Obamas Boost Broadway Sales for ‘Joe Turner’

The August Wilson production Joe Turner’s Come and Gone received a major increase of attention last week after President and First Lady Obama attended a performance at New York City’s Belasco Theatre. The Tony-nominated revival had already been a huge hit on the Broadway scene, but the Obamas’ seat in the audience made the show even more popular, tripling ticket sales on May 31 as compared to the previous week’s numbers.

Joe Turner’s Come and Gone is an August Wilson classic, set in the early 1900s and telling the tale of black America and the shift from sharecropping farms and the South to the more industrialized North. The play features Chad L. Coleman starring as Herald Loomis and also includes Tony-nominated Roger Robinson, Marsha Stephanie Blake, Michael Cummings, Aunjanue Ellis, Danai Gurira, Andre Holland, Arliss Howard, Ernie Hudson, LaTanya Richardson Jackson and Amari Rose Leigh.

According to the Washington Post, onlookers crowded the streets of Sixth Avenue leading up to the theater for the Obamas’ arrival to the Belasco Theatre before the scheduled performance of Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, which the president and his wife attended due to a promise Barack made earlier this year that he would take Michelle to a Broadway show after his presidential campaign ended.

To get Broadway tickets, go to StubHub.

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