Broadway Open in January??

delusional

She also adds temperatures will be checked and mask will be worn

They can't just turn the lights back on and be ready. There will need to be a lot of prep to do. These casts will have been out of practice for 9 months, or more. There'll need to be rehearsals. There'll need to be changes in best practices front of house and backstage to ensure more safety. There'll need to things installed or updated or put into place and ready to go for audiences.

This is a process that will take weeks. They could possibly begin this process in January, but I highly doubt Broadway will be welcoming audiences back for performances then.

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That seems unrealistically optimistic. There are way too many factors; as people have previously stated....rehearsals, possible recastings, making sure theaters are appropriately set up and ready for anything that may come up, making sure the crew and front of house are protected.

How anyone can think actors are going to want to stagedoor, or that people are focused on that right now absolutely blows my mind. That type of thing meet and greets, backstage visits will be the least of the productions concerns. Ridiculous.

Jordan Catalano said: "And don’t forget pretty much 100% of these shows will need to be recast in some form or another. I can’t imagine every single person who was in a show on 3/12/20 will be available or even wanting to do it again almost a year later. Not to mention new people backstage including lighting/sound etc who will have to learn a brand new show."

A lot of that stuff can be done beforehand, though. Let's just say for the sake of argument that by January we can in fact have large enough gatherings that theatres can reopen at full capacity. That almost assuredly means that smaller gatherings would have been acceptable by October or so at the latest. Which means auditions can resume, rehearsals with 10-15 people can resume, scene shops can reopen with social distancing in place, cleaning crews can come into the theatres, etc. My point being that whenever the "we're approved to have large theatre crowd gatherings again" switch is flipped, that doesn't mean that's the first moment theatre folks go back to work or shows start to be worked on again. That's the last step, so whenever that happens, be it January or March or next June or whatever, shows will be able to start up pretty quickly then.

is there a reason we needed a second thread on this less than an inch from the first? This subject has been well dissected and discussed in the other.

I’ve made several comments regarding this over the past several weeks and truth be told I am getting really sick of saying it (that is not directed at any specific person by the way) so I’m not gonna repeat myself in detail but the truth is NO ONE KNOWS. Will Broadway reopen in the fall? Probably not. But is that out of the question? No. Unlikely, probably yes. Not impossible. January reopening? Probably significantly more likely than September. Definite? Also no. What kinds of safety precautions will need to be taken? We also don’t know that. It doesn’t matter if you’re a theatre professional or a healthcare worker or just a random person on the street, at this point no one knows what’s gonna happen in September, or January, or any other time until we’re a lot closer to said time. It’s not even June yet. We have the whole summer ahead of us before the date the shutdown is currently extended through. If people are serious about distancing and staying in and taking precautions, the sooner theatres can reopen - maybe even as soon as the fall. Yes, it’s harder as the weather gets warmer and stuff but the more we do it now, the sooner we get theatre back. Making assumptions now just doesn’t make sense.

To sum it up, I fully support people saying that September is the EARLIEST POSSIBLE reopening, and that the shutdown will most likely once again be extended. And to say that a January reopening is more realistic. To say that people should be prepared for the shutdown to last past the fall, and be prepared for safety precautions once theatres do reopen. But it’s not realistic now to make anything sound definite when it’s not. To say things now like “Broadway will definitely not reopen in September” or “Broadway will remain closed til 2021”, etc. The only definite thing we know now is that Broadway isn’t reopening before September at the soonest. Past that no one knows.

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again, not to repeat, but if folks here would read the other thread you would know that Broadway is not, can not, open in September. This is because, unlike many other things, Broadway cannot open with safety restrictions. Because there will not be a critical mass of audience. This has nothing to do with epidemiology. I agree we have no way of knowing when Broadway will reopen, but we do know when it will NOT open.

I fully support people saying that September is the EARLIEST POSSIBLE reopening,

Uh, considering that is LITERALLY the earliest possible opening.....you make no sense. If ya thought they were going to surprise everyone and open Wicked up for the 4th of July you are sorely mistaken.

You fully support people saying that?

Cool.

You know it, Jordan!

What we can agree on is that Broadway won’t open in January in the dead of winter, if anything it would be the November before or March/April after, but not January.

We can also agree on that when Broadway does open it will be very gradual, only maybe a handful of shows open to test the market and watch the grosses to see if it is worth opening a few more shows. You won’t have 25 shows open at once.

Phantom of London said: "What we can agree on is that Broadway won’t open in January in the dead of winter, if anything it would be the November before or March/April after, but not January.

We can also agree on that when Broadway does open it will be very gradual, only maybe a handful of shows open to test the market and watch the grosses to see if it is worth opening a few more shows. You won’t have 25shows open at once."

I actually don't agree with that at all. January seems like the perfect time, given that tourist crowds are the smallest then, but enough locals will be thrilled enough to come back to the theatre that it would still make it profitable. Rather than overwhelm the system with huge tourist crowds and all the Broadway-deprived locals at the same time.