AlanB3 said: "I found this analogy in a NYT op-ed today to be compelling and a likely possibility for what the future may hold.
"The next round of social distancing will be activated more rapidly, because officials — and the public — will be more prepared. It should also be shorter, because we can assume that most of the people who were initially infected are likely to be immune next time around. But it will still disrupt people’s lives and the economy. We will still have canceled conferences and sporting events. People will not frequent restaurants and will not travel. The service industry will be severely curtailed. And it’s going to happen again and again.
Maybe the best analogy is pumping a car’s brakes on an icy road. Either doing nothing or slamming on the brakes leads to an accident. So we pump the brakes — pushing on the brakes, then easing up, and then applying them again — and after three or four times we slow down enough to stop."
Yup. Unfortunately, though (and unless someone RADICALLY reinvents the model for how the entire business works - i.e. moving entirely to streaming, etc.), this just isn’t practical or conducive at all for live theater. Especially when you consider that actors can start up on TV shows, movies, etc. and have those suddenly shut down for a few weeks or a month with (comparatively) minor disruption... I just don’t see how, by contrast, anyone enters into contract, let alone pre-production or rehearsal, for an upcoming stage show with the foreknowledge that at any point in the next 6-to-18 months there may be another outbreak causing us to do this all over again.
The overall financial toll on the film and TV industries, sports teams, etc is obviously worse - but at least they can theoretically get some teams together to play ball games for a month on, a month off - they can reopen movie theatres for a few weeks here and a few weeks there, closing them down inbetween - a museum could technically open tomorrow and let people in for however many days they can until the government orders them to temporarily close again- but with the average 2-to-4-week rehearsal period for a regional show, and 4-to-8 weeks for a Broadway musical, I just don’t see how in the world this model of “rounds of social distancing” determined by “several waves of illnesses” allows theatre (or opera, concerts, ballet, etc,) to resume business anything close to normal until the vaccine is readily available and distributed, which everyone is estimating will be around 18 months from now.
(I assume wiser minds than I are ahead of all of us on this one and are talking to various unions and theatre owners about how such a scenario would hurt the industry, and how they can hypothetically work around it.)
