Public Sale tickets

I'm wondering, as a HS choir teacher, if the Broadway Theaters were to open in 2021 sometime after January 3rd, would there actually be tickets available to purchase for the general public? I'm assuming there are a fair amount of season ticket holders at every venue and the theaters are not likely(guessing here) to open up at full capacity, so with some sort of social distancing in place, will the season ticket holders be the only ones that will be able to go to the shows? I still have, at the moment, a trip planned for my choir to NYC in late March, early April and our itinerary has three Broadway shows on it. I'm assuming that I should change my trip destination, or are there other options if my assumptions are correct? Thank you so much!

Do you think they WILL reopen on January 5th or are they being optimistic?

My apologies for Lizzie's remark, you did not put a source so she was not feeling your question.

If you mean season ticket holder's for regional theaters, there is a pretty good possibility that things will start up again in January, with a social distancing. It's much easier to do that, and several theaters are already presenting plays with 30% capacity or doing musicals under tents in their parking lots.

Obviously, that is not possible with Broadway theaters. You can buy tickets for January, and perhaps a few shows will be open but it's not very likely. Hope for the best, but plan for the worst. Also, reopening a show in January is risky because it's usually a very low grossing month.

If you're taking a large group of kids to the city I would wait until an effective vaccine becomes available. Not only will your group be in a crowded theater but the bus or plane or train will also be crowded. Could you re-schedule your trip for later in the Spring?

Updated On: 7/30/20 at 03:15 PM

Jordan Catalano said: "Obviously there’s no way to know for sure but with a vaccine more and more likely being distributed (to select groups first) as early as this Fall, I think the Spring timeline here is looking very hopeful. I’m even more positive than ever now that I’ll be seeing West End shows months before Broadway shows, but I still think the March/April goal is attainable."

I respect so many people who post here - truly - but along with many others I've really come to believe that a spring reopening for Broadway is magical thinking. Which studies or articles are you referring to when you say a vaccine looks more and more likely to be available as early as fall? The most optimistic projections I've seen by Dr. Fauci and others seem to hope for an effective vaccine to HOPEFULLY be approved by November or December, but even in that best-case-scenario event there's almost no way it will be made available to enough of the population by a month or two later to allow Broadway producers to feel confident enough to begin rehearsals right after the New Year for a March or April opening.

An article yesterday with health experts at Johns Hopkins, which specifically addressed realistic timelines (that's in the title of the piece), quotes them as saying "A reasonable timeline for wide distribution of vaccines is likely the end of 2021... Even after we have a vaccine that works and even after we demonstrate its safety and efficacy and even after we’ve produced enough doses to go around, at least for the first round, we still need to get it delivered and that’s going to be a big challenge,” Dr. Bar-Zeev said. “What we’re seeing is science live in real time. I think in the long run, that’s good for science and that’s good for community trust. In the short run, it leaves people feeling a little bit, say, uncomfortable.”

I so deeply want for you to be right and for me to be wrong... I love the optimism on here, as well as elsewhere, and at bare minimum it certainly does no harm. But remember that only 2 months ago experts were trying to see if there was some way to get students back into classrooms before the end of the school year.... and now there's a question of how much in-person in-classroom learning will be possible for the entire rest of the calendar year, 6 months from now. Many outdoor parades and expos scheduled for the first few months of 2021 have already been postponed or canceled. So personally speaking I don't think scheduling school trips to see Broadway shows for this winter is a wise use of planning, when I've reluctantly come to think HogansHeroes may be right when he says "My belief is that we will not see a Broadway musical (I think we may see a few plays) before Fall '21. I have been saying this since April and I still think it is going to be the case." But again, I miss theater so much (I have tickets to two major rescheduled productions next spring) and would love to be surprised.

Well Fauci is testifying right now and again said that a vaccine could not only be approved but (because doses are already being mass produced) started to be distributed before the new year. And until I hear him say something differently, I hold to my hope.

Hope is a good thing. I think there are two pieces to this puzzle however, an effective vaccine that is widely available, and a return to New York of tourists in the volume needed to sustain most shows (especially musicals). I think the latter is going to prove a steep climb, for several reasons (people not quickly embracing the vaccine, people dealing with the 1/3 reduction in gdp and lost income by conserving their luxury expenditures, etc). So... if there is a distributed vaccine (and it will need to be not just in millions but hundreds of millions) we MAY see Scott Rudin mounting his pre-sold TMM but I do not think all productions are going to feel like they are not going to take a bath. So optimism is good but I will reserve mine for the Fall.