In the ancient days of my youth, I spent many years in the
performing arts business. Cleveland area
theaters and other performing venues have been closed for over a year.
When the lockdowns and masks were rammed down our throats, I
immediately wondered how the arts communities would survive. Theater companies, opera companies,
orchestras, etc., and non-profit operations such as Playhouse Square always
have fund-raising challenges; they depend
on the goodwill and contributions of boards of trustees, and they are always
flirting with deficits. So I was
concerned after the lockdowns that one of the principal sources of cultural product
for, say, Playhouse Square, was the Broadway theater, and the Broadway theater was at risk.
Broadway has always been the sine qua non of legitimate and musical theater, both essentials in our American culture. So I was distressed but not entirely surprised to read a gloomy piece at American Thinker last week on the prospects for the Broadway stages. Here’s Alexander Nussbaum on the subject:
Bye-bye Broadway: A
grim prognosis for New York’s theaters
New York City Broadway theaters
closed on March 12, 2020. The closure was supposed to be for just one month.
Fourteen months later, the theaters are still closed. But now Governor Cuomo
has announced New York’s theaters are cleared for reopening, starting
September 14. No less than 23
plays are scheduled to open between September and November.
Theaters will be allowed to open at
“full capacity,” but with “social
distancing,” with “capacity limitations are only governed by the ability of
people to socially distance by six feet.” Maybe this makes sense to someone who
is “woke,” but it does not make sense to me. Theater seats are not exactly six
feet apart. In fact, a problem with Broadway’s theaters when they were open was
that, when most of the theaters were built, only a tiny percent of the
population was over 6 feet tall or over 250 pounds.
Broadway’s 41 theaters range in
capacity from 600 to just under 2,000, but more than 30 [theaters] seat more
than 1,000. A play has to be at close to 100% audience capacity to be
economically viable. Taking out seats would require drastically raising already
pre-Wuhan Virus sky high prices. Cuomo has hinted all theater patrons will
require proof of vaccination.
I keep hearing how resilient New
York City is and that it will be back. But I think New York City is finished
forever as a “world” capital; it is Karachi, Pakistan now – the biggest city
and commercial, not political, capital of a populous nation.
I’ll believe the Broadway theater
will be back and viable when I see it happen.
Mr. Nussbaum looks at the demographics, the economics
including the costs of a night out on the town, household income stats, and
especially tourism:
Sixty-five percent of attendees
were tourists. The theater thus depends on tourists.
Let’s us add that all together and
see how it can not mean anything else but the death of Broadway theater.
How is New York City, with its
defunded and demoralized NYPD and rising murder and shooting rate, going to
attract tourists? Attacking and killing the few tourists that
were still coming, is now in, in this woke BLM city. What is the difference
between New York and Mount Everest? Both have no culture, no economy, no
restaurants, no police, and are extremely dangerous. But Mount Everest will get
tourists.
Whites and the rich have fled the
city. With the economy demolished, who is left to afford the Broadway ticket
price, which because of fewer seats, will be even higher than the 145 dollars
the report quoted? Older people are still afraid to leave the house because of
the virus, and many did not survive Cuomo.
Read the full article here.
Those arts organizations that can survive to re-produce plays,
musicals, operas, or music already created might revert to the local community-theater
model, no longer dependent on huge grants and contributions from individuals and
companies, and no longer committed to union contracts. Another possible
outcome, as we sink further into socialism, will be a dreaded “partnership” between the
arts communities and the socialist state. Under that model, major government and corporate grants may roll in, but at a terrible price: a professional performance might be
great, but it’s more likely to be laced with, or used to advance state propaganda.
On the other hand, maybe Ohio audiences will tear a page from Texas. Headline from HotAir:
Two weeks ago 73,000 people watched a fight indoors in Texas.
What's happened with COVID since then?
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