If You Rebuild It, Will They Return?

AMERICAN THEATRE: It is perhaps a dubious sign of progress that the third anniversary of the COVID shutdown—which in the theatre field is marked as beginning March 12, 2020, the night Broadway went dark, along with most live performance venues across the U.S.—passed fairly quietly a week ago. While we can’t say we are in a post-pandemic world as long as the virus’s daily death count remains in the hundreds and COVID safety advisors remain on theatres’ payrolls, we are, for better or worse, in a post-pandemic posture as a society.