By: Mario Mancini
Michael Paulson, the theatre reporter for The New York Times, recently interviewed many of the key players on Broadway for their perspective on the reopening and subsequent closings that have rocked the shows and individuals trying to make a living in the arts.
Paulson reports that, “during the week that ended Jan. 9, just 62 percent of seats were occupied. That’s the lowest attendance has been since a week in 2003 when musicians went on strike, and it’s a precipitous drop from the January before the pandemic, when 94 percent of seats were filled during the first week after the holidays. The casualty list is growing. Over the last month, nine shows have decided to close their doors, at least temporarily. “To Kill a Mockingbird,” a huge hit before the pandemic, last week that it would close until June; on Sunday “Ain’t Too Proud,” a successful jukebox musical about the Temptations, closed for good. Most shows struggle each January with a post-holiday slump. The musical, Ain’t Too Proud, was not doing well in January of 2020, prior to The arrival al of COVID-19, so it is not surprising it did not manage to survive.
According to Paulson, “Box-office grosses are falling off a cliff. The all-important Christmas and New Year’s weeks, which producers count on each year to fatten their coffers in anticipation of the lean weeks that follow, generated just $40 million this season, down from $99 million before the pandemic. Requests for ticket refunds are now so high that on some days some shows have negative wraps, meaning they are giving back more money than they are taking in.” The Broadway League has resorted to publishing the box office numbers for Broadway as a whole, instead of as individual shows, so that a single show isn’t stigmatized. The Broadway League has, according to Paulson, “asked labor unions to consider pay cuts to help shows survive this rough patch. At one point, in a step previously reported by The Daily Beast, the League asked workers to accept half-pay when Covid-19 forced performance cancellations; there have also been discussions about offering lower pay for scaled-back performance calendars.”
In a recent statement to The New York Times, “We’re doing everything we can to keep as many shows open as possible,” said Charlotte St. Martin, the president of the Broadway League, citing safety protocols and marketing efforts as well as labor discussions.” A response from the union representing is as follows, “It’s fair to say that all the unions recognize that shows remaining open is important — that represents jobs for actors and stage managers and everyone else who makes a living in the live theater,” said Kate Shindle, the president of Actors’ Equity. But Ms. Shindle noted that Broadway shows had received tens of millions of dollars in federal aid last year, and that the industry is no longer even disclosing weekly box-office grosses for individual shows, as it did before the pandemic. “Pretty universally, the unions’ response has been that if you want us to make financial concessions, we need financial transparency,” she said.
