Broadway after COVID
It’s has been more than a year since a lockdown was imposed on all Broadway shows. The last ones closed down on March 12th, 2020, hurling Broadway into an unprecedented state of inactivity and uncertainty. There were several announcements through the months that followed and the initial press releases were optimistic. However, the lockdown continued.The latest official announcement by The Broadway League was that shows will remain closed through May 30, 2021.
New Measures
The local and federal administration didn’t stay idle. Multiple measures were proposed, and some of them were already implemented with varying degrees of success. One of the measures which intended to boost all performing arts was NY PopsUp, proposed by New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo.
NY PopsUp
NY PopsUp is an expansive festival featuring hundreds of pop-up performances, many of which are free of charge and all are open to the public. The festival was launched on February 20th, and the grand finale is planned to be the 20th Anniversary of the Tribeca Film Festival.
The whole initiative is coordinated with state public health officials and will strictly adhere to Department of Health COVID-19 protocols. Its major goal is to bring back the live performance in front of a crowd. NY PopsUp will feature more than 1 000 performances scattered through out all of New York City’s boroughs.
So far, artists like Curtis Stewart, Justin Vivian Bond, and The Missing Element have taken part in NY PopsUp, with more big names to follow!
Tribeca Film Festival
The Tribeca Film Festival will celebrate its 20th anniversary and would give the NY PopsUp the grand ending it deserves.
The popular motion picture festival was canceled in 2020, at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, it is one of the first events in New York that will welcome back the audience. The Tribeca Film Festival will host innovative community screenings across all boroughs at venues like Empire Outlets, The MetroTech Commons, Brookfield Place New York, Pier 57 Rooftop, The Battery, and Hudson Yards.
State officials supervise the whole operation, along with Broadway operators, including names like Scott Rudin and Jane Rosenthal.
What does this mean for Broadway in 2021?
Broadway has suffered nearly irreparable damage in 2020. The theater industry provides more than 96 000 jobs that contribute $15bn to New York City’s economy. As vital as it is, Broadway is a top priority on the list for policy makers. This is where the Flexible Venues (“Flex Venues”) come into action.
The Flex Venues are established performance spaces that can adapt to social distancing guidelines. The shortlisted venues include The Apollo, Park Avenue Armory, St. Ann’s Warehouse, The SHED, Harlem Stage, La MaMa, National Black Theatre, and The Glimmerglass Festival’s Alice Busch Opera Theater. On the list of Flex Venues is also one of the more notable Broadway theaters -The Music Box.
The Flex Venues plan is supposed to be followed by Broadway’s own pilot program in 2021 that will be in motion until a final date for opening.
Planned measures
The guidelines of New York State’s Department of Health state that the attendee capacity of any performance must be limited to less than 33% of the maximum occupancy for the particular area, with a maximum of 50 people, excluding performers, crew, and other staff. By April 2, 2021, the number of attendees may exceed the social gathering limit of 50 people, with a maximum number of 150 attendees, or a 33% maximum occupancy limit for the particular area. This is in case all attendees provide a negative COVID-19 test result prior to the event. The number can rise up to 200 or even 500 for outdoor events.
However, owners and producers are skeptical when it comes to reopening. Positivity rates are still above 6%, and venues remained closed when positivity was around 1.5%. And that is why Broadway stakeholders prefer to remain cautious. Many owners, especially of smaller venues feel that their places are not well-equipped for socially distanced events, so they prefer to focus on full reopening.
Mass Vaccination
The city administration has decided to make preparations for reopening one step further. Mayor Bill De Blasio has announced that NYC officials plan to set up COVID-19 vaccination sites specifically for Broadway theater workers. A special mobile vaccination unit will be deployed to the theater for the process.
This is just a portion of a larger-scale plan, including COVID testing sites near theaters and extensive guidelines on how to handle crowds before and after shows. One of the ideas suggests utilizing the existing ticketing system for advance notification and timed entry to manage crowds. All of this is part of President Biden’s nation-wide plan to convert venues into vaccination centers. The Javits Center already serves this new purpose. You can schedule a vaccination by calling 833-NYS-4-VAX (833–697–4829) or visit www.ny.gov. You would need a pre-scheduled appointment.
How’s Broadway coping a year later?
Broadway has been desolated for more than a year. Many of its stars have taken other gigs such as appearing on TV, movies, reality shows, and especially on social media. However, acquiring a cast is not the biggest problem. As in most cases, the problem is funding. Broadway shows can be pretty expensive. Most of the top-grossers cost between $500.000 and $1 million a week and such an amount of money is impossible for a half-full venue.
Furthermore, shows can’t get into “quick start mod.” Producers need to assemble their casts (or find replacements) and stagehand crews. Advanced tickets must be issued, too. Other problems like releasing paperless tickets and dealing with the crowds in front of theaters are also an issue.
Good practices from all over the world
The aforementioned issues are not only concerning Broadway. They are global and affect every single aspect of our lives. Still, many organizations have managed to find revolutionary solutions to this unprecedented menace.
West End
The first good practice comes from Broadway’s biggest global adversary — London’s own West End. The measure proposed by the U.K.’s Department for Digital Culture, Media, and Sport is similar to those, proposed by Gov. Cuomo.
UK officials have developed a four-step roadmap, including allowing large school and outdoor gatherings, step 3 would reopen outdoor theater venues on a capacity of 50% or 1000 people, and step 4 will ease further all existing capacity measures. The socioeconomic impact of the measures is popular and is in line with the attitude of the majority of the people in the UK.
Restart Stages
The next good practice comes straight from New York. The Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Their idea is to create an open-air performing center with 10 outdoor stages for performing and rehearsals. They will be established according to all safety protocols and health requirements.
The new venues will include a cabaret-style page, family and kids areas, rehearsal spaces, and even a school graduation ground. The Lincoln Center will also partner with The New York Public Library to give regular readers an open space for their favorite activity!
Artistic programming will feature Lincoln Center’s constituent organizations, including outdoor performances of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s annual Summer Evenings concerts, film screenings from Film at Lincoln Center, a concert and cabaret series by Lincoln Center Theater, and dance workshops from New York City Ballet.
Barcelona Experiment
A popular party destination, residents and visitors to Barcelona missed the live music events. So, local authorities have decided to give fans what they want — a live music festival. But they would combine it with a social experiment. They will allow 500 avid fans to take part in a 5-hour long festival inside Barcelona’s Apolo Theater. Fans and artists will have to wear FFP2 face masks and use hand disinfectants.
One of the curiosities of the concert is that there won’t be any social distancing enforced. All of the 500 volunteers — those that were allowed on the fest, and those that were sent home, would undergo PCR tests. The results will determine if any infected people got past the same-day antigen screen and, if so, did they infect others inside the show.
Spain is one of the global tourist destinations, with its rich history, amazing beaches, festivals, party destinations, and sports teams. Such experiments, as brave as they are, would give them a direction where to head next, and will certainly spur the country’s tourism. Spain was one of the most affected countries by the COVD pandemic and tourism — one of Spain’s main sources of income, was seriously impacted.
Broadway in 2021 — what now?
If hope is the last to die, then it is surely immortal on Broadway. Fans, experts, producers, actors, and staff have been through a lot in the past year, but are hopeful. They are right to be. It may sound like a cliché, but even after the darkest night comes a bright new day.
There is still a lot of doubt which shows will return. Many have called it a night, while we’re waiting for an official announcement. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton is the star of the party. Miranda took his shot and made a successful transition of his box-office breaker into the mainstream, including an online movie version on Disney +.
And Mean Girls have followed. Tina Fey isn’t sitting idle! She has announced that there’s a new “Mean Girls” movie in the making. She is collaborating with Paramount Pictures and Lorne Michaels from SNL. Tina Fey stated:
“I’m very excited to bring Mean Girls back to the big screen! It’s been incredibly gratifying to see how much the movie and the musical have meant to audiences. I’ve spent 16 years with these characters now. They are my Marvel Universe, and I love them dearly.”
The cast is yet to be announced. We can only guess who’s going to be starring. And, of course, hope for some all-time favorites to appear!
Many other shows were scheduled for Broadway’s 2021 season. We have covered them before. Many of them have blockbuster potential. Broadway expected to see the returns on global superstars such as Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker, and Hugh Jackman in The Music Man.
MJ
A new addition was MJ: The Musical. Such stage “biopics” are rather common and very successful. You just have to look at Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, and Tina, who have achieved success in the recent past. The show has a book by Lynn Nottage. We will hear some of Michael Jackson’s greatest hits in the musical numbers.
Ephraim Sykes will play Michael Jackson. He certainly guarantees top quality. We’ve seen him in shows like Ain’t Too Proud, Hamilton, and Rent.
Is Winter coming to Broadway?
A curious rumor is circulating the Internet. It states that a part of A Song of Ice and Fire, more famous as HBO’s Game of Thrones, will come to Broadway sooner rather than later. But HBO isn’t involved. However, George R.R. Martin’s name was!
This rumor certainly would intrigue fans of the series, who were left rather disappointed by the show’s finale. A couple of spin-offs were announced, with one expected to debut next year.
Martin is expected to work with playwright Duncan Macmillan (“1984”) and theater director Dominic Cooke on the project. It will cover the infamous Tourney of Harrenhal, which kick-started Robert Baratheon’s Rebellion that in turn settled the board for the Game of Thrones we saw on TV. Rumors are rather controversial of when the show is actually going to start rehearsals, but speculations are about 2022 or 2023. We have already seen a mainstream book that was turned into a successful movie debuting on Broadway — Harry Potter and The Cursed Child, which has achieved a huge amount of success. With Game of Throne’s huge fanbase, the initial interest is undoubted.
A few other shows are expected to make their debut in 2022. This includes some popular names like David Byrne’s American Utopia, Caroline, Or Change, 1776, and The Minutes. MJ would have a worthy companion with The Who’s Tommy.
Final Words
2020 and 2021 were unlike anything, not only on Broadway but all over the world. The world of musical theater was certainly heavily affected, but the damage is not irreparable. Broadway would certainly need to recover, and this would take time.
I am certainly an optimist that shows would return on stage by the end of the year. But it would be a slow, slow process that requires a lot of effort. Stakeholders must take care of staff, actors, and audience first, and vaccination sounds like their best option. Testing should be regular, too. Broadway will re-emerge after COVID, and it will re-emerge stronger. Top-grossers like Hamilton, Wicked, and The Lion King would be the first to return, along with veterans like Phantom of the Opera and Chicago. One thing is certain — Broadway will return in 2021!
