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Broadway League Head Hopes Theaters Will Reopen in January

Charlotte St. Martin tells The Daily Beast Broadway is seeing a loss of $35 million per week during the shutdown

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The head of the Broadway League Charlotte St. Martin says she is hoping theaters on Broadway can reopen by January 2021 and that under current financial conditions, would need to do so with full houses.

While social distancing options for performances have been considered, St. Martin says that they won’t be able to socially distance cast and crew effectively or have performers wear masks and that they also can’t afford theater audiences that are spread out.

“We know that we cannot socially distance within theaters with the present financial models we have,” St. Martin said in an interview with The Daily Beast. “We can’t socially distance the cast and crew in these 100-year-old-plus buildings.”

She continued: “And we can’t afford to socially distance the audience. We have terrific theatrical employees, but they are the most expensive theatrical employees in the world.”

St. Martin told The Daily Beast that in the last 10 weeks since Broadway went dark in March, theaters collectively have lost an average of $35 million per week, which if this were to continue into January as she estimates, would amount to a loss of $1.5 billion in revenue.

The Broadway League previously announced that theaters will be formally closed until September 6, or Labor Day weekend. Since then, many shows that were shut down or were in the process of opening or were in previews before theaters went dark have already announced they would not reopen once theaters are allowed to do so, including the stage adaptation of Disney’s “Frozen.”

St. Martin said she is optimistic that audiences will return to theaters, but acknowledged that there may be empty theaters on Broadway with no productions until things pick up.

“We do anticipate some loss of business when we reopen,” St. Martin said. “But we’re not going to open until we have the information that tells us it’s safe to sit next to each other, and for the cast and crew to be dancing and kissing and everything else they do, sweating on each other. We’re not going to put people’s lives at risk, at least not knowingly.”

St. Martin also addressed new policies and approaches being implemented, including contact-free ticket scanning, new improvements in bathrooms and concessions, and the League has been exploring options related to the problem of people queuing in long lines for performances outside theaters.

“I hope it becomes a problem, by which I mean that the audience comes back,” St. Martin said. “There is some thinking that the side streets of Broadway would be shut down to accommodate the lines, and enable social distancing.”

Read St. Martin’s full interview at The Daily Beast.

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When New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo closed Broadway theaters on March 12 in response to the coronavirus pandemic, the New York theater scene was heating up ahead of the Tony Awards -- with 31 shows playing and another eight scheduled to begin performances by mid-April. Now the theaters will remain dark until at least September -- and the Tony Awards have been postponed indefinitely. But the uncertainty of when theaters (and Broadway-bound tourists) might return has forced some producers to close shows early -- or push new productions to sometime in the future.
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Closed: "Hangmen"
Martin McDonagh’s new comedy, starring Dan Stevens ("Downton Abbey") and Mark Addy ("Game of Thrones"), announced March 20 it would not reopen after playing 13 preview performances ahead of an expected March 19 official opening.
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Closed: "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"
The revival of Edward Albee's classic drama, starring Laurie Metcalf and Rupert Everett, had played just nine preview performances before Broadway went dark. With the scheduled April 9 official opening off the table, producers decided to close the show on March 21.
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Postponed: "Flying Over Sunset"
The new musical by composer Tom Kitt ("Next to Normal," pictured), lyricist Michael Korie ("Grey Gardens") and book writer James Lapine ("Into the Woods") was scheduled to begin performances on March 12 ahead of an official April 16 opening. On March 24 the Lincoln Center Theater announced the show's opening would be pushed to the fall.
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Postponed: "Birthday Candles"
Noah Haidle's play, starring Debra Messing and Andre Braugher, was due to begin performances in early April. But on March 25, Roundabout Theatre Company announced it would open this fall instead.
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Postponed: "Caroline, or Change"
Roundabout also delayed the opening of its revival of the Jeanine Tesori-Tony Kushner musical "Caroline, or Change," starring Sharon D. Clarke in an Olivier Award-winning performance. The show had been set for an April 7 opening at Studio 54.
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Postponed: "How I Learned to Drive"
Manhattan Theatre Club announced on April 7 it was postponing a Mary-Louise Parker-led revival of "How I Learned to Drive" to the 2020-21 season. The Pulitzer-winning drama, with David Morse as co-star, was due to open April 22, just before the cutoff for this year's Tony Awards.
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Closed: "Beetlejuice"
The Tony-nominated musical was being evicted from the Winter Garden Theatre on June 6 (even though ticket sales had dramatically improved over the fall and winter). Now producers are hoping to find a new theater when Broadway opens up, though there's no guarantee that will happen. The adaptation of Tim Burton's 1988 movie played played 27 previews and 366 regular performances.
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Postponed: "Plaza Suite"
A new revival of Neil Simon's comedy starring Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick will now play March 19, 2021 through July 18, 2021. The show had been expected to begin previews at the Hudson Theater on March 13, the day after theaters were shut down.
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Postponed: "MJ"
The new Michael Jackson musical, starring Tony nominee Ephraim Sykes as the late King of Pop, had been planning to begin performances in July for an August opening. But now it's pushed back its debut to next spring, with a new opening night set for April 15, 2021.
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Closed: "Frozen"
Disney's stage version of the animated hit "Frozen" became the first long-running show to close due to the pandemic. The Tony-nominated show opened in March 2018 and played 825 performances and 26 previews.
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Postponed: The Tony Awards
Since there's no word yet on when Broadway performances might resume, the Broadway League on March 25 indefinitely postponed this year's Tony Awards, which had been scheduled for June 7 at Radio City Music Hall.
All the Broadway Shows Killed (and Postponed) Due to Coronavirus Shutdown
Disney’s “Frozen” is the latest affected
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