Advances to Pay Expenses?

It could be that she misspoke and meant the reserve (a lot of productions will include a certain amount in their capitalization to cover expenses during a portion of the show's run while they build up word of mouth and advance ticket sales). It could also be that there are certain types of loans available where the advance is used as a form of collateral (I'm just speculating here, but it doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility that a loan to help a show such as Wicked or Hamilton, both of which would have significant advance sales, to cover some "re-start up" expenses would be a much surer bet to a financial institution than to a new show that hadn't even opened yet and had little in ways of advance sales going into the summer months even before the shut down happened).