Today is September 17th, 2021. A placeholder in the fresh “Broadway’s Back!” blitz that’s sweeping the Arts sections of major newspapers and mainstream media and certainly my Facebook and Instagram feed because I pretty much only know people in the Arts. The best people.
I’m so moved by the videos of curtain calls in the theater and first day of rehearsal hugs and crying and the joy and tears in the studio. Thrilling. That makes me happy.
It’s been a fucking brutal pandemic, but…….
We’re back!
I’m gonna check back on this blog and hope what I’m feeling changes about professional theater on this day because I believe reality is about to take a bow.
The existence of theater is predicated on the willful suspension of disbelief. You know, you gotta let go as an audience member and believe what you’re seeing is real. You’re in a land of make believe. You are in the catacombs of the Paris Opera House or in Oz.
But what makes show biz possible is the part that isn’t as fun. But really real: Ticket sales, marketing, investors, advances, weekly costs, casting and hype and a great unfuckingbelievable show that will draw an audience.
Draw an audience.
I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately….drawing an audience.
Theaters need audiences. The consideration of that reality is what I think is lacking almost to the point of deceptiongaslighting.
A willful suspension of disbelief.
First, the obvious: Two thousand people are dying every day in this country….still… of Covid. And we’re not even into the Fall and Winter months. The term “ breakthrough” is a misnomer in describing what are increasingly common cases of fully vaccinated people becoming infected, and spreading the 🦠. The fact that the fully vaccinated joined that club in the first place signals to me they would prefer to not be infected and minimize risk… and probably not go to the theater for a while.
Several shows in the West End, and in this country as well, have already had to suspend performances due to infections in the cast. One of those was the Muny in St.Louis last month … an outdoor theater.. where reportedly 3 cast members came down with Covid. No word in any press reports on how they are doing, just how great the season was… which is an indicator of how these stories will be reported from now on. The shows are more important than the people. Anecdotally I heard it was 6 fully vaccinated cast and crew members, not 3.
It’s inevitable this will happen on Broadway, tours and in regional theater. It already has….You just haven’t heard about it. It’s a human story. It’s a story about a virus being smarter than all of us. For now.
Bway will do it’s best to keep Covid infections under wraps. I’ve heard of several infections in shows that have just opened.
A friend went to see “Passover” last week… that show is a testament to federal grants keeping Broadway afloat for the time being.
It’s been heavily comped from the get go… anyway, she asked an usher if she could move to a seat a bit further back and wondered why the audience was crammed into the first few rows of the theater.
While pretty much the rest of the house was empty.
It’s stupid irresponsible, with Covid protocols out the boo boo , like covering keyboards after the show( do keyboards spread Covid?) to jam people up front in an attempt I would imagine to assuage the cast and make “Passover” resemble a hit.
That says a lot.
We gotta put on a show. The weekly grosses and attendance for every show on Broadway will remain confidential. They are a barometer for investors and audiences alike to gauge the viability of a run. And quality and interest in a show. Is it a hot ticket?
Again, that’s not putting a lot of faith in your product…or your audience if the numbers are kept secret.
It seems to me the “Broadway’s Back” stuff is pretty one sided, and a bit precious. It says “we’re back!”… that’s enough.
Is it enough?
How about “we need you back”.
You know, theater goers. The audience. The people who buy tickets. The peeps who support theater with their souls and pocketbooks.
We need an audience more than they need us at this point. It’s a bit “come and see how magnificent we are… we’re doing a show!”
And that’s sorta it.
A hit show is pretty much a thing of the past. “Music Man” may be one next year. But the old juggernauts that have reopened are not hits anymore. They’re struggling to survive.
Some of these musicals are 20 or 30 years old and have cycled through not only tourists but a generation at this point.
Tourists. Tourists are approximately 60% of ticket buyers on Broadway. They’re a long way from back to pre pandemic levels. And stories like a hostess getting the shit beat out of her at Carmine’s after asking for vaccination proof is trouble for NYC.
I don’t know, but this rollout of shows so far is weirdly like an”Alien: Resurrection/Lost Boys” mashup.
Anyway, the white knuckling of Broadway is completely understandable, and I know everyone involved..cast and crew and producers and publicists you name it…. must feel that anxiety of waiting for the other shoe to drop, courtesy of a pandemic. That anxiety is being guarded as closely as the grosses… which adds to the stress. There’s an awful lot of putting on happy faces.
“Smile baby! Smile”
But, there’s another part of the not so warm welcome back to Broadway that’s perhaps more damaging, and longer lasting .. not related to the pandemic necessarily……a crusade that is also sending a 🚫 vibe.
Maybe it’s just me. Or, maybe I’m just putting my neck on the line to talk about this. But, I know I’m not alone.
Under the guise of building back better I suppose, there’s been a push for inclusion and diversity that’s been so bungled, so mismanaged and self serving that it’s wafted a divisive, mean spirited message…not only to audiences, but to theater creators.
It’s hypocritical. And insincere. A willful suspension of disbelief that’s as willful as the Emperor’s new clothes.
Tribalism and cancel culture have infected American theater. An interview with Stephen Schwartz in the London Telegraph barely made a blip on the radar over here. The lack of hoopla says 2 things to me… people in the arts and education are afraid to speak out, and most are just ignoring an interview with one of the most successful theater composers for the last 50 years who’s comparing the current American theater to the downfall of the Arts in Communist China and totalitarian regimes.
“Everyone in the arts in America is talking about the tyranny of cancel culture and cultural appropriation,” says the Broadway composer Stephen Schwartz. “The funny thing is, no one dares to say it aloud. It’s like living in a totalitarian state. When your life is all about creating stories, and to be told you can only write about someone who is exactly like you, well, I’m not happy about being put in that situation.”
London Telegraph
Schwartz, who is married with two children (his son, Scott, directed the West End production of Prince of Egypt) is an amiable man, laid-back and good company. He’s keen to talk about a career that has won him three Grammys, three Oscars and a Golden Globe, but the conversation keeps drifting back to the new ideological militancy in America, which he compares to that of Maoist China. As a former president of the Directors Guild of America he has a particular horror of the censorship creeping through American education in particular. “We’ve lost the ability to have our world view challenged by another point of view. It’s as though we’ve become terrified of ideas. But ideas are how society progresses.”
London Telegraph
What about surviving today’s cultural climate? “I think the pendulum has swung so far it’s got to swing back now. It’s just too crazy. The whole point about art is empathy. At the end of the day we have to deal with it if we want to live in a free society.”
He’s right. About all of it.
Several colleagues of mine who teach theater in prestigious universities agree. But they’re so terrified of backlash, including getting fired, that they can’t speak publicly about it.
https://apple.news/A92vI3nsXQiCl4LsFH1H-hg
The new inclusion parade on Broadway is predicated on skin color… and exclusion. I can sum it up as….
Anything but white.
The inclusion and diversity groups that have sprung up during the pandemic… We See You White American Theater and Black Theater United and others … have targeted white women and gay white men, amongst less fun white people, as their oppressors, and mandated no “all white” creative teams.
That’s the goal.
The absurdity and folly of it all is the people signing the open letters and making demands are overwhelmingly elite in theater. The virtue signaling is deafening. The advocacy is for themselves primarily.
They’re either rich or successful already, and are happy to be in shows that charge hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars a ticket and appear on a Tony Award telecast that cost ten bucks to watch while they push for inclusion in the theater.
The structure of commercial theater is the big fish in reshaping Broadway … and the federal government has rewarded that machine with hundreds of millions of dollars in grants funded by taxpayers. “Hamilton” alone has received 40 million dollars of taxpayer money.
Buy hey, let’s try and figure out who’s the whitest on a creative team while the rich get richer.
Do I feel welcome in the theater on this day? Frankly, I don’t. I find the atmosphere so toxic and tribal and fraught and stale that I’m sitting this dance out for a bit.
I’m hoping the pendulum swings back too.
Welcome to the theater, tovarisch.
Robert DuSold 
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