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By Michael Paulson, Ben Sisario and Robin Pogrebin
Broadway plans to start performing at least 3 dozen exhibits before the end of the year, but manufacturers don’t know if there will be enough tourists, who usually make up two-thirds of the audience, for all of them.
The Metropolitan Opera is making plans to return in September, but if its musicians agree to pay discounts.
And New York’s famous nightlife —the dance clubs and concert halls that give the city a reputation for never sleeping) has been hampered by the slow and failed rollout of a federal aid program that has wrongly declared that some of the best in town. . . The well-known nightclub entrepreneurs are dead.
The return of the arts and entertainment is to New York’s economy, and not just because it’s a primary industry that hired another 93,500 people before the pandemic and paid them $7. 4 billion in salaries, according to the state comptroller’s office. of New York’s lifeblood: a magnet for visitors and citizens that will play a key role if the city is to remain important at a time when outlets are suffering from e-commerce, the ease of remote paintings is forcing businesses to reconsider the desire to stay in central business districts and suburbs are booming.
“What is a city without social, cultural and artistic synergies?Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo asked earlier this year in a speech about the importance of the arts to the city’s recovery. “New York City is not New York without Broadway. And with Zoom, many other people have learned that they can do business from anywhere. Add to that the rise in crime and homelessness, and you will have a national urban crisis. “
And Mayor Bill de Blasio, who might have distanced himself from the arts earlier in his tenure, has become a cultural animator in the final days of his administration, launching a $25 million program to get artists back to work, creating a vaccination site on Broadway for the theater. industry staff and making plans for a “reunion concert” in Central Park next month with Bruce Springsteen Array Jennifer Hudson and Paul Simon to announce the return of the city.
Eli Dvorkin, editorial and policy director of the Center for an Urban Future, said, “In my view, there might not be a solid recovery for New York without the arts of acting at the forefront. He added: “People here gravitate to the cultural life of the city. »
There are signs of hope everywhere, as vaccinated New Yorkers reappear this summer. Destinations like the Whitney and brooklyn museum are crowded again, though hourly reservations are still required. rock back to Madison Square Garden.
Shakespeare in the Park and the Classical Theatre of Harlem present new adaptations of classic plays in city parks; the Park Avenue Armory, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and several off-Broadway publicity theaters have featured productions inside; and a new outdoor amphitheater draws crowds on Little Island, the new headquarters of the Hudson River.
Haley Gibbs, 25, an administrative assistant who lives in Brooklyn, said she felt the pulse of the city return as she waited to attend “Drunk Shakespeare,” an off-Broadway event that resumed its performances in Midtown.
“I feel like it’s our soul that’s been brought back to us, in some way,” Gibbs said, “which is super dramatic, but it’s something like that. “
But we have some of the tests for the cultural landscape of the city waiting for us.
The withdrawal (downsizing, downsizing) has proven to be a brutal but effective survival strategy. Arts personnel have faced record unemployment and some have not yet returned to work, yet many companies and organizations have been able to cut costs and wait safely. for reopening. Now that it’s time to start hiring and spending again, many cultural leaders are worried: can they thrive with fewer tourists and travelers?How much will the security protocols cost? Will the donors who mobilized the emergency for a less glamorous reconstruction era stay?
“Next year may prove to be our biggest financially toughest,” said Bernie Telsey, one of the 3 art managers at MCC Theatre, an off-Broadway nonprofit. “In many ways, now it’s like a new company – it’s not just about turning on the lighting devices. Everything is a bit uncertain. It’s like starting over. “
The fall season promises to be the big test. “Springsteen on Broadway” last month, but the rest of Broadway isn’t resuming yet: The first musicals are scheduled for September, starting with “Hadestown” and “Waitress,” followed by warhorses. they come with “The Lion King”, “Chicago”, “Wicked” and “Hamilton”.
The question that lies ahead is whether there will be enough spectators at all those exhibits, while there have been symptoms that some visitors are returning to the city, tourism is not expected to return to pre-pandemic levels in 4 years. , some of Broadway’s retroactive exhibits will first begin with reduced hours, generating fewer than the same 8 old exhibits consistent with the week, as manufacturers assess price ticket demand.
And “Harry Potter and the Cursed Legacy,” a big-budget Tony-winning play that was performed in two parts before the pandemic, will be reduced to a bachelor show when it returns to Broadway on Nov. 12; its manufacturers cited “the advertising demand situations facing the theater and tourism industries emerging from global shutdowns. “
“What we want to do, which has never been done before, is open all of Broadway in one season,” said Tali Pelman, the lead maker of “Tina – The Tina Turner Musical. “
As New York begins its post-pandemic life, we explore the lasting effect of Covid on the city.
Safety protocols have been quickly replaced, as more and more people are vaccinated, but there is still the fear of going too fast. In Australia, reopened screens have been regularly interrupted due to lockdowns, while in England, several screens have been forced to cancel. actions to comply with isolation protocols that some too restrictive.
“On a basic level, our fitness is at stake,” said Lin-Manuel Miranda, author of “Hamilton,” which plans to resume performances on Broadway on Sept. 14. “You are wrong and we open too soon”, then we reassign and close again, it is almost unthinkable ».
Some presenters worry that with fewer tourists, arts organizations will fight each other to get the attention of New Yorkers and locals.
“At first there will be a lot of festivals for a smaller audience, and it’s scary,” said Todd Haimes, artistic director of Roundabout Theatre Company, a nonprofit that operates 3 theaters on Broadway and two off-Broadway.
Another challenge looming is public protection concerns. Bystanders were hit by stray bullets in shooting incidents in Times Square in May and June, leading Mayor de Blasio to promise more officials to protect and reassure the public in this densely populated community of tourists and theaters.
The City Tourism Organization, New York
The economic risks to the city are high. Broadway exhibits give paintings to actors, singers, dancers and bailiffs, but also, indirectly, to waiters and bartenders, hotel painters and taxi drivers, who then spend part of their salary on goods and services. During the season, Broadway generated $14. 7 billion in economic activity and supported 96,900 jobs, taking into account the direct and indirect spending of tourists who cited Broadway as a prime explanation for why making a stopover in the city.
“We’ve been through a very complicated time and now you have this new variant, which is a little scary, but I still hope we’re on the right track,” Shane Hathaway, co-owner of Hold Fast, told Restaurant Row bar and place to eat asking “Do you miss the performing arts?So do we!”” We’re already seeing a lot more tourists than last year,” Hathaway said, “and I hope we continue. “
At the Met Museum, which relies on tourists, attendance has returned, but not until the end: it is now open five days a week and has attracted another 10,000 people for several days, whereas before the pandemic, it is open seven days a week and welcome. an average of 14,000 visitors per day. In addition: more and more visitors are local and do not have to pay for the entrance; the Met continues to forecast a $150 million profit loss due to the pandemic.
If the Met, the country’s largest museum, is in trouble, it means small art establishments suffer even more, especially those outdoors in Manhattan, which tend to have less pedestrian traffic and fewer giant donors. Music, for example, is watching from a pandemic era without wasting millions of revenue, cutting its staff and having to loot its endowment to pay the bills.
The city’s music scene has faced its own demanding situations, from the most popular bars to nightclubs and the Metropolitan Opera.
According to a manager through the city council, some 2,400 concert and entertainment venues in New York City supported nearly 20,000 jobs in 2016, but the sector has gone through difficult times.
Many are waiting to see if they will get help from a $16 billion federal grant fund to maintain music clubs, theaters and other live event businesses devastated by the pandemic, but the program’s implementation, the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant initiative, has been slow Some owners, adding Michael Swier, the founder of the Bowery Ballroom and Mercury Lounge in New York. , they were first denied attendance because the program mistakenly believed they were dead.
Elsewhere, a 1,600-person musical and arts area in downtown Brooklyn’s trendy neighborhood reduced its capacity from 120 to five when the pandemic hit. After the state lifted restrictions on small sites in June, it reopened and began hiring workers. , however, their owners are concerned that it will take them a year or two to become profitable again.
The club obtained assistance in the form of a $4. 9 million grant for closed sites from the federal government, which it said would be used to pay off its debts, adding rent, utilities and loans, and to fix and pay staff. be used only to get us out of Covid,” said one of the site’s partners, Dhruv Chopra.
And the Met Opera is still uncertain whether it will be able to raise its golden curtain in September, as expected, after the longest prevention in its history. The salaries of their companions, soloists and machinists. The company is now in tense negotiations with the musicians in its orchestra, who have been placed on unpaid leave for nearly a year. If they don’t get a deal, the Met , the country’s largest performing arts organization, will likely miss out on being a component of the initial push for energy reopening.
Some cultural leaders are already past the fall, facing the challenge of keeping up to get tickets after the initial enthusiasm for reopening fades.
“We have a lot of paintings to make so that other people know we’re open,” said Thomas Schumacher, president of Disney Theatrical Productions, “so that other people feel comfortable coming in, keeping the exhibits faked, and spending the holidays and going through the winter.
Laura Zornosa contributed to the report.
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