Among the first American artists to embrace the theater as a signature theme, Shinn had a lifelong involvement with popular entertainment, working as playwright, producer, set designer, and actor.  Around the time he painted The Orchestra Pit, Shinn was commissioned by David Belasco to create murals for his Broadway theater.  Belasco's experiments with electric lighting find expression in Shinn's painting of musicians silhouetted against a stage bathed in an aquamarine glow.  One performer provocatively engages a musician at the conclusion of their act at Proctor's Fifth Avenue Theatre, a leading New York vaudeville house.  By the turn of the century, vaudeville was the most popular form of entertainment in America, offering a variety format that attracted people from every social class.  Frederick F. Proctor, the first director of a traditional theater to successfully convert it into a vaudeville house, soon managed a chain of them.  Shinn painted this scene during a pivotal year in the impresario's career; in April 1906, jubilee celebrations attracted overflowing audiences to Proctor's Fifth Avenue, but in May an alliance between Proctor and another manager merged their houses under the name Keith and Proctor.