Varieties Theatre Gravier Street. Lewis Baker, Stage Manager. Sunday Evening, Feb. 14 1864 and Every Evening Until Further Notice. The Ticket of Leave... [caption title]

[New Orleans], 1864. Very good.. Broadside, 21 x 6 inches, on thin paper. Old folds, moderate toning, occasional small marginal chipping, tip of lower left corner chipped, light offsetting to itself while folded. A scarce Civil War-era broadside from Union-occupied New Orleans. The Varieties Theatre on Gravier Street in New Orleans was established by the Variete Association Theatre Club of New Orleans, a stockholder association of individuals committed to producing local theatre and who oversaw hiring a manager, building a repertory company, and attending performances. The Varieties Theatre was built and re-built three times between 1849 and 1871 at two different addresses in the Big Easy. The theater manager also changed during this time period. The present broadside advertises a performance of "A Great Moral Drama" called The Ticket of Leave Man. The play was a stage melodrama by the British writer Tom Taylor, and was based on a French drama titled, Le Retour de Melun. The English title takes its name from the "ticket to leave" issued to newly-paroled convicts.

Most interestingly, the broadside indicates how the arrangement of the theater created designated seating areas, and reinforced segregated seating based on race, with sections for "Colored Boxes," a "Colored Gallery," and "2nd tier" Private Boxes available to "Quadroons." OCLC lists three examples of Varieties Theatre broadsides printed between 1851 and 1868, including the only other Civil War-era example, dated seven days after the firing on Fort Sumter. New Orleans was not yet occupied by Union forces at that time, so the present example is the only known surviving broadside from the Varieties Theatre printed in Union-occupied New Orleans.