After reading the review, I started to think to myself about the originality of any form of theater. I am a huge marvel fan and have noticed they are bringing back the old school heros. Many critics say it is the original but then the hardcore fans like me wonder about what is considered original. Hamilton was interpreted alot and kept being considered the original one. Makes you wonder what people view as original.

When I read the reviews of Hamilton, I still don’t see how it is a game-changer. The review from Rooney says that Hamilton is original, but what even counts as original anymore? The same article even says other works have done the same things before, just not with as much success. That doesn’t make Hamilton “original.” It just makes it “good.” Is the “game-changer” the one that first pioneers a concept or is it the one that is first to obtain success?

I learned during the scavenger hunt that theater is everywhere in NYC. Whether it is an actual theater, or souvenir. One of the items was to find the sad and happy theater masks. After we found one, I kept noticing them all over. Many clues surprised me as I am not very familiar with theater history in NYC. The most interesting find of the scavenger hunt was the arrest that happened in front of a theater. It was just something I never heard of and it was fun to be in place of something I had just found. I also enjoyed seeing how many restaurants are dedicated to theater. And then that made me realize how many themed restaurants there are out there. There is theater everywhere. I felt that I was learning history as we found each clue. The experience was a good one. I had never participated in a scavenger hunt before, so I was really curious to see how it would be set up. I feel that if the weather was nicer, more clues would have been found. I really enjoyed figuring out the answers to clues and directing ourselves there. It was a great way to learn about all the theater that NYC has to offer in just 90 minutes. It was very memorable. It was also cool to see other teams post their answers, and wishing we were able to figure it out. For example, I believe that a team used Ripley’s Believe It Or Not as a Vaudeville house. After seeing that my teammates and me thought to ourselves that we were right there! Overall running around Times Square made me realize how many plays there are out. It’s amazing that there are so many productions and how adored they are. Not to mention the actual stores dedicated to the shows.

It was my first time to have a scavenger hunt in my life. I was worried before when I read about scavenger hunt because I don’t know well about Manhattan’s map.  And at that day, weather was also raining. I expected little that scavenger hunt would be canceled. But, all of us went out for that. Our group had a different plan while other groups were going out. We stayed in the class, and checked the lists’ locations for few minutes. I think that it was great plan. We found locations, and we were split. I was going out with Bektosh for down town. We found a place of Theatre club which is funded by Edwin Booth and Mark Twain near our school and then we found Union Square Theatre which is for Famous Vaudeville house and off Broadway Theatre. For me Union Square Theatre was special. When I took a theatre class last semester, I had to hand in review papers. But, I missed one review, and fortunately, I had  chance and get a ticket for the show from the professor that was ’39 Steps’. And I watched the show at Union Square Theatre and I received good grade for that. So, when I went to Union Square Theatre during scavenger hunt, I felt like familiar with the theatre. I was also impressed that there are many theatric things just around us. I and Bekthosh found 6 or 7places and others in our group found 14poitns of places in a hour. Before this experience, I used to think that for watching theatric things had to go theatre and pay money. But now I know, Theatre is not an expensive and payable, it is just near us. It was great experience for me.

Plays versus musicals (data from the Visualizing Broadway project at Harvard)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pw6eKxa0puY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADNbtAID5wM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx9z1Fdz1j8

The Nyc scavenger heart was interesting although the rain made it slightly less attractive to be running around New York.
The item on the list where somewhat of what I expected with a few curve balls I’m used too. Some items seemed like it was impossible the most interesting item I was the oldest theater to be lit by electricity however I wasn’t able to get there in time for the hunt I now know that at this very old building is on The way of my daily commute towards work. The best find I’d say was the studio simply because the downtown area is more attractive to my eyes running around looking for old theater related objects was more fun than I thought however a pamphlet of each item if you find it would have been useful towards learning more of said objects

The scavenger hunt, although in the rain, was interesting to say the least. I am not a theater enthusiast, and I had always assumed that theatrical history in NYC was based around Broadway mainly. So I was surprised to see that most of the answers to the scavenger hunt was outside Broadway, specifically the ones that held historical significance to the growth of theater and the arts in New York City.

There were two interesting “finds” in our hunt. The first was the answer to the hint “an actor’s place of worship”. I had always walked passed this temple and the name had always intrigued and stumped me. It was called the “ Actors Temple”, with a purple banner flying with those words and the Jewish star. It was only during the scavenger hunt when I read the clue I realized that this building was the answer! I guess my curiosity helped me remember that clue.

The other find that interesting was something that we actually did not get to find. Originally Tin Pan Alley was located somewhere along Broadway and 28^th, and a plaque commemorating it had been placed there. But as we arrived on the location, we realized that the plaque had been removed to another location. I just found it interesting to commemorate a place in a different location.

I think this class in general had the most interesting experience completing this scavenger hunt. The rain did not let up, and by the end my teammates and I were completely drenched. But overall it was a good experience. I don’t think there is a better way of learning something then going out into the actual world and seeing it for yourself. The classroom can only teach you so much. To go out and see all these different locations in the city made me appreciate theater even more.

Besides the fact that the rain was extremely irritating, overall the scavenger hunt was an amazing experience. I wish we were given more opportunities to explore the city for classroom experiments in all of the classes. It helps us understand the topic more and makes us dig deeper into what we are studying. I was surprised by the amount of Theater related restaurants we really do have in NY. My team divided up so the guys I was with, we found this restaurant themed restaurant near the NYU campus. We walked all the way down to 15th street because we heard it was very nice and it was pretty interesting.  Doing this assignment if the weather was decent outside would have been resulted in me wanting to run around a little more but the rain was very uninspiring. Going to times square would have helped my team and I rack up more points but for a first time doing something like this, very happy.

This scavenger hunt was a lot more fun and interesting than I thought it would be. It was interesting to me because I was fascinated about how close some of the theatre landmarks are. Apparently I walk by some of them daily and I have no idea. The Astor Place Riots was the best part of this scavenger hunt because it seemed peculiar to me that people had riots over who was a better Macbeth. 

My group had split up into a group of 3 and a group of 2. The group of 3 headed uptown towards Times Square and Broadway, while me and my partner headed downtown towards Astor Place and Canal Street. Although it was raining, I have to say that my team (and all of the other teams) did a really good job of finding the theatre landmarks.

The only disappointment I had with this assignment was my unablity to explore the city more and find the rest of the stuff that we couldn’t find due to the time limit. Of course, I can’t be mad at that. It’s not like we could’ve spent the whole day trying to find all the stuff on the list.

The scavenger hunt was a pretty eventful hour for my group and I. Although we all dreaded the rain, we still had a pretty adventurous time. At first, it seemed like the list was very overwhelming, but once we started looking closer, we realized that most of the things we were looking for were primarily very close to one another. It was very interesting to see how we could find about 10 items within a 8 block radius.

It was hard to get the most points because my group was at a disadvantage. We only had 3 people so we really pushed through when trying to find as many items as we could. Instead of us 3 splitting up with half of us going uptown and half of us going downtown we ended up sticking together and going to Times Square. Heading to Times Square had to be the best idea. It wasn’t a surprise to find most things were located there. My team and I ended up getting 8 points and we are proud that we worked together to do so.

Overall, the scavenger hunt was a fun idea. It was a great way to find out more about theatre in the city. I wouldn’t had known have the things about theatre if it wasn’t for this scavenger hunt. It really opened my eyes to find out how much history this city has and what it has to offer.