There is a reason Broadway Barks works, and it is not just star wattage. It is scheduling. A working Broadway actor’s calendar is famously airless, and on a two-show day the only free window is the gap between the matinee and the evening performance, the one stretch of the afternoon an actor would otherwise use to eat, rest, and recover. Bernadette Peters built her adoption event directly into that window, in Shubert Alley, steps from the stage doors. That single logistical choice is why a free street fair can reliably summon a roster of Tony winners, and why, over 26 years, it has helped more than 2,000 cats and dogs find homes. The glamour is real. The machine underneath it is a calendar hack.
How a fundraiser turned into a rescue institution
The origin is almost offhand. In 1999, Peters was starring in a revival of Annie Get Your Gun during a season when every Broadway show competed to raise money for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. (For the record, her show raised the most.)
“Once we did that, I said, ‘What else can we do?’” Peters tells us. “I got to talking with my good friend Mary Tyler Moore, and we came up with an event to get the community together to help homeless animals get adopted, and Broadway Barks was born.”
This Saturday, August 3, Peters cohosts the 25th annual Broadway Barks with Tony winner Sutton Foster. It is free, starts at 3 p.m., and takes place in Shubert Alley, between 44th and 45th Streets. A reported 25 adoption agencies are on hand this year, which is the scale that turns a feel-good afternoon into an actual rehoming pipeline.
The ask that shouldn’t work, but does
Here is the part that reveals how much goodwill the event has banked. Peters is asking some of the busiest performers in the country to spend their one daily break working a crowd.
“We ask theater actors to do this on a two-show day, between shows, which is usually their only break of the day,” Peters says. “Surprisingly, almost everyone wants to participate.”
That “surprisingly” is doing a lot of work, and it is the quiet proof of the event’s standing. This year’s reported guests include Eddie Redmayne (Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club), Ali Roy (Aladdin), Jeremy Jordan (The Great Gatsby), Jordan Fisher (Hadestown), Shoshana Bean (Hell’s Kitchen), Michael Urie (Once Upon a Mattress), Emma Pittman (The Outsiders), Olivia Donalson (Six), Alexandra Socha (Wicked), Justin David Sullivan (& Juliet), and many more. The star power is not the point so much as the bait: a marquee name on the mic is what pulls a passerby close enough to meet a dog they did not plan to adopt.
Why the format itself is the lesson for rescues
Strip away the celebrity and Broadway Barks is a clinic in adoption-event design that any local rescue can borrow. It is free, so there is no barrier to walking in. It is held where foot traffic already is, not in a remote shelter parking lot. It is timed to when its volunteer talent is actually available rather than when it is convenient for organizers. And it pairs animals with a reason to stop and look. Those are transferable principles, not Broadway magic.
Peters has watched thousands of animals pass through, and she still remembers the ones that landed.
“One year, there was a beautiful, sweet Pit Bull with an amazing heart,” she says. “She was at a wildlife rescue before she came to us, very gentle, and she loved the little doe that was there. Her name was Nina, and she was adopted on the spot.”
She knows the feeling of love at first sight from her own household. “I have two dogs, one for each hand. Charlie, a Heinz 57 rescued from a shelter in Texas, and Rosalia, a Pit Bull rescued here in NYC,” she says. “Animals offer that unconditional love that some humans forget to express to one another. They deliver on that need 10 times out of 10. They know how to love.”
The New York rescue organizations attending this year include Anjellicle Cats Rescue, Best Friends Animal Society, Husky House, Long Island Bulldog Rescue, Muddy Paws Rescue, and Yankee Golden Retriever Rescue, among others.
References
- Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. “Broadway Barks 2024.” broadwaycares.org.
- Broadway Barks. “About the Event and Founders.” broadwaybarks.com.
