www.broadwayworld.com: During a press conference that New York governor Andrew Cuomo held today, it was announced that New York event, arts and entertainment venues holding less than 10,000 people would be allowed to reopen at 33% capacity beginning April 2. Up to 100 people will be allowed indoors, and 200 people will be allowed outdoors.
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Even with this reopening, this will likely either prevent theaters from opening or make tickets extremely expensive to where it is not possible for the average person to go see a play. Reopening to only 33% capacity would make profitability for almost anything nearly impossible. Generally, these venues are only profitable when they are at 80% capacity or more. If they cannot meet this then if they can they will choose to raise prices. I hope that theatres can open sometime in the near future, but I do not see how it would be possible for an average student to see a play sometime within the next 6 months. I believe that entertainment venues will reopen soon but they will not be permitted to open at full capacity, it will probably take another year for us to reopen to full capacity. So maybe this is great for some performances and types of entertainment that could double their prices, but the average broadway show cannot do this.
First of all, am I just dumb or does this math not work?: theaters that can seat “10,000 people would be allowed to reopen at 33% capacity beginning April 2. Up to 100 people will be allowed indoors, and 200 people will be allowed outdoors.” So say you had a theatre that could seat 9, 999 people. At thirty percent capacity that would be about 3,300 people so where the heck did the limit of 100 people come from??? This didn’t make sense to me and it bugged me the rest of the article. Also how do you watch a play outdoors in New York City%? Are they going to shut down Broadway, put folding chairs on the street outside the theaters and then make them watch a live recording on a projector??? I just have so many questions about just those two sentences.
When I first heard of this happening my initial thought was that it was too good to be true. Even after reading the article explaining the reasoning behind it, I still think it will either be canceled in a few days or will run for a few days before it inevitably gets shut down. There are so many people that need to be in a theater in order to keep production running, that I don’t think that keeping the crew at the bare minimum will be enough. Perhaps what will happen is that the shows will have to be modified, with most of the technical elements, or really anything that requires a lot of personnel, be stripped down. With that said, it is exciting to see a test run. My second concern still is how will the shows manage to not lose money in the process. It is already hard to pay rent with a full house sometimes, so I’m curious if we will hear anything on the financial side of things.
While on the surface, this news of Arts and Entertainment venues is very exciting after a whole year of everything being shut down, there is a lot more to consider here. If these venues are able to reopen, I anticipate that a lot of businesses will still struggle to stay open, as profits will be slashed by a whole two thirds. The only two real solutions I see to this issue are either the venues staying closed regardless of the lessened restrictions, or ticket prices being bumped up to a point of being unreasonably expensive. Operating such venues is a difficult and costly process in general, and to add upon that the additional requirements and protocols for Covid safety as well as less than half capacity, it will be extremely difficult for these venues to stay afloat without jacking up admission prices. A lot of venues, especially Broadway houses, already charge prohibitively high admission rates for many people, and raising the prices even more is just unreasonable. On the other hand, though, remaining closed will also just cut off any profits entirely. It will be a difficult call and I am interested to see which venues will remain closed and which will still reopen.
Perhaps I am just very pessimistic with this entire situation and covid in general but I don't think this is the right move for theaters. Even though these venues are reopening at 33% capacity it seems like the burden will be put onto the venues and the shows themselves. What will happen if even one of the audience members has covid and it went undetected. Or if anyone in the production were to catch the virus at a very unlucky time. I feel as though theatre is an industry where people have to be so close to each other that a spread is at a very high chance. For instance if a cast member were to catch the virus near tech week or close to opening would the entire venue shut down for 2 weeks. On top of that what would the venue do about refunding tickets to people who have already bought them or would they continue to have performances at very high risk. If they do call of performances will actors and technicians be paid for those two weeks or would they be forced to survive without a full 2 weeks of payment. There just seems to be a lot of logistics that need to be sorted out and there needs to be a solid contingency plan before venues fully open up. I am happy that steps are being taken however I wish we could hear more about the procedures and logistics.
I am honestly so afraid of this happening. I am obviously very excited for theaters to reopen again all over the country but I am so hesitant about them opening back up in major cities like New York and what will happen to COVID cases when they do. I think that it would be a huge mistake to open back up in any large capacity before a significant amount of the population has been vaccinated. I personally think that it would not be a good idea to open theaters back up in person until the fall. I know that a lot of summer stock theaters are chancing opening back up this summer but those then to have more outdoor capacities and and tend to be in smaller towns. I think that reopening in cities, especially NYC where the cases have been so out of control at times, is a very risky thing. Maybe I'm just pessimistic but I am genuinely scared of what reopening event spaces too soon will do to the virus and the cases associated with it.
I want the arts to come back as much as the next person, lord knows I am always bitter about how sports are basically all returning to normal, but I am hesitant to be excited about this. I will be the first to admit that I am one to be "overly stringent" about COVID guidelines. My county has been going back and forth between stay at home orders and lower level, fewer guideline tiers. Regardless, I have stayed home whenever possible (which is basically all the time), I do not invite people over, my "pod" is my immediate family, I do not go to restaurants or indoor venues if it isn't a necessity. I honestly think this move by Cuomo is not the best idea. Also, as Rhiannon pointed out, the math doesn't seem to add up. All things considered, I am glad that indoor capacity for larger venues is 100 people and no higher, but 100 is definitely not 33% of a 10,000 seat venue.
New York entertainment venues opening up again is huge! Despite the rule that venues can only be open up at 33% capacity, in spaces that have 10,000 (which is the biggest size venue that is allowed to re-open, that is 3300 people! This sort of contradicts the rule that 100 people can be allowed indoors and 200 people can be allowed outdoors. I’m actually not too sure how I stand with all these re-openings. While obviously, I want entertainment to go back to the way it was, and for life to resume as normal, it feels too early. COVID cases are still high, people are still getting sick, hospitals are full, and people are dying. It hardly feels like the time to rejoice and open up entertainment venues. I understand the urgency and want though. Lockdown first began a year ago, in March of 2020. I actually had my senior trip to New York in March of 2020— the weekend we touched down in New York was also the weekend they declared COVID a state emergency. Broadway closed days after I came back home. Still, despite having a lot of time passed, that doesn’t mean COVID is “over.” It’s going to take work, work that a huge population of American citizens need to put in. And they haven’t been doing the work, so how can we be expected to reap the rewards?
While I am of course happy that venues might be able to actually hold performances once again, I have to say that I don't fully support reopening just yet. Yes, the spike that we witnessed in the past few months is finally beginning to recede, and yes, the expansion of vaccination programs and vaccine supply is an amazing ray of hope that this pandemic may be nearing its end, but we simply aren't out of the woods yet. COVID is still a serious problem. With new variants starting to come out of the woodwork that are even more likely to spread around and an uptick in state governors relaxing restrictions around the country, I have a very bad feeling that things will get much worse before they get better. People are getting laxer and laxer in their observance of what restrictions still remain, and talk in the news about vaccines seems to have made people complacent, thinking they will be "saved" in the end. It's too early to start relaxing restrictions. In the entertainment world, we've seen great strides being made in terms of the creativity and quality of performances being given virtually, and I think this will be more than enough to hold us over until things are safe. Obviously, it's not an answer that solves everything. Many people are still out of work and desperately need things to start to return to normal, but I think the options we still have now are far better than even more people dying to this pandemic.
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