own. Several American playwrights, such as Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, became world-renowned. In the 1950s and 1960s, experimentation in the Arts spread into theater as well, with plays such as Hair including nudity and drug culture references. Musicals remained popular as well, and musicals such as West Side Story and A Chorus Line broke previous records. At the same time, shows like Stephen Sondheim's Company began to deconstruct the musical form as it has been practiced through the mid-century, moving away from traditional plot and realistic external settings to explore the central character's inner state; his Follies relied on pastiches of the Ziegfeld Follies-styled revue; his Pacific Overtures used Japanese kabuki theatrical practices; and Merrily We Roll Along told its story backwards. Similarly, Bob Fosse's production of Chicago returned the musical to its vaudeville origins. Facts and figures of the postwar theater The postwar American theater audiences and box offices constantly diminished, due to the undeclared "offensive" of television and radio upon the classical, legitimate theater. According to James F. Reilly, executive director of the League of New York Theatres, between 1930 and 1951 the number of legitimate theaters in New York City dwindled from 68 to 30. Besides of that, the admissions tax, has been a burden on the theater since 1918. It was never relaxed ever since, and was doubled in 1943. Total seating capacity of thirty most renown legitimate theaters amounted 35,697 seats in 1951. Since 1937 in New York City alone, 14 former legitimate theaters with a normal seating capacity of 16,955, have been taken over for either radio broadcasts or television performances. In the late 1990s and 2000s, American theater began to borrow from cinema and operas. For instance, Julie Taymor, director of The Lion King directed Die Zauberflöte at the Metropolitan Opera. Also, Broadway musicals were developed around Disney's Mary Poppins, Tarzan, The Little Mermaid, and the one that started it all, Beauty and the Beast, which may have contributed to Times Square's revitalization in the 1990s. Also, Mel Brooks's The Producers and Young Frankenstein are based on his hit films. Drama The early years of the 20th century, before World War I, continued to see realism as the main development in drama. But starting around 1900, there was a revival of poetic drama in the States, corresponding to a similar revival in Europe (e.g. Yeats, Maeterlinck and Hauptmann). The most notable example