A traumatic time thats yielding some good for both the art and the people who make it.
Fall Preview
A cautiously optimistic guide to an (almost) normal season.
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Of the 41 theaters in the Broadway League, almost every one is booked.
Tourism numbers are still low, but at least the place feels full.
The past year has been a time to think critically about the structures that underlie decisions like these.
One of the key lessons: Programming isnt everything.
The League is still overwhelmingly white, as is 100 percent of the proprietorship of those Broadway theaters.
The ought-to-be-a-classicTrouble in Mindwill close on January 9.
Five of the seven plays from this Black Renaissance wave are scheduled to be gone by early January.
Is Broadway turning over a new leaf?
But even the sure-bet shows are iffy in this fearful maybe-twilight of the virus.
Every revelation about theDelta variantand our national response has sent optimism reeling.
Andrew Lloyd Webber says he may have to sell his West End theaters because of his losses.
The known costs go into the billions.
Grants meant to stanch the bleeding have been slow to disburse.
For art to return to pouring money into the state treasury, something must ease the art-makers way back.
It is both heartening and a drop in the bucket.
That recovery depends too on the theater they can come back to.
She advocates for withholding ones talent until the form can be fixed.
Saying no to self-destructive work has been a theme of summer 2021.
Thats why even a beautiful and much-longed-for fall season makes some folks feel a little cautious.
But there has been some good news!
The shutdown paradoxically empowered the labor sector.
Unemployed actors turned themselves into lobbyists, helping to secure federal aid for the field at an unprecedented level.
Exploitative systems were confronted in the public square and in many cases, labor seems to have won.
The Metropolitan Opera locked its stagehands out … and eventually capitulated.
Sound engineers walked off the job during a thunderstorm in Williamstown, winning new salaries and protections.
And organizations that started in the shutdown have been working on cementing new practices.
Murmurs from up and down the city hint that other changes are coming.
Thank goodness its a form accustomed to starting fresh with every show.
But the audience also has its own work to do.
For once, we are entering a season that is, mostly, just for New Yorkers.
Do we attend the flashy show that charges more than $400, or nah?
Are we excited by the new young writers?
Or are we going back to the old chandelier-swinging workhorses because it turns out we missed them?
Do we value thought?
Even though were still all a little frightened, theres a banquet laid out.
So what do we want?
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