Day 421…
Broadway to reopen on September 14 at full capacity!
A couple of days ago, Governor Cuomo announced that theatres and other indoor businesses can reopen at full capacity as of May 19. This followed an announcement from our Mayor that New York City would fully reopen by July 1. Initially, Governor Cuomo said that the May 19th date was the starting point and that theatres would be on their own schedules following that. Yesterday was when he announced the September date.
61 years ago, just 19 days from the day, President John F. Kennedy announced before a joint session of Congress that we were going to land a man on the moon.
Were we ready to land a man on the moon? Not really.
A month before, Yuri Gagarin from the Soviet Union had become the first person in space when he successfully orbited the earth in a Russian capsule. We sent Alan Shepard up a few weeks later, and he became the first American in space, but he only achieved a short sub-orbital flight rather than being able to orbit the earth the way the Russian had.
While Gagarin was up above us, Kennedy was embroiled in the Bay of Pigs fiasco. He needed something to turn the tide of public opinion. He consulted with his Vice President as well as with NASA administrator James Webb and decided that, even though nobody yet knew how, that this was an achievable goal. Landing a man on the moon before the Russians did would send a clear message of United States superiority.
Project Mercury was then adjusted towards this goal and the Gemini and Apollo programs were initiated to finally achieve it. On July 20, 1969, just over eight years later, Neil Armstrong took his first step on the lunar surface.
Between 1960 and 1973, the United States spent $28 billion to land men on the moon. In today’s adjusted dollars that amount would be $283 billion. There were setbacks and accidents. A fire killed the three Apollo 1 astronauts.
Was it worth it?
The moon is a desolate rock. Nobody quite knows what, if anything, to do with it. After the Apollo program was discontinued, nobody has been back. Eugene Cernan was the last person to stand on its surface in 1972 which is now fifty years ago.
John F. Kennedy was assassinated long before Apollo 11 fulfilled his dream, but it remains one of his greatest legacies. The moon race did, indeed, turn the tide of public opinion and became an immense point of pride for the country that endures to this day. Kennedy is considered by many to have been one of our greatest Presidents.
The announcement that Broadway will be back in September has been met with both elation and utter skepticism. The question on every skeptic’s lips is, how?
In recent days, Michael and I have been dining out with friends in person and indoors. A month ago, we would never have considered doing that. Over the past year, there have been all sorts of discussions about how handshakes and hugs were going to be things of the past. After the pandemic ran its course, people said we would move forward with less physical contact.
That is not going to happen. It is already started back up again. We are hugging our fully vaccinated friends and family. There is always a slightly awkward conversation before about whether we are each open to a hug, but as more and more people in our orbit become vaccinated and we get used to being back in the world, that’s going to pass.
As of this morning, just about 250 million vaccines have been administered and 32.3% of Americans are fully vaccinated. Nearly half of all eligible New Yorkers have received both doses of their vaccines. For any sort of herd immunity to be in place, however, we will need to get to somewhere between 70% and 80% of people inoculated.
The concern in New York is that even though everybody 16 and older is now eligible and many more vaccination sites have opened up, the number of people seeking the vaccine has dwindled. There are many people who are choosing not to get the vaccine. Too many people.
Michael and I are happy to eat indoors with vaccinated friends, but not if the restaurant seems too crowded and cramped. The places we have eaten indoors in have all had very high ceilings and tables spaced comfortably apart.
Neither Michael nor I have anything beyond the most rudimentary understanding of the virus and how it is spread. We get the general idea, but do we know enough about how air circulates in a given area and what the risks truly are? Of course not. We are operating on almost pure gut instinct.
There is a risk every single time you step onto an airplane. Do I know how an airplane works? No, I do not. I have a vague idea from having visited the Wright Brothers’ museums around the country and the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C., but I can’t look at an aircraft and know whether it is flight worthy or not. Even when I get on one that seems a bit suspect to me for whatever reason, I just take my seat, buckle up, and hope for the best. Eventually, that’s what we are going to feel about COVID.
So, back to Broadway. Am I willing to sit shoulder to shoulder with the rest of a sold-out crowd in a crowded theatre? Not yet. Will I be willing to do that in September? I don’t know… I am far more comfortable being near members of my own community who tend to be more informed, than I am with the population at large.
I am watching the news this morning for the first time in weeks and there was just a story about the rampant misinformation that is being circulated about the vaccine. Without any evidence, women are being told that the vaccine can compromise or terminate a pregnancy. Much of that disinformation can be traced back to a very small pool of people who have inundated websites with multiple postings.
Unless the theatres are extremely strict about checking tests and vaccination cards, I’m going to be pretty selective in what I choose to see at first. There are too many people buying into the lies.
The Phantom of the Opera has announced that it will resume performances in October. While I think that there are some New Yorkers who will want to go and see it purely out of a sense of nostalgia, Phantom’s audience has long been largely made up of tourists.
The United States floundered badly under the previous Administration in regard to our response to the pandemic. We have almost completely reversed that trend with the efficiency of our vaccine rollout. Other countries have not been nearly as lucky. Nobody in the Japanese government seems to have ordered any vaccine. The Japanese inoculation rate is just 1.6%. That’s among the worst rates on the planet. India is drowning in COVID cases. Brazil is still suffering badly.
For a Broadway show to be successful, we need an influx of foreign people from all of these places and more. Will they be allowed into the country in four months? What will happen if The Phantom of the Opera reopens, and not enough people come? Even though I am vaccinated, I am not going to want to sit next to a whole bunch of potentially non-vaccinated people. By September, it will have been six months since I was vaccinated. Will the vaccine still be as effective then? We don’t know yet.
Phantom is not alone. Other shows have announced that their performances will resume before the end of the year, too. Some have delayed their starts until next year. Certainly, at first, there will be a limited pool of people for these to pull from for their audiences. Most of the travel-related articles I have read are not expecting a return to pre-pandemic tourism levels until well into 2023.
Some theatres are allowing ticket buyers to be able to refund their tickets up to a couple of hours before curtain. If they are going to require testing or vaccination cards, that seems imperative. Nobody will buy a ticket if they can be turned away at the door without a negative test. How that ends up affecting the Box Office remains to be seen.
When John F. Kennedy announced that we were going to the moon, nobody was fully sure that we could do it. In his speech, he said, “We choose to go to the Moon. We choose to go to the Moon... We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.”
As many obstacles that are in our way, we have to bite the bullet and go back sometime so why not September? A good friend and mentor once told me, and I’m sure I’ve said this before, that however impossible it seems that your show is ever going to get to opening night, at some point you will wake up the day after opening and it will have been done.
We know that Broadway will reopen. At the moment, the ‘how’ of it all seems insurmountable, but we will figure it out. The first time back might be nerve-wracking and uncomfortable, but the second time will be better and by the fifth or sixth time it will just feel normal.
If we can land a man on the moon, we can reopen our theatres. We all know why we can’t reopen so we should let all of that fall away and start to figure out how to really do it.
If not now, when?
September might seem too soon, but we have four long months to get used to the idea and make it happen.
❤️🎭”They say the neon lights are bright on Broadway....”
my first thought too...”how”?
Me....can’t wait for Christmas / Spielberg’s
West Side Story opening date
what a gift to the greatest city that will be! 🌟🌟🌟🌟🙏❤️🎭