Broadway to return in Fall 2021?- Page 2

[Sutton Ross]

Posted: 8/5/20 at 7:51pm

The Theater Leaders in New York have been handling this pathetically. 

Despicable, repugnant, greedy, and useless I will also add. 

 

[teatime2]

Posted: 8/5/20 at 8:05pm

Sutton Ross said: "The Theater Leaders in New York have been handling this pathetically.

Despicable, repugnant, greedy, and useless I will also add."

Amen!

[HogansHero]

Posted: 8/5/20 at 8:32pm

i respect a bunch of you. Could someone please explain to me who and what you are talking about here and in the UK? I honestly don't understand. I would love a clear-eyed, specific explanation, not more generalities. I'm all for ganging up on people but shouldn't we know what we are comparing? I see a lot of good product here on the streaming front, as well as in the UK, and I also see that everyone here is working at a distinct disadvantage because our horrible government is so much worse than their horrible government. Please sort this out for me.

[Phantom of London]

Posted: 8/5/20 at 8:51pm

Broadway is shut thru to January and will be pushed back past the next tentative re-opening date. So many dates have been made and missed, we just have to hold tight and sit it out.

[Mr. Wormwood]

Posted: 8/6/20 at 12:05am

I agree with those who say we just don't know. Could it be Fall 2021? Yep. Could it be Spring 2021? Yep. Could it be later than Fall 2021? Yep. We'll just have to see. Anyone giving a concrete date knows nothing more than any of us, it's just speculation. We have to see what happens with the virus and there's many things that we will know more about before any of those dates: vaccines, treatments, flare-ups, the presidential election. Literally no one knows.

[itsjustmejonhotmailcom]

Posted: 8/6/20 at 12:27am

Phantom of London said: "Broadway is shut thru to January and will be pushed back past the next tentative re-opening date. So many dates have been made and missed, we just have to hold tight and sit it out."

The messaging has been far from crystal-clear, but I don't think any of these dates were ever announced as reopening dates, just "canceled through" dates. So technically no reopening date has been missed since one has yet to be announced.

[itsjustmejonhotmailcom]

Posted: 8/6/20 at 12:29am

yankeefan7 said: "My daughter teaches with someone who was on maternity leave from "Wicked" before the shutdown and she has been told they will tentatively go back Oct 2021."

I'm sure your daughter's co-worker is lovely, but I doubt she has any inside info. The cast and crew are usually the last to know, and I can't imagine the Nederlanders just letting the theater sit dark without charging rent, or the producers paying rent for a show that isn't running, if Broadway ends up opening sooner than that. While shows would love to be able to choose when to reopen, the likely reality is the theater owners will tell them when they are reopening, and the show can either decide to reopen then or to close.

[Kimbo]

Posted: 8/6/20 at 7:01am

itsjustmejonhotmailcom said: "yankeefan7 said: "My daughter teaches with someone who was on maternity leave from "Wicked" before the shutdown and she has been told they will tentatively go back Oct 2021."

I'm sure your daughter's co-worker is lovely, but I doubt she has any inside info. The cast and crew are usually the last to know, and I can't imagine the Nederlanders just letting the theater sit dark without charging rent, or the producers paying rent for a show that isn't running, if Broadway ends up opening sooner than that. While shows would love to be able to choose when to reopen, the likely reality is the theater owners will tell them when they are reopening, and the show can either decide to reopen then or to close."

This isn’t exactly how it works, and under the circumstances is an oversimplistic way of looking at it); In normal times all this would be true, but these are not normal times, and a shutdown of Broadway for a year or 18 months is obviously unprecedented. When Broadway does come back, it will need all the help it can get and all the product that can be supplied, and I would think the shows we’re talking about here (the long-running tourist-driven hits) will be a big part of that.  For that matter, even if we’re close to recovering from the recession, it will still be more difficult for a little while than possibly at any point in Broadway history to raise the money for a big new Broadway musical, so if the Shuberts or Nederlanders lose these shows, say, the Majestic and the Gershwin could be sitting empty not just for another additional few months or a season, but for a very long time. So there will almost certainly be more cooperation and more give-and-take than you’re implying. I’m also quite certain the shows themselves would not spread unsubstantiated gossip to their casts and staffs, and others on the theater community, if they were not in almost constant communication with their theater owners/landlords/often investors or co-producers, on a regular basis and getting the latest information directly from them already.

In any case, all some of us have been saying is that some of the talent involved in some of these shows - Phantom and Wicked have been named, so I’ll leave it at that, even though other productions have heard the same thing - were informed that the most likely scenario is a return in fall 2021, and that no one right now is or should be counting on anything sooner than that. Could it be earlier, could a few productions start in the spring, would a fast vaccine production and distribution change everything, might a few small plays or one-person shows come in even without a vaccine? Absolutely.  Doesn’t change the fact that at least a few big shows are currently being told it’s looking like fall 2021. I hope they’re just allowing people to prepare for the worst, and hope like hell it turns out to be sooner.

 

 

[HogansHero]

Posted: 8/6/20 at 9:56am

just to underscore the point, when a company member tells someone something and that someone tells another someone something (this, btw, is the definition of double hearsay), the first question that is required is "by whom?" I'd be willing to bet a pair of house seats to Wicked that the company member was told by another company member and not by the production. 

[yankeefan7]

Posted: 8/6/20 at 10:11am

"I'm sure your daughter's co-worker is lovely, but I doubt she has any inside info. The cast and crew are usually the last to know, and I can't imagine the Nederlanders just letting the theater sit dark without charging rent, or the producers paying rent for a show that isn't running, if Broadway ends up opening sooner than that".

Yes, she is a very lovely young woman. I knew of her when she was a teenager and competed in dance competitions and she turned out very well. Anyway, she told my daughter she got notification from the show to expect to be back in October 2021.  Will that happen, no idea just saying what my daughter was told.

[Broadway61004]

Posted: 8/6/20 at 10:15am

Kimbo said: "When Broadway does come back, it will need all the help it can get and all the product that can be supplied, and I would think the shows we’re talking about here (the long-running tourist-driven hits) will be a bigpart of that."

But who's going to see those long-running tourist-driven hits?  I think the one thing we can be pretty certain on is that regardless of when there's a vaccine or when case numbers go down or when social distancing is relaxed or anything else is that tourism is going to be down in New York for quite a while (some people still won't feel safe travelling, many others will have been out of work and struggling financially so they won't be able to afford a vacation to New York, and many other reasons).  So for shows where the vast majority of audiences are tourists (because folks living in New York are not the ones flocking to see Phantom, Wicked, Lion King every night), would it really make financial sense for them to resume performances this spring?  That's the real question here.

[yankeefan7]

Posted: 8/6/20 at 10:18am

"I'd be willing to bet a pair of house seats to Wicked that the company member was told by another company member and not by the production. "

My daughter told me she said she got notification from the show (not cast member) to expect to be back in Oct 2021. I don't know if she got this notification because she was on maternity leave from the show. Supposedly, they gave her up to a year maternity leave. I will ask my daughter again if she does not mind to clarify this point and then you may owe me some house seats - lol. Just kidding !!!

[HogansHero]

Posted: 8/6/20 at 10:34am

some here might say they won't be all that expensive.

[jonah3500]

Posted: 8/6/20 at 10:52am

Sutton Ross said: "Some schools have already opened, and I give it a few weeks before they are shut down again. Colossal disaster."

The NYC DOE is actually the only major school system in the US still working towards a hybrid model. Some high schools in NYC (NEST+M, Stuyvesant) requested to go completely remote this fall, but the DOE rejected it. Their reasoning is that if any student chooses to opt out of in-person learning, they can go fully remote, so there’s no need for a whole school to be online. However I predict that they’ll open for a week before shutting back down.

[Kimbo]

Posted: 8/6/20 at 11:18am

jonah3500 said: "Sutton Ross said: "Some schools have already opened, and I give it a few weeks before they are shut down again. Colossal disaster."

The NYC DOE is actually the only major school system in the US still working towards a hybrid model. Some high schools in NYC (NEST+M, Stuyvesant) requested to gocompletelyremote this fall, but the DOE rejected it. Their reasoning is thatif any student chooses to opt out of in-person learning, they can go fully remote, so there’s no need for a whole school to be online. However I predict that they’ll open for a week before shutting back down."

I don’t want to be that negative about everything - love ‘em or hate ‘em Cuomo and Di Blasio have in the long run proven their mettle by overall doing a better job getting this currently under control than all other states - so you’d think they and the NYC DOE have a lot to lose by opening schools and not much to gain, since no other major cities are doing it... but I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re right.  I am surprised they’re forging ahead though. To say each student will have a mix of remote and in-person learning, with classroom attendance somewhere between 1 and 3 days a week on a rolling basis, sounds like a logistical nightmare for everyone to keep track of (I barely made it to homeroom on a regular basis even when I knew exactly where I was supposed to be and what time I was supposed to be there 5 days a week). But I’m sure wiser minds than mine are pondering all the various vicissitudes, so I’m definitely hoping for the best.  If it doesn’t go well in New York it’ll be like the summer camp I mentioned on the previous page (which shut down 3 days after opening in Georgia)... but if it does go well for the first few weeks, it could well be a tentative road map to gradually letting spectators back in to restaurants, movies, sports, comedy, concerts, and obviously, theater. 

Updated On: 8/6/20 at 11:18 AM

[HogansHero]

Posted: 8/6/20 at 11:28am

let us understand that, no matter what DOE and the mayor may think they are planning, the decision on whether to allow schools physically open is Cuomo's call. Unfortunately, much of what the mayor says is just a part of the antagonistic pas de deux in which the two of them have been engaged since day one. I think the odds of him allowing school this fall are less than the odds of Broadway opening in the Spring (another decision in which anyone other than the governor is just window dressing, as I have pointed out above and elsewhere).

[itsjustmejonhotmailcom]

Posted: 8/6/20 at 3:19pm

yankeefan7 said: ""I'd be willing to bet a pair of house seats to Wicked that the company member was told by another company member and not by the production. "

My daughter told me she said she got notification from the show (not cast member) to expect to be back in Oct 2021. I don't know if she got this notification because she was on maternity leave from the show. Supposedly, they gave her up to a year maternity leave. I will ask my daughter again if she does not mind to clarify this point and then you may owe me some house seats - lol. Just kidding !!!"

I don't think a show would, in any official way, tell a cast member when to "expect" to be back. You can't have a cast member hold dates without a contract behind it. Maybe gossip has passed from say someone in the GM office to a cast member, that seems likely. 

[KKeller6]

Posted: 8/6/20 at 4:28pm

It seems a few, "what to expect in the near future" after a vaccine articles have come up. Here's one.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/life-after-covid-19-vaccine_l_5f2ad9c6c5b64d7a55ed7b2c#

It sure seems like a spring opening is very optimistic at this point for the majority of Broadway. Who's gonna wanna sit in the Golden Theatre? A small 100 year plus old building with poor ventilation? 

[Sutton Ross]

Posted: 8/6/20 at 4:30pm

Depends on what show is being performed....

[yankeefan7]

Posted: 8/8/20 at 10:38am

"I don't think a show would, in any official way, tell a cast member when to "expect" to be back. You can't have a cast member hold dates without a contract behind it. Maybe gossip has passed from say someone in the GM office to a cast member, that seems likely. "

OK, I have no idea how this stuff works.

[yankeefan7]

Posted: 8/8/20 at 10:39am

" some here might say they won't be all that expensive. "

lol, you may be right !!