Nancy Coleman

Once they reached the theater’s lower lobby, fitted with four 1960s telephone booths and old newspaper stands, it really hit them: This was not your typical trip to the movie theater.

And Netflix doesn’t want it to be. That streaming service is filling three levels of compact Broadway seats with some of the first audiences to see “The Irishman,” Martin Scorsese’s epic gangster drama, this month at the Belasco. The site will release the film for streaming on Nov. 27, toward the end of its brief Broadway run.

Last month, negotiations between Netflix and major movie theater chains fell through when the two sides couldn’t agree on a time period for theaters to have exclusive screening access. (Bigger chains typically want 72 days of exclusivity, sometimes up to 90 days; “The Irishman” will be at the Belasco for 26 days before going online.)

The Belasco run was planned for Netflix’s rollout independently of those negotiations. If the theater’s ornate architecture falls in line with Netflix’s goal of creating an elaborate filmgoing experience, that’s mostly serendipitous. The theater’s window of availability — after “Network” closed in June and before “Girl From the North Country,” the Bob Dylan musical, begins in February — happened to coincide with the dates Netflix wanted. The Belasco screenings run through Dec. 1, and tickets are available at Telecharge.

Scott Stuber, the company’s head of films, called it “a perfect marriage” — one that could be difficult to orchestrate again, given the logjam of Broadway-bound shows with not enough theaters to house them.

“It feels like it deserves to have a theatrical release,” said Alex Svensson, who came to Saturday’s matinee with his parents. “I think in an age of digital distribution and streaming, having it at not just a theater but a theater like this is a really unique screening experience.”

He added, “I think it’s sort of fitting for a film that feels like it might be kind of a swan song for all these key players.”

To heighten the sense of theatricality, Netflix installed those phone booths, which showed trailers of the film. Their exteriors were covered with stickers supporting Jimmy Hoffa’s reign at the top of the Teamsters union (a key element of the film). Once inside, patrons picked up the ringing phones to see footage from the film on a small screen.

In between the phone booths, metal boxes — tagged with more Hoffa stickers and others advertising John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign — held newspapers boasting a six-column headline: “Where Is Hoffa?”

Copies of the newspaper (complete with an arts section) and “The Irishman” posters were available to take home, to the delight of audience members, who included a man in a “Scarface” T-shirt and another determined to maintain his streak of seeing every Scorsese film in theaters. Like a kid grabbing free mints on his way out of a diner, one man tucked a thick stack of posters under his arm. He looked over at a companion and grinned: “We’re all set.”

This is the first film to be screened at the Belasco in its history. Netflix brought in a digital-media firm to outfit the space with surround-sound systems in the theater’s three levels, a projection booth (with two projectors) behind the orchestra seating and a screen that is 18 feet by 32 feet. The whole process took 20 hours over two days.

It is more modernization than the theater has seen in a while. When it opened more than a century ago, the theater producer David Belasco envisioned a Broadway house akin to a living room — something intimate, residential. In reality, it’s closer to a palace (and perhaps a haunted one, if rumors are to be believed).

Scattered across the dark wood ceiling are colorful pools of stained glass, a tempting case for staring up rather than straight ahead at the stage. There are intricate murals — 18 of them, in seemingly every direction — by Everett Shinn. Then there are the Tiffany light fixtures. Yes, that Tiffany.

Tickets for “The Irishman” are $15, close to the typical movie ticket price in Manhattan. But touches of Broadway are evident in other details: The film is running eight shows a week, skipping Mondays as a theatrical production would. The Belasco’s ushers guide patrons to their seats, and the theater’s full bar with concessions is open downstairs. (No intermission to break up the film’s 3 1/2 hours, though, so get comfortable.)

“We all get excited about that night at the theater,” Stuber said. “There’s kind of an endless possibility of the kinetic energy of live music or live theater.”

The key, Stuber said, is giving consumers the option to make their own decision between watching at home or having a night out in a dark theater, experiencing art with others.

“Whether I want to go to a Yankee game or watch it at home, I get that choice,” he said. “And each of them are great. There’s nothing disparate. But each of them has a different thing to it. So for us, we want to continue to get to a place where the consumer has that option.”

That option, though, extends to only those in New York or Los Angeles for now. The film will later open in several more cities in the United States and abroad.

Netflix’s dip into theaters, in part to meet the Oscars’ eligibility requirements, is relatively new. Eligible films must screen in a Los Angeles theater for at least a week.

For some, it’s less about the size of the screen and more about seeing it as early as possible. Eric Corcoran, another Saturday matinee ticket-holder, knew he couldn’t wait for the film to hit Netflix to watch Scorsese and the cast — his childhood heroes — in action.

Seeing it in a Broadway theater, he said, was just an added bonus. “It’s like going to a movie on steroids.”

This article originally appeared in

'The Irishman' on Broadway: Phone Booths, Broadsheets and Jimmy Hoffa Stickers

NEW YORK — A long line of moviegoers stretched down West 44th Street on one of New York’s first bitterly cold days. Shuffling past oversize posters of Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci, and past ornate gold statues perched above the Belasco Theater’s box office, the ticket-holders headed in for a Saturday matinee.

She slipped into a striped, black-and-white ’50s pinup dress, lined her eyes with dark circles, covered her mouth with lipstick. Then the wig, a blunt bob with bangs Ruiz trimmed herself.

The cockroaches were the pièce de résistance: fake craft-store bugs, painted a fluorescent chartreuse, sprinkled in her hair and down her dress and through her fingers. With her “Handbook for the Recently Deceased” in tow — illuminated with LED lights that Ruiz had buried within the pages — she was off across town, toward “Beetlejuice” on Broadway.

The transformation took an hour, but the details were crucial. This was Oct. 10, a Thursday — and every Thursday in October, when the musical hosts its preshow costume contest, the competition can get intense.

There are always a handful of Lydias, contestants who go full goth in homage to the teenage antihero’s all-black vibe. Sometimes the Maitlands appear — a Barbara or an Adam, the show’s newly deceased yet not-so-scary couple, demure and suburban in an unassuming green dress or flannel. One winner’s body was painted entirely in a shimmery teal, with a red gown and pageant sash identifying her as Miss Argentina, the Netherworld’s regretful receptionist.

And then, up Ruiz’s alley, are the many, many Beetlejuices: in striped suits and shirts and skirts, faces pale and ghostly, with hair both green (the musical) and white (the 1988 movie).

There are a few ground rules: Your costume has to fit in your seat. (Sorry, sandworms.) No weapons, functional or otherwise, are allowed. (Sorry, musket-wielding shrunken heads.) And stick as close to the musical as you can.

Ruiz had those boxes checked, but she was nervous leaving the office — ghoulish makeup tends to stick out. She knew she’d be in the clear once she hit Times Square, but the commute was a challenge. Ruiz had skipped the crosstown bus in favor of a taxi — “These bugs look pretty cool,” she thought, “and I don’t want to startle anyone” — but rush hour traffic, of course, is Manhattan’s most frightening Halloween scare of all.

When she finally made it to the Winter Garden Theater, Ruiz took a moment and looked around. There was a congregation of young Lydias in black, and a foursome that coordinated to each dress as different characters from the show — and, of course, her fellow green-locked Beetlejuices. She started to cry.

“I was just so happy to be around other people who love the musical as much as I did,” Ruiz said. “Because in normal life, you have a few people that you can share some of your passions with — especially when they’re very specific.”

Taylor Rooker, a 21-year-old Beetlejuice from Orlando, Florida, took several hours and an X-acto knife to create her homemade light-up sign for the Oct. 24 contest. “I flew at 2 a.m. this morning, and I’m flying out at 6 a.m. tomorrow, specifically for this,” she said. “My family thinks I’m insane.”

While “Beetlejuice” opened to mixed reviews, it has been building at the box office, with social media and special engagement efforts part of the strategy. Fan art handed to the cast at the stage door lines the stairwell backstage. Online fans are especially pervasive — particularly on TikTok, where short videos of teenagers lip syncing to the soundtrack have become a far-reaching meme.

Cultish Broadway fan bases are nothing new. But costumed patrons in the seats each night?

“This is blowing me over,” said William Ivey Long, the costume designer to whom fans have been (perhaps unwittingly) paying homage. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Every once in a while, through his decades designing 75 Broadway shows, Long has spotted an audience member in costume: Little girls in sparkling tiaras for “Rodgers &amp; Hammerstein’s Cinderella,” a zipper-necked “Young Frankenstein” or two.

But not like the fan response at “Beetlejuice,” he said. “No, I must say, this is something.”

He’s still looking for some of the Beetlejuices to up their game. The ghosts with the most he’s seen so far just aren’t looking quite dead enough.

His suggestion: “Buy a Beetlejuice suit and go to town. Customize it. Try to think of what the earth has done.”

The costume contest extends beyond the Winter Garden. Fans who can’t make it in person can enter the online competition: Sara Poskonka, a body painter from New Jersey, went full aquamarine as Miss Argentina.

Alison Cosgrove, a student at William Paterson University, created a Beetlejuice get-up out of a spray-painted black plastic tablecloth and a Walmart-napkin-turned-necktie.

The costume wasn’t for her, though — it was Xander, her mustang, who rocked the bright green Beetlejuice wig on one ear. “That was a battle to get on,” Cosgrove said.

The winner of the online contest will be announced on Halloween. Each week’s in-the-flesh champions, on the other hand, find out at the Thursday night intermission. At curtain call, after the actors take their bows, the winner is brought onstage and then escorted behind the scenes for a photo with the cast.

Ruiz didn’t enter the contest thinking she would win — which is why the shock of the cast welcoming her onstage, victorious, rendered her silent for a good three minutes.

“We got this gem of a picture, and they saw it and they said, ‘You look like you’re part of the cast,’” Ruiz said. “And I almost absolutely melted on the floor.”

Beetlejuices, Beetlejuices, Beetlejuices, All Over Broadway

NEW YORK — Inside an upscale corporate office building in Midtown Manhattan, Amaryllis Ruiz, a legal assistant, watched the clock strike 5 p.m. She grabbed her electric green wig and a smattering of neon cockroaches, dashed to the office bathroom and got to work.

In the decades at Grace House, a Catholic youth center on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, the image was a tag: Keith Haring was here.

The radiant baby, one of Haring’s most recognizable symbols, was the beginning of a three-story mural by the artist, who in one evening painted a dozen more figures dancing up the stairs.

The characters he brought to life were quintessential Haring — the barking dog, a person with a corkscrew torso, conjoined figures with a hole in their shared chest.

“When new kids came to that building and they saw all that stuff, they said, ‘Oh my god, this is Keith Haring. Is this real?’” said Gary Mallon, who was the director of the youth center.

But Grace House would eventually close, and the Ascension Church next door — which had leased space to the center — would eventually decide to sell the building. Haring’s work has been preserved — sections meticulously cut out of the wall and brought to Bonhams, where they will be auctioned as one work in November.

But the move has led some, including those charged with safeguarding the artist’s legacy since his death in 1990, to ask: Is this right for a piece painted with the youth center’s enjoyment in mind?

How High Art Landed in an Old Convent

It started with Paradise Garage, a vibrant but short-lived SoHo nightclub. Haring was a regular. So were some Grace House members, who befriended him at the dance hub and asked him to create something at the center.

Haring came to paint on the same night as a Grace House program. Attendees came to a halt to watch him work.

“He had a can of black paint in his hand and a black, kind of a thick brush, and he just started with that radiant baby on the first floor and then just worked his way up,” Mallon said. “We followed him, and I remember saying, ‘Ooh, it’s dripping,’ and he said, ‘That’s OK. It’s supposed to drip.’”

Mallon, then in his early 20s, OK’d the mural. He didn’t have permission from anyone — mainly, the parish that owned the building.

“I was a nervous wreck because I thought, ‘Oh my God, what’s going to happen when my bosses see this?’” Mallon said. (The first couple of priests to come by, he added, thankfully didn’t seem to mind.)

Haring incorporated the architecture in the work. The final figure, on the third floor, is cut off mid-torso by the door to what was then Mallon’s apartment, where it appears to dive headfirst.

“He said to me, ‘That’s you,’” Mallon said. “‘At the end of the day, when you need to get away from these kids, that one is you.’”

And on the ground floor, a waving figure’s head is actually a plaque commemorating the Grace House founder.

“The murals never were preplanned or sketched out,” said Gil Vazquez, acting director and president of the Keith Haring Foundation. “This particular instance,” he added, “it was just black paint, and away he went. Him and paint.”

The Mural’s Next Chapter

The Ascension Church knew several years ago it would have to sell the Grace House building, which had become a residential space. (It is still awaiting a buyer.) There were $4.5 million in church-related capital improvements to cover — fixing the roof at the Ascension School, making sidewalks more accessible — not to mention general operating costs, said Philip Zeafla, the church’s business manager.

But what about the mural? The building is nearly 90 years old, and any buyer would be likely to do a gut renovation, Zeafla said.

The church instead spent about $900,000 to extract it. A conservation and restoration firm, EverGreene Architectural Arts, excavated the 13 figures by cutting out each piece, separating the painted plaster from the heavy terra cotta backing, and hoisting them down from the stairwell to the ground floor. Each weighs up to 1,000 pounds.

Haring’s public works have been removed before: A 40,000-pound mural at the Boys’ Club of New York on the Lower East Side was saved from demolition in 2007. The artist himself once painted over his own outdoor mural on the Bowery, which was restored after his death. (Haring has also cut art out of a wall, to preserve a Jean-Michel Basquiat work on the wall of Haring’s studio.)

It’s unusual, though, for one of his murals to be sold. The excavation and the church’s financial needs played into the decision, Zeafla said. But he added that the church hopes it will be put on display in a museum, and that part of the sale may go to the Keith Haring Foundation or a cause Haring cared about.

Still, once the piece is sold — Bonhams estimates it at $3 million to $5 million — there’s no guaranteeing where it will end up.

“We are disappointed,” said Vazquez, of the Haring Foundation.

“This mural was not meant to be owned by a collector,” he said. “It was meant to brighten a room full of children.”

The silver lining, he added, was that the church recognized its value and preserved it at all — a fact Mallon finds amusing.

“That church is benefiting from that mural, but they had absolutely nothing to do with it,” he said. “At this point it’s kind of moot, but it kind of makes me smile.”

Touches of Grace House

The mural is being auctioned off as it was in Grace House, with the typical scuffs found on the blocks of any youth center wall. The details can be seen when the mural is on display at Bonhams from Nov. 2 until the auction on Nov. 13.

“They go from being a wall to being almost these sculptural artifacts that have their own kind of intrinsic artistic quality,” said Jeff Greene, the chairman and founder of EverGreene.

Along with the paintings, EverGreene saved other pieces that add context. The plaque-headed figure still has its plaque head — and the diving figure on the third floor has his door to dive into.

There are also inked-in additions by Grace House visitors — a pair of eyes and a frown, the expression faded, inside a Haring outline; and a “Hi,” etched beside the radiant baby and underlined with a squiggle.

But one important signature is missing: Haring’s.

“It would’ve been ridiculous for him to sign it,” Mallon said. “Everybody knew who he was. We all watched him do it.”

Keith Haring Mural Cut Out of New York Stairwell Heads to Auction

NEW YORK — For a time, a crucifix hung on the wall of the Grace House lobby. Then, in the early 1980s, something else took its place: the stark black outline of a crawling infant, in thick strokes of paint beaming outward.

It is not “The Lightning Thief,” the 2010 film that Rotten Tomatoes granted a mediocre 49% — or the sequel that scored even lower. The film that The New York Times called “flat and mechanical” with a title character who was “blandly appealing.” The film that plunged Rick Riordan into despair.

“If I were intentionally trying to sabotage this project,” Riordan wrote, “I doubt I could have done a better job than this script.” He would know. He wrote the bestselling Percy Jackson series on which the film was (loosely) based.

So when the musical — now in previews for an Oct. 16 opening at the Longacre Theater — started coming together several years later, the actors and creative team got the message. They read the books. They reread the books. When faced with a question of what would happen next, who would say what, how to make something happen onstage — they went back to the books.

“It’s been fun to see the transition from the early, ‘Really? The movie didn’t work and now they’re making a musical?’ to, ‘Oh, this is made by people who love and understand what we love and understand about these stories,’” said Joe Tracz, who wrote the musical’s script.

The film made the characters older and lost the story’s adolescent spirit in the process. The musical returns to the eccentricity and silliness that got readers on board in the first place.

For newcomers, the opening number lays it out point blank: The Greek gods are real. They have children. And being their child — chased by monsters, ignored by all-powerful parents running the universe, put into constant mortal peril — tends to suck. (Angsty teens on Broadway — sound familiar?)

Percy Jackson, a son of Poseidon, is one of those children. Having a learning disability and getting kicked out of six schools, as it turns out, are side effects of his mind being hard-wired for battle and reading ancient Greek.

He winds up at Camp Half-Blood, a safe-haven-slash-summer-camp for children of absentee deities, and embarks on a cross-country quest with the tough, brainy Annabeth and his goat-legged satyr pal Grover to recover Zeus’ stolen lightning bolt and save his mortal mom.

Social media-fueled teen musicals remain a gamble on the big stage of Broadway. “Be More Chill” — also written by Tracz and directed by Stephen Brackett — closed after several months, while “Dear Evan Hansen” has maintained its popularity for nearly three years.

“The Lightning Thief” played to just over half capacity last week, but the commitment to the original story seems to at least be paying off with fans. Wherever the show goes, a mini Comic Con of Percy Jackson fans follows, usually clad in the story’s signature orange Camp Half-Blood T-shirts — or, for at least one performance, furry homemade goat legs. (The show was featured at a session last Thursday at New York Comic Con itself, too.)

Riordan is known to avoid seeing adaptations of his work, and he isn’t planning on visiting the Longacre during the musical’s run, his publicist said. But his fans — from middle schoolers picking up the books for the first time to millennials who still reread the young adult novels as not-so-young adults — will find plenty that registers as familiar.

The first and last lines Percy has in the book are also the first and last lyrics he sings onstage, and our introduction to Annabeth — “You drool when you sleep,” she tells Percy — remains the same. Destinations will be familiar, whether a Las Vegas hotel where time stands still or the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where Percy faces his first monster on a school field trip.

There are also smaller hints, Easter eggs hidden onstage for the eagle-eyed. Mr. D, for example — the wine god Dionysus, whose punishment from Zeus in the novel includes an alcohol-free century — takes enraged swigs of a Diet Coke, a small but notable nod to the source material.

Fidelity to the source has been a priority from the start, but it hasn’t always been easy — especially as Tracz and the composer, Rob Rokicki, first packed a 375-page novel into the initial one-hour production with TheaterWorksUSA in 2014.

The show was expanded to a full, two-act musical for a brief run off Broadway in 2017; it then toured the country before returning, this time on Broadway, in September. (It is scheduled to play through Jan. 5, which includes the lucrative holiday season.)

Through the show’s evolution, the minimalistic DIY aesthetic — a necessity in the early stages, Brackett said — has remained intact. In the book, Percy’s sea-god parentage lets him unleash a stream of toilet water to wallop a rival. But onstage, pressurized waterworks aren’t easy to come by — so Percy pelts her with a speedily unraveling, leaf-blower-propelled roll of toilet paper instead.

“It’s really capitalizing on having the audience use their imagination to fill in the blanks in the storytelling, which is one of the things that I thought was so beautiful about reading the novel,” Brackett said.

For fans still feeling burned by the movie, that spirit is a reassurance — a restoration of what the film lost. A 2014 New York Times review of the one-hour version said the show struck “a tone that’s sassy though not snarky, and energetic without being hectic.”

Chris McCarrell, who plays Percy, said the stage script refuses to let him or the other actors take themselves too seriously, which is appropriate.

“The magic of those books is the tone that does not waver the whole time,” he said. “This is a mess of a 12-year-old trying to figure out what is happening, which I love. And I try to keep that alive in the musical, which is pretty easy to do.”

The cardinal rule for the cast? “Don’t show Stephen something if you don’t want to put it in the show,” said Kristin Stokes, who has played Annabeth since the show’s inception.

“Trust me,” said Jorrel Javier, who plays both Grover and Mr. D. “If the choice that you made just happened to coincide with his vision, then sometimes you end up having to kick your leg to your face eight times a week.”

A Message From the Gods: Keep the Fans Happy

NEW YORK — One thing the team behind “The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical” wants to make abundantly clear: “Maybe you’ve heard of a movie with a similar title,” the show’s Twitter account warns. “We’re not that.”

Barack and Michelle Obama wanted to trademark their company’s name, but the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office had deemed it too similar to the mark Massey registered in 2017 for her computer training company. Higher Ground Productions was looking to strike a deal.

So began the dispute, which escalated from an initial note sent by the Obamas’ lawyer to requests by Massey for on-screen roles in their productions and, now, an attempt by the former president and first lady’s company to have Massey’s trademark wiped off the books.

The case isn’t expected to slow the Obamas’ post-presidency plans to break into the entertainment business — or to prevent them from using the name. The first film from their Netflix deal, “American Factory,” has already been released on the streaming site, and more content is in the works.

The Obamas landed on Higher Ground, inspired by the Stevie Wonder song of the same name. But Massey got the name first.

Higher Ground Enterprises started training people to use computers more than 10 years ago, Massey said. Her inspiration for the name stems from her clients, who she said wanted to be on a “higher playing field.” Now, Massey said, her company’s services include consulting, photography, videography, e-books and other learning materials. It was her father who encouraged her to trademark Higher Ground Enterprises, telling Massey, “you just never know.”

The Obamas’ Higher Ground Productions has successfully found resolutions with other similar trademark holders, the company’s trademark lawyer, Jim Vana, said in a statement. But with Massey’s company, the Obamas have hit a snag.

Massey and her lawyer, Larry Zerner, came back with a proposal to sell the mark — in exchange for what Vana called “significant demands,” including appearances in the Obamas’ TV and film productions.

Massey referred all questions about proposed terms to her lawyer, who confirmed that acting roles for Massey were part of her suggested deal.

“It was not, ‘I want to star in a movie,’” Zerner said in an interview. “It was like, ‘Can I get a bit part in something?’”

A few weeks ago Higher Ground Productions filed a petition to cancel Massey’s trademark. Rebecca Tushnet, a Harvard Law School professor and an expert in intellectual property law, said in an interview that the goal of this move would be to determine whether Massey is actively and regularly using the trademark to conduct business. The Obamas’ filing starts a fact-intensive inquiry that could take years to sort out.

“If there’s not sufficient use of the mark, then the registrant has no rights and the Obamas can go ahead,” Tushnet said. If there is sufficient use, she added, Massey could have a potential trademark infringement claim.

As for Massey’s request for roles in the Obamas’ productions, it isn’t exactly typical in trademark cases, Tushnet said in an email. “I can’t say I’m super surprised given the context (where she might have greater than usual leverage in seeking a role she might otherwise not be able to get),” she wrote. “Nor am I surprised that it wasn’t an acceptable term to the Obamas given the interference with creative control it would mean and given the lack of any apparent relationship between that condition and the rights to use the trademark.”

“Some judges might feel it’s kind of tacky,” she added, “but it doesn’t affect the legal question of who has the right to the mark.”

Vana said Higher Ground Productions filed the petition after having difficulty finding evidence of Massey’s company or use of the trademark. Massey said she has invoices and advertisements to present as evidence. A client — Yvette Rodriguez, who said in an interview that Massey has handled her nonprofit's social media presence for about four years — sang her praises.

But her company’s internet presence was dormant for years, which Massey argues shouldn’t reflect her business presence. The current website for Higher Ground Enterprises was still in development on Sept. 4, but it was up and running the next day. (The site was later updated to include a section recommending Zerner’s services, which was then removed after Massey was asked about it.)

Even without having had that presence online for some time, this case and the petition has left Massey concerned about the digital effect of the Obamas’ prominence.

“It could definitely hurt my business severely,” Massey said. “Because if you Google this, this is the only thing that comes up. And I am pretty much a little needle in the haystack at this point.”

Vana, however, said that the petition “in no way” hinders Massey’s ability to run Higher Ground Enterprises.

It could be a while before there is an outcome. Trademark cases are decided on paper rather than in a courtroom, Zerner said, and for a petition such as this one, the Trademark Office automatically sets up dates and deadlines. This case could stretch into March 2021.

This isn’t a political fight for Massey, who said she voted for Obama for president both times. “They put their pants on just like me, one leg at a time,” she said. “It didn’t really make any difference to me who it was.”

“They were the ones who started this. I’m willing to go as far and long as it takes,” Massey added. “The question is, can they?”

The Obamas Want 'Higher Ground.' Someone Got There First.

Hanisya Massey, owner of Higher Ground Enterprises in Covina, California, first heard from a lawyer for Higher Ground Productions early this summer.

With any luck, come high noon, they get a ticket.

Hours before every summer show, this has been the scene outside the Delacorte Theater, where New Yorkers trade a few extra hours of sleep for a shot at a free ticket to Shakespeare in the Park, or, in the past few years, the annual Public Works pageant. For patrons who show up year after year, rain or shine, the line-sitting is as much a tradition as the show itself.

But for the first time — with “Hercules,” this year’s Public Works production opening Aug. 31 — the Public has gone digital, doing away with the queue snaking around Central Park’s walkways.

A new advance digital lottery, open since mid-August and closing Wednesday, is the main pool for tickets to all seven performances. Entries can be submitted through the digital ticket platform TodayTix online or via its app, and those without internet access can mail in written requests. There are separate lotteries for seniors and those seeking ADA-accessible seating.

One in-person option, a daily standby lottery, remains — but there has never been a guarantee that standby tickets will be available.

Another choice, though hardly for everyone: donate $10,000 to the Public, which gets you two seats for “Hercules,” among other perks.

With the previous system, audience hopefuls could line up at one of the Public’s distribution sites — usually libraries or community centers — in the other boroughs, and there was an in-person lottery at the Public Theater downtown. The TodayTix lottery was an option then too, but on a daily basis for individual performances.

Tom McCann, a spokesman for the Public, said that changing the ticket process for the Public Works productions “has been in the works for a while now” as the program has grown, and that they will evaluate its success after “Hercules” closes.

Public Works, which has offered theater classes to local groups since 2013 in addition to its annual community-driven pageant, now partners with eight organizations in the five boroughs.

Most tickets go to Public Works’ community members and partners, McCann said in an email. The limited number of performances makes securing a seat even harder: “Hercules” runs for just one week, while the Shakespeare shows typically span several, and the added allure of a world premiere Disney production can only add to its popularity.

“We know that there are many fans of the Public Works annual productions who are not involved with the program, and we wanted to make sure that free tickets available to those fans are distributed fairly, safely, and in an easily accessible way,” McCann said.

Not everyone is physically able to sit in line outside for tickets and not everyone can take the day off work to wait in the park, said Emily Hammerman, a vice president at TodayTix.

“I think for ‘Hercules’ in particular, they’re expecting an outsize level of demand,” she said. “And so they want to double down on making digital access that didn’t wait in anyone’s favor based on how early they could get to the park or how many hours they could camp out for.”

In Central Park, if you showed up early enough — before 8 a.m. was a good bet — you would be all but guaranteed a ticket. With the new lottery system, however — not including the $10,000 donation option — there’s no way for patrons to ensure they will have a spot at the theater.

“I’m definitely for that kind of concept, but I do like the in-person lottery to give the people who are really committed a chance to also get it,” said Ben Meyerson as he waited in line one morning last month for a ticket to Shakespeare in the Park’s “Coriolanus.” “I knew that if I got here at six o’clock, I was going to get tickets. So I would like if there was a more sure way.”

But Meyerson and some others waiting in line also appreciated what they see as an equitable move to make tickets more accessible.

“Someone who’s working year-round is not able to come out and wait for four hours or five hours in line,” said Craig Redmond Cilley, a teacher who has the summers off. He arrived around 7:30 a.m. with a book and an inflatable sofa. “I think there are pros and cons to it.”

For Shakespeare in the Park regulars, though, there’s something special about the line.

Eva Suarez remembers her parents telling stories about their summers, decades ago, waiting for tickets. In the past few years, she has picked up some tales of her own: “One year I was waiting by myself, and the people next to me had a full-blown picnic party happening, and so they were just feeding me all morning.”

“I understand that they’re really trying to democratize how they get these tickets out there," she added, “but I also think there’s something about the experience that to me is so New York.”

Public Theater Goes Digital for 'Hercules' Seats

NEW YORK — They line up in droves in Central Park, bearing picnic blankets and lawn chairs and inflatable sofas. Before the crack of dawn, with books, snacks and (hopefully) some sunscreen, they stake out a spot in line. Then they sit. They wait.

Instead, the directors of the 1997 film wanted gospel.

“I said, ‘Really? Explain this to me, please,’” Menken recalled in a phone interview. Hercules’ epic journey to prove he’s a hero involves quite a few Greek gods — and gospel, they explained, is the music of praying to God. “I go, ‘Well, that’s a stretch. But OK. Let’s play with it.’”

The resulting score became a cherished chapter in the Disney songbook. Now the songs are coming to life in a world premiere stage adaptation — and Menken, along with lyricist David Zippel, is adding five more.

But in a turn from Disney’s typical theatrical adaptations — commercial endeavors aimed at Broadway — “Hercules” will be presented for free in a weeklong run at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park beginning Aug. 31.

Tickets for the show, directed by Lear deBessonet, will be distributed through a digital lottery. And unlike “The Lion King,” “Aladdin” and, most recently, “Frozen,” there are no plans for future productions, Menken said, on Broadway or otherwise.

“Hercules” will be presented as part of Public Works, the Public Theater’s annual end-of-summer event since 2013, which matches professional actors and community groups for streamlined productions that are part theater, part pageant — and increasingly acclaimed and influential.

Shakespeare has been the usual source material, although in 2015, deBessonet directed a musicalized take on “The Odyssey.” Delving into a hero’s journey, with an abundance of relatable themes for an abundance of actors, was fertile territory for the program.

Menken said he started thinking about a stage adaptation after seeing a condensed “Hercules” on a Disney cruise. He invited deBessonet to his studio two years ago, she said, after attending her production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at the Delacorte, part of the Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park season.

“It seemed so nuts to imagine that the world premiere of ‘Hercules’ might be as a Public Works show, but I put it out there to him,” deBessonet said. “Obviously he knew how much I loved his body of work, and I just said, ‘I think there could be this incredibly special realization of that story in this house that we’ve built.’”

Visiting one of Public Works’ partner organizations, deBessonet saw the room light up when members started talking about Disney films. A love of those stories was something they all shared — including deBessonet, who traces her affection for musical theater back to watching Disney cartoons as a child in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Those musicals, she said, are a “shared American canon.”

More music ...

That Disney superfan comes back out in deBessonet when she talks about the new songs from Menken and Zippel, which she called “some of their best work.”

“It makes me cry,” she said. “It makes me dance. I squeal.”

The “Hercules” classics that fans know and love will still be there: The Muses remain the story’s narrators, setting up the premise with “The Gospel Truth.” “Zero to Hero” — “possibly the most fabulous musical theater number known to humanity,” deBessonet declared — will still be a spectacle.

And Hercules (Jelani Alladin) still promises to “Go the Distance,” only this time, with the added pressure of Roger Bart — the original singing voice for Hercules in the film, who returns onstage as Hades — listening in the wings.

“The first time I sang ‘Go the Distance’ in front of Roger Bart, I wanted to poop my pants, point blank,” said Alladin, who made his Broadway debut last year as Kristoff in “Frozen.” “This is the man whose voice has made this song iconic.”

In the new version, audiences can also expect a duet between Hercules and his headstrong love interest, Meg (Krysta Rodriguez), and another “Zero-to-Hero”-esque group number, “Great Bolts of Thunder.”

Menken’s favorite addition is a song for the villain, a staple in other Disney musicals from the time period. With “A Cool Day in Hell,” Hades at last gets his number.

“Hades is always blowing his top,” Menken said. “You know —”

“You see the flames come out of his head, and then he takes two deep breaths and goes, ‘OK. I’m cool.’ It’s a little bit ... ‘Walk on the Wild Side.’”

... And many more performers.

Poster-size sticky notes filled with more than a hundred faces and names, color-coded in eight neon shades, line the walls of deBessonet’s Public Theater office.

“You basically have come into my war room,” she said before rehearsal one evening, comparing the array to the ultimate Sudoku.

Photographs of the “Hercules” ensemble — community members from the five boroughs, ages 5 to 78 — are categorized even further by role: the Fates, the Gods, a corps of puppeteers, various townspeople in ancient Greece.

And deBessonet’s assignment is not just directing a run-of-the-mill musical. She and her team have the Herculean, you could say, task of coordinating a cast of 117 community members, eight professional actors, a featured dance group, a gospel choir and a high school marching band. (Not including, of course, the three parade-float-size Titan puppets, nor the five 60-foot-long Hydra heads that are ferried across Lafayette Street between the show’s three downtown rehearsal spaces.)

Before rehearsals began, her team sat down with a model of the stage and planned where every cast member could safely enter and exit each scene. Arrangements carry over offstage, too.

DeBessonet took the photos of two actors from one wall and held them up to a photo of a young girl, playing one of the all-seeing Fates.

“Isabelle Romero’s dad and little sister Maya are in the show as well, but they are in the Agora,” she explained. “So basically we have to figure out: When Isabelle needs to be rehearsing with Fates, how can we be sure that she has a ride home?”

Public Works engagements are a family affair for other ensemble members, who’ve returned year after year. Both Maddie Ramos and her 9-year-old daughter, Noemi, have been in the shows for six years.

“This is where she grew up,” Ramos said. “I consider these people my family. They’re my joy.”

Alladin, as a professional and a newcomer, has been swept up in the spirit. “The community is playing the community,” he said. “The energy is so alive in the room because everyone wants to be there.”

Michael Roberts, a nonprofessional who is portraying Zeus, said it’s meaningful that roles like his, and Alladin’s, are played by black actors.

“When I see Zeus in the cartoon, I didn’t see Zeus as me,” he said. “But I think that’s what they’re bringing to it — anybody could go on the hero’s journey. Everybody will find somebody that they can really watch and feel connected to.”

In the rehearsal room two weeks before opening night, there was a distinct sense of unity among members of the ensemble as they stumbled through the show’s first 12 minutes. Some were still glancing at the choreographers for assistance or moving slightly off the beat — but as members of each group finished running their part, the rest of the cast and crew erupted in encouraging applause.

In a way, they were hammering home the exact message deBessonet wants to get across in the show.

“Togetherness with other people,” she said, “is more valuable than any kind of extraordinariness or perfection.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/23/theater/hercules-public-works-disney.html" id="92da8eb8-9526-30e0-adb1-cfa81579d4cb">The New York Times</a>.

How Do You Stage Disney's 'Hercules'? Invite Everyone

NEW YORK — When Alan Menken — the songwriting virtuoso behind Disney’s late 20th century animation renaissance — was brought in to score an adaptation of “Hercules,” he assumed a classic story would call for some classic music to match.

But all that glittered was rivaled after Saturday evening’s performance when two brides, gleaming in rose-gold sequins, exchanged marriage vows onstage.

Armelle Kay Harper, a script coordinator for “The Prom,” and Jody Kay Smith, an actress and singer not affiliated with the production, wanted a small wedding before a bigger ceremony in Smith’s hometown next month.

But, with the entire cast of “The Prom” surrounding them onstage, and roughly a thousand strangers looking on from the audience, it wasn’t exactly an intimate affair. For the couple, this musical that celebrates inclusivity — in it, a small-town Indiana lesbian couple face opposition to attending the prom together and get help from an unlikely source — was the perfect backdrop.

“There are so many shows where lesbians are secondary characters or the butt of the joke," Harper said in an interview. “We all love ‘Fun Home,’ but it’s a drama. So ‘The Prom’ is really unique in that it’s a celebration, and it’s funny without being at the expense of lesbians. It’s just so much joy.”

The brief ceremony came as a surprise to the audience after the cast took its bows. Bob Martin, one of the show’s writers, was ordained online and officiated. An offhand comment he made a couple months ago — “That’s how everything good starts,” Harper said — set the idea in motion.

“He said, ‘Well, I’ve married people onstage before, so if you wanted to just get it over with and do it at curtain call, we can do that,’” Smith recalled. Martin officiated at a similar ceremony in 2005 during the pre-Broadway run in Los Angeles of “The Drowsy Chaperone,” which he wrote and starred in.

NEW YORK — There’s a lot that sparkles at “The Prom” on Broadway: the sequined formal-wear costumes, the gem-studded protest-sign props, the luminous school dance decorations for the show’s finale.

Nancy Coleman

Articles written by the author

'The Irishman' on Broadway: Phone Booths, Broadsheets and Jimmy Hoffa Stickers

Beetlejuices, Beetlejuices, Beetlejuices, All Over Broadway

Keith Haring Mural Cut Out of New York Stairwell Heads to Auction

A Message From the Gods: Keep the Fans Happy

The Obamas Want 'Higher Ground.' Someone Got There First.

Public Theater Goes Digital for 'Hercules' Seats

How Do You Stage Disney's 'Hercules'? Invite Everyone

An Onstage Wedding Brings a Broadway Happy Ending to Life

'Cabaret,' 'Phantom of the Opera' and More: Hal Prince's Hits Transformed Broadway

What We Know as ASAP Rocky's Trial Begins

Man Wielding Burglary Tools Arrested Outside Taylor Swift's Home

Kennedy Center Honors Go to 'Sesame Street' and Earth, Wind & Fire

Kennedy Center Honors Go to 'Sesame Street' and Earth, Wind & Fire

Kennedy Center Honors Go to 'Sesame Street' and Earth, Wind & Fire

'Pretty Woman' announces Broadway closing

'King Kong' musical will close in August on Broadway

New York City's public libraries to end film streaming through Kanopy

Scandal, and a play on white privilege in education