Charlotte St. Martin, the president of the Broadway League, predicts that Broadway will not reopen until January 2021.
For St. Martin, Broadway’s post-pandemic reopening means safety protocols being in place to ensure audience members can sit next to each other as they did before, likely—at least in the first phase of reopening—wearing masks, with actors, singers, and dancers able to perform in the same numbers and proximity, and with the same energy, as before.
According to the Daily Beast, St. Martin cited that in the last ten weeks, Broadway has been losing an average of $35 million a week; this will remain so for however long Broadway remains closed. If this continues to January, that means a total loss of around $1.5 billion—with the sum heading towards $2 billion if the closure continues into next spring.
This year, she doesn’t think a Broadway that reopened before Christmas would have had enough time to acclimatize to handle the possible Christmas crowds as things get back to normal. “We do anticipate some loss of business when we reopen,” said St. Martin in the Daily Beast. “But we’re not going to open until we have the information that tells us it’s safe to sit next to each other, and for the cast and crew to be dancing and kissing and everything else they do, sweating on each other. We’re not going to put people’s lives at risk, at least not knowingly.”
Audience members should expect to be required to wear masks and go through temperature checks, as well as get firm guidance on how to enter and leave theaters. Read more about St. Martin's predictions for Broadway reopening here.
Photo: Getty