yankees and Mets water taxis, which are also sponsored by Delta Air Lines this season. The ferry is to the event only. You’re on your own for the return. Also, you must reserve your US Open ferry seat online in advance. The New York Water Taxi’s booking system needs $1 per reservation, so technically it’s not completely free. The boats carry 140 passengers.
$20 'Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson' Broadway tickets
The box office for the rock musical “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson” will open at 10 a.m. today, selling $20 tickets for the show’s first Broadway preview on Sept. 20.
The historical musical, a Public Theater transfer, mixes fact with fiction to an emo rock soundtrack. Off-Broadway, critics loved it.
The Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre is located at 242 W. 45th St., map. There’s a limit of two-per-person for the $20 tickets, which are good for the first preview only.
Regular tickets for the show will sell for $51.50 to $131.50. Premium seats are priced $171.50 to $251.50.
Opening night is scheduled for October 13. Tickets are on sale through Jan. 9.
“Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson” isn’t the only Broadway show with cheap seats to previews this season. $10 Broadway tickets are available to the first previews of “Brief Encounter” and “Mrs. Warren’s Profession.”
Big Bambu Phase II rises 50 feet above the Met's roof
The “Big Bambu” invasion of the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as promised, can’t, don’t and won’t stop.
The artists Mike and Doug Starn and their team of rock climbers have begun Phase III of their rooftop installation, which now includes about 5,000 bamboo poles lashed together as high as 50 feet off the roof deck with public pathways as high as 40 feet up. By the time “Big Bambú: You Can’t, You Don’t, and You Won’t Stop” closes Oct. 31, it will encompass about 6,800 poles, a museum spokeswoman told NewYorkology during a tour of Phase II on Monday.
The sprawling structure, which features benches, a “doorbell” and instruments made of bamboo, will next rise higher on its western edge overlooking Central Park. During Phase I, the bamboo was up to 30 feet; the addition will bring it up to 40 feet.
Weather permitting, the roof is open for museum-goers to stroll under and around the installation, but you need to be swift to snag free passes to walk the elevated pathways. There are two tours per hour, with 15 people per group. There are very specific rules about when to get the tickets and what you can wear and carry. “In particular, visitors under the influence of alcohol or another intoxicant will not be permitted to participate in the guided tour and will be denied access,” the rules state.
For those who prefer insobriety, the martini bar will continue to operate on the roof every Friday and Saturday night from 5:30 to 8 p.m. through the run of the exhibition. The cafe, which is on the roof during regular hours, serves food and other drinks.
Video of the view from the highest path in Big Bambu:
