This year, many things the people of the world hold dear to them have been taken away or considered unattainable due to the amount of risk the country faces during the current global pandemic.
Mid-March, the nation was forced to go on lockdown due to the feared COVID-19. This very quickly led to the closing of any and all non-essential businesses. Each individual person was then expected to quarantine themselves, wear masks/face coverings in public, remain at a six-foot distance from each person, and also accept the fact that daily activities that were once taken for granted were suddenly canceled and far out of reach.
Cases in New York quickly skyrocketed, making it a hot spot state with almost 500,000 cases to date. Only three other states out of the 50 experienced a higher number of cases. This is a huge cause for concern as this is an extremely high traffic tourist area in America.
On top of this rapidly becoming a national and global health crisis, COVID-19 has also been the cause of a terrible economic downfall. When non-essential businesses began shutting down countrywide, the employees were left without a source of income. As the shutdowns, mandates and cautionary procedures continued for many weeks, an abundance of stores and restaurants were not able to survive and unfortunately, left thousands of Americans unemployed. Although the food and retail industries were largely affected in a negative way, one of the biggest industries to take a massive hit was the entertainment industry. Sports were suddenly canceled for the remainder of the seasons and filming for upcoming shows and movies had to be postponed or canceled completely.
As the society works to make room and accommodations for sports teams and upcoming movie releases, the form of entertainment that lights up New York City still remains out of reach. March 12 was the day the lights went off in the Broadway theatre. It was said that the shutdown was to last until the middle of September, according to the New York Times, making it approximately a month-long closing. As increasing and fluctuating numbers of cases continued to flood the news channels, the date had moved back.
For aspiring performers, on the other hand, they will continue to be out of (performance) work until the industry is up and running in a very fluid motion.
On top of performers being out of work, many shows are focusing on budget cuts or completely shutting down. The behind the scenes work that goes into making Broadway productions possible and top quality is where the majority of the expenses lie. Without ticket sales, these expenses are becoming unmanageable. It is safe to expect that the show you’ve been wanting to see or bought tickets to will either be closed or extremely different from what originally was planned.
Broadway is considered to be the heart and lights of New York City, and many are fearful that this darkness will continue to live in.
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