This scavenger hunt was hands down my favorite assignment I’ve ever had to do for any class, and that includes being more fun than having to prepare scenes in an acting class. Tuesday morning was absolutely disgusting weather wise, and while I was hoping that we weren’t going to have to go out and do the hunt, I’m still incredibly glad that we were given this opportunity to just roam the city and look at theater related objects and buildings. Theater history in NYC, as we have been learning, is very expansive, and while I feel like I have a decent amount of knowledge about it, it was very exciting to see that there were so many clues on the list that I had no idea what they were. Who would have known that there were so many different arrest sites in theater history (even in recent history), as well as there being a bunch of theater spaces that were founded by people from other professions. One of the things that I was very happily surprised about was that we were still able to find people in costume, even in the awful rain. While looking at the clues on the train to Times Square, I was pretty upset that we probably weren’t going to be able to check off what on any other day would have been the easiest one to get. However, once we got to 42nd second street, though they were  not in costume, we saw some people handing out flyers for shows, and that reminded me that the women who hand out flyers for the show Chicago are always dressed up. So after asking around, we found out that when it rains, a lot of the people who do come out hang out under the awning of the Hard Rock Cafe, and thats where we found our person in costume. It was also really interesting to see from our finds and our classmate’s that there were a few different theater themed or related restaurants around the city. Our strategy for this hunt, having a rather large team of 5 people, was to have some people take uptown (Times Square mostly) and some take downtown, and the downtown portion of our team would text their pictures to me to post, and that added so much to the experience. Even though I was not physically a part of the downton team, getting to see and write the captions to the guy’s pictures from the Astor Place Riot Site, th Yiddish Theater Walk of Fame, Edwin Booth and Mark Twain’s theater club, and Richard Foreman’s Ontological Theater was as exciting as running around and taking pictures in Times Square. It was also really exciting to watch the feed on the hashtag we had to use, and seeing what everyone else was posting in real time, as well as getting some recogniziton for what we were doing (ex: the Vineyard Theater likig our tweet where we talked about the Yiddish Theater Walk of Fame). There are so many great pieces of history in the city, especially regarding theater, that are almost hidden and it was really great to see how things just started appearing all over the place once we really started looking. Over all, this was a really informative and fun experience that took some places I already knew about, and some I had no idea of the history behind and brought them into a new light for me.

I’ve never felt theater to be a big part of my life. If I ask someone, “What is Broadway?,” it isn’t meant to be a thought-provoking or rhetorical question. Literally, what is Broadway? I don’t feel that one-hour long trek through the rain with our intent mainly focused on finding theater rather than studying was able to answer my question, but it did help. I, at least, see now that New York has a ton of theater crammed into a relatively small part of the city.

Because I knew nothing going in, almost every find was a learning experience. What was of most interest to me was the thrust stage, mainly the fact that there was a specific name for it, but also because image searches on google brought up some really beautiful pictures. The most amusing find, though, was when we stopped at a random street corner to plan out next move. We had a short chat with a policeman there, and on the wall of the building next to him was painted comedy and tragedy masks—one of the items on the list, just sitting on the wall of a random building.

My train ride home was a really surreal experience. I came across two separate performances. One was a magic demonstration involving nerf balls. The other was a dance routine. I’ve always had a rather one-dimensional view of these performances. Magic shows were entertainment. Dance routines were an annoyance. Simple. That was the first time I linked them to something else—the theater of New York. It may also be the last time I do so, but nonetheless it was a new experience of an old experience.

My first thoughts of doing a scavenger hunt wasn’t as exciting but once the hunt began I started to enjoy it. I honestly did not know how many places related to theater we could find near campus. Across the street we have a theater themed restaurant and all my years in Baruch I never went inside there. This scavenger hunt was a life changing experience.

Throughout the hunt it was a bit difficult going in the rain considering the fact I didn’t have an umbrella. I went out with my teammates to buy one and little did we know that we found an acting studio. It was very surprising it was next to a bar. This area was very interesting because of all the places in NYC I wouldn’t expect this acting studio to be there. I always assumed all theater related stuff was at broadway and excluded. I began to remember that theater is everywhere, we see it everyday at the train station during our commute. Although the rain made the hunt intense it also made it competitive to see which team can win. Unfortunately my team did not win but we still had a good time and made new friends. This hunt made me appreciate theater more and value it alot. I hope to do another hunt like this and cannot wait to discuss this in class today.

Tuesday morning was an adventure indeed. Waking up to the sight of rain, I knew that this was going to be an interesting day. Hardly knowing any of my group members, we quickly exchanged numbers and proceeded to map out our destination for the scavenger hunt. However, our group only consisted of 3 members, including myself. I found this aspects to be quite difficult in our hunt to achieve our 12 points, but through the adversaries and endeavors we’ve faced, our group managed to explore and find a reasonable amount of theater related locations. I’ve learned that theater history in NYC is indeed something that’s been around for a while. For example, when we were trying to find a theater that was 100 years old, I’ve come to the realization that theater has been very prominent to the foundation of NYC entertainment. The usage of technology was perhaps also really salient in our goal of acquiring points, because it made the scavenger hunt much easier. The most interesting find throughout our hunt had to be the Vaudeville house, Ripley’s Believe it or Not! and the theater related restaurant which i was so intrigued to enter, mostly because i was getting hungry while walking. The only downside to this event was the weather which was really unfortunate, and the experience was quite amazing because I’ve seen various theater related sites which I’ve never noticed before while in Time Square. I actually felt like a tourist myself. The rain did manage to hurt our progression, and the theater group paper was on the brink of ripping from the rain. What surprised me the most was the theater that is said to have sightings of ghost, that seemed really interesting. It was a good experience to understand the history of theater around NYC, and Time Square was definitely the highlight of this scavenger hunt, the actors and costume performers were kind enough to take pictures with us, without the exception of charging money.

The scavenger hunt was a fun and tiring learning experience. I really like how my team strategized before we went on our hunt. We first googled the places and came to find most of the 2 point clues were around Astor place and the 1 point clues were in times square. Therefore, we had the boys go to Astor place as the girls roamed Times Square in the rain which was annoying but doable.

On my commute to school I get off the bus in Times Square and I’ve always pass by “Theater Row Diner” and many other theater related attractions but never knew it is called the “Theater District” as obvious it is. Before I wouldn’t think much of it but by this scavenger hunt I learned more about theater and the importance of such attractions. For example, the statue of George M. Cohan would just be another regular statue to me but now I know about it. As I roamed the area I realized how little things such as costumes and stage performances are theater. Theater is everywhere you just may not realize it.

At one point I was tired of googling so I just tried to apply what I saw in the area to any of the clues. Madame Tussauds had a wax of Daniel Craig, outside so I applied that to a clue as many guests visit the museum to admire the wax figures of actors. Next to it I saw Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, that automatically reminds me of vaudeville entertainment with its unusual acts. As time was almost up, the timeline on twitter was throwing me off as it kept refreshing while I so vigorously typed. It was my first scavenger hunt and it was a cool experience. I found my team to be very productive and hard working as we gathered points which in turn reflected positively on us.

The scavenger hunt was pretty intense(mostly because of the rain). Also because people were extremely competitive. It was interesting to see people I’ve seen in the classroom calm and then see a whole different side of them on Tuesday. I also enjoyed having to work together as a team to try to attain was many points as possible and interact with students from the class that Ive barely ever spoken to before. I learned so many new things from this scavenger hunt( which I appreciate the most). I’ll never see NYC the same anymore, which is honestly a really good thing. I feel like an accomplished “theater geek” after everything I’ve learned in this class so far and from this intense scavenger hunt.

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I didn’t even realize that there was so much theater history in New York. You can literally pin point on any site in NYC and find something related to theater history. Whether it is a statue, a building, or the people in the city that represent the performing arts culture. I truly learned that time square is the mecca for theater. We didn’t get to go to the lower side, where I wanted to visit Union square area, Chelsea, and Astor but knowing things like there were haunted theaters and the first movie theater was pretty interesting.

What surprised me was that there is a theater themed restaurant in the city. I know there are themed restaurant but it didn’t even cross my mind that there could be a themed restaurant. It sure would be interesting to check it out now that I know that it is there. Also, most of the theater building in out city are over 100 years old. So much history in our lovely NYC.

The most interesting find that my group personally found was the George M. Cohen statue in Times Square. I always pasted that statue for my entire life and never once took the time to stop and look at it. I never he knew who the guy was. When we got there Stephanie told our group that his famous quote was, “Give my regards to Broadway.” That was pretty cool.

I am not going to lie; this scavenger hunt was very much annoying especially in the rain. I was hoping we would stay in and do a theater jeopardy game or something. We were at a disadvantage because there was only 3 members in out group and we thought it would be best to stick together and find as much as we could together in one area because it would be too much to ask one person to go alone. We did the best we could and I am glad that I know we tried our best and did it to the end. I want to thank Stephanie and Stevon for a very interesting and memorable day.

Besides the rain, I enjoyed competing in the scavenger hunt with my team [Team 4], and we got so close to winning! Having very little knowledge about NYC theater history, I knew that I was going to have to Google every clue, and my phone’s battery would have to be 100%. Other than guidance from Google, Ralph S. was a great team leader, he knew a lot of the answers, and is the reason why we were the first team to get to 42nd, and post on Twitter.

One thing learned about theater history in NYC from the scavenger hunt, most of it is located around Midtown. It is also where all the tourist’s are, so as a native New Yorker/ Brooklynite I’ve never cared much about the area, and I still don’t care to an extent. I don’t really go to the theater, and so until taking this class I didn’t really acknowledge how much history gets overshadowed by the bright lights and consumerism.

Thinking back at he scavenger hunt, nothing really surprised me. I feel like i didn’t really absorb what I learned, because I was mostly focused on finding answers and taking pictures.

The most interesting thing that that I learned about was Theater Row, which we used for the clue for a off-broadway theater. I never heard of it, and they looked really small, so i looked it up on Wikipedia, and learned a bit about it’s history.

I can’t say the whole scavenger hunt was fun, there were points when I was over it, and really tired of racing against the clock. There were times when I felt like it was impossible to get to 12 points, but we did! It was possible, with help from the other teams posts, because of them I realized what we may have missed  🙂 Team 4 got to 20 points.

Tuesday, i had a great and fun activity that were scavenger hunt for theater history. I were grouped a team with other class mates then we left class room to find our treasure. When I got the list which is full of short questions, I little surprised but we searched it via google then solved. We needed to go to many places. So, we decided to split up two groups and then one group went to time square and the other group went to Astor place. I was in a group who went to Astor place. The first place of which I and my team member visit was the Players club. I astonished because this club is really close to our school. It is just a few blocks away. Even I used to walk around there. The Players club is a social club founded in New York City by the noted 19th-century Shakespearean actor Edwin Booth and Mark Twain. They might discuss about stories, plays, and thought a lot. Mark Twain’s place! What an amazing! When I was in a young boy, I read Mark Twain’s work and used to dream about adventure even I grew up outside of the U.S. The irony thing is, even Mark Twain is my one of the here, more even it is really near of the Baruch College, I never figure out his place until Tuesday. It happened other places, too. Next destination was Astor place. We have been finding the site of a theater riot and a theater “Walk of fame”. Whenever we got off subway, we tried to find the site of a theater riot place at first. We turned on the google map then was looking at it. We just stand near station, then the google map pointed out a building right behind of us. Moreover, the first floor of the building is a huge Starbucks coffee chain even I stepped by many times to buy a cup of coffee! It was continuous surprising. Then we moved to find walk of fame. At first, I thought it is a name of theater but it is not. It was star plate of fame on the street. This boardwalk is also I passed by so many time but never know. All these places are that I was passed and knew but I didn’t know what it is. This activity is literally scavenger hunt. The treasures are scatted out all around us. We just didn’t know that. I learned and knew the historic story of the building and place that I didn’t care about it.