The Show Must Go On, and On, and On

“Tina” it seems, isn’t done with us yet. And other shows are lingering beyond the bows, too.

The curtain call as we know it today became formalized in the early 19th century. Its elements are simple: A show concludes, performers bow, spectators applaud — a “ritual form of acknowledgment,” in the words of Derek Miller, a professor of theater at Harvard University.

Over time, curtain calls grew to include underscoring, bits of comic business or a brief reprise of a beloved song. Stars like Al Jolson, Pearl Bailey and Sammy Davis, Jr. would often come to forestage after a show had finished and do a few of the numbers they had made famous — strategies to extort a standing ovation and goose word-of-mouth.

These days, when standing ovations are de rigueur and box office records break weekly, many still want in on the post-curtain action. Reprises have given way to glossy remixes and confetti cannons. Remember that old theory that you should leave them wanting more? This is more like leave them wanting to post an Instagram story.

“It’s a value-added extra,” said Laurence Maslon, an arts professor at New York University and a historian of the Broadway musical. “It’s a goody bag for audiences on their way out.”

These post-curtain moments have less to do with telling the story and more with telling the audience how to feel about the story they have just seen and what they should tell their friends.

As someone who loves a Broadway musical but is often ready to scurry up the aisle once that musical nears the three-hour mark, I spoke to some of the creators behind current musicals to discover how and why each of them had built in an encore.

Broadly and with overlap, the post-curtain numbers serve three distinct purposes — to brighten the mood, to offer intimacy, to send the audience into the night with a parting gift.

Make Me Hopeful

Not every show has a happy ending and not every happy ending is especially upbeat. Shows like “Tootsie” (he has defrauded the woman he loves), “Moulin Rouge! The Musical” (she dies), and even “Tina” (she triumphs, but only after years of struggle and abuse) use post-curtain songs to perk up an audience without selling out a show’s story. The curtain call, which falls just after and outside the story, provides one last, ecstatic chance for emotional manipulation.

In Chicago, during the out-of-town tryout for “Tootsie,” the show ended with Michael (Santino Fontana), an actor who rose to fame by impersonating a woman, silently sharing a park bench with Julie (Lilli Cooper), his former co-star.

“Then the discussion became, ‘Well, how can we bring back some of the razzle dazzle?’” the show’s director, Scott Ellis said. He also wanted to find a way to bring back Dorothy, the woman Michael masquerades as.

Now, after Fontana takes a bow as Michael, he hurries offstage, back to his Dorothy costume. As the chorus reprises the first-act closer, a wigged and corseted Fontana rises up from beneath the stage to perform a triumphant tap number.

“I mean, there are nights when my dresser Lauren basically has to push me onto that platform because I’m almost comatose,” he said. “But it feels great to leave everyone on a high.”

That same impulse — wanting to have an honest emotional moment and eat it, too — inspired the megamix that concludes “Moulin Rouge.” After the death of the courtesan Satine, the company takes a bow in silence, then the club emcee, Zidler, flips a circuit breaker. Lights flare and the band plays “Lady Marmalade.”

“We didn’t want to leave the audience on a low note,” Justin Levine, the music supervisor said. The megamix, which takes its cues from the musical numbers that conclude Bollywood movies, reprises previous songs and integrates a new one, OutKast’s “Hey Ya.”

“It feels like an after-party,” said Sonya Tayeh, the show’s choreographer.

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If “Tina” ends, the first time, with a feeling of what director Phyllida Lloyd calls “hard-won joy,” the post-curtain number feels less hard-won. Lloyd and Anthony Van Laast, the choreographer, wanted to give the audience a taste of what it felt like to see Tina Turner performing in her prime.

During the show itself, Turner’s songs work to heighten emotion or drive narrative. In the coda — which segues from “Nutbush City Limits” into “Proud Mary” and includes the full cast and one last delirious costume change for its star — they simply entertain, providing, Lloyd said, “a kind of euphoria.”

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Make Me Part of Something Bigger

Other shows seek a more meditative conclusion, one that emphasizes shared humanity rather than virtuosity. At the close of “A Christmas Carol,” after Scrooge (Campbell Scott) renounces his miserly ways and serves dinner, the company takes a bow and takes up a collection for a local charity. Then the cast performs “Silent Night,” wordlessly and with handbells, with the last note given to the actor playing Tiny Tim.

Matthew Warchus developed this encore three years ago, when he first staged the piece at London’s Old Vic. “It’s very counterintuitive,” he said. “You normally send people out on the absolute noisiest high you can.” But he is a preacher’s son and he wanted to provide “one prayerful but not specifically religious moment,” he said.

Handbell ringing is harder than it looks and Warchus had to teach the cast to overcome what he calls, “bell ringer’s face” — an expression of rigidity and terror — which works against the mood he means the carol to create: peace, humility, generosity of spirit.

“People love to be part of this communal feeling,” Scott said. “I always wonder, ‘Is it too much? Are we laying it on too thick?’ And the answer that keeps coming back is, ‘Not really.’”

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Anais Mitchell, the composer of “Hadestown,” the folk musical based on the Orpheus myth, had similar worries. “If I play a show, I want to feel that the encore is earned. There’s nothing worse than going out there and feeling like people didn’t really desire or expect it,” she said.

So when the show’s penultimate number “Road to Hell II” evolved into a new finale, she suggested cutting the former finale “We Raise Our Cups.” But Rachel Chavkin, the director of “Hadestown” argued for keeping it as a post-curtain coda.

The audience, Chavkin thought, needed catharsis, a way to move past the story’s tragedy. “We Raise Our Cups,” which asks that we honor Orpheus’ attempt to rescue his beloved rather than mourn his failure, could provide it.

After bows, the cast stands still and performs the song unamplified, which feels, as actress Amber Gray said, like “a very vulnerable thing to do, very raw.” But the song itself provides a kind of salve.

“It confirms that even in the face of sorrow we persist, we raise a glass, we find fellowship with each other and we choose still to try,” Chavkin said.

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Throw Me a Party

Sometimes, particularly in a jukebox musical, a post-curtain number just wants to roll you and rock you and sing you what you want to hear — fan service with harmonies.

“Jersey Boys,” the 2005 biomusical of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, which incited the jukebox craze and has since moved off-Broadway, has already played “December 1963 (Oh, What a Night)” by the time the curtain falls. But as the cast bows, they reprise it — "a way for the audience to celebrate the show,” said its director, Des McAnuff.

In David Byrne’s theatricalized concert, “American Utopia,” Byrne added “Road to Nowhere” as an encore, because, he said, “We didn’t have a good place for it and it was a lot of fun to do.”

The show proper ends with the protest anthem “Hell You Talmbout” and an a cappella version of “One Fine Day.”

“Then we give them something really enjoyable and kind of joyous,” Byrne said.

The heavy metal jukebox musical “Rock of Ages,” which has joined “Jersey Boys” off-Broadway, waits until the very end to give the people what they want, Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’,” the song that inspired the show.

It cues the bows, then continues in a post-curtain jam with the actors running into the aisles and encouraging audience members to join in.

“The party doesn’t just stop with the curtain call,” the show’s director, Kristin Hanggi, said. She was speaking from Los Angeles, where she is rehearsing an even more interactive version of the show.

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Kelly Devine, the show’s choreographer, kept the post-curtain moves simple so that anyone in the audience could dance along. “I feel like I want to leave them completely joyous,” Devine said. But hadn’t the last two hours and 20 minutes delivered joy enough? Couldn’t the actors and the audience just go home?

“When it comes to ‘Rock of Ages,’” she said, “more is more.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .