Broadway theatres in New York City will remain closed until at least June 7, according to the industry’s trade organisation, the Broadway League.
The announcement means that the initial April 13 target for reopening the venues, which have been shut due to the Covid-19 outbreak since March 12, has evaporated.
A total of 41 theatres are located in the district in Manhattan and support nearly 90,000 jobs. Thirty-one productions were cancelled on the opening day of the shutdown alone, with concerns increasing about the financial impact for stakeholders.
However, there is little prospect of the venues reopening in the foreseeable future, with New York City having been particularly badly hit during the pandemic. By the close of the day yesterday (Wednesday), 4,260 people had died with coronavirus in the city, accounting for nearly one-third of all of the outbreak’s recorded deaths in the United States.
“Our top priority continues to be the health and well-being of Broadway theatre-goers and the thousands of people who work in the theatre industry,” said Charlotte St. Martin, president of the Broadway League. “Broadway will always be at the very heart of the Big Apple, and we join in looking forward to the time when we can once again experience live theatre together.”
Broadway producers are braced for a collapse in key metrics for the 2019-20 season, which has now effectively been curtailed, with the 2018-19 campaign having generated record revenues of $1.829bn.
As previously reported in TheTicketingBusiness, total attendance reached 14.77 million in the 52-week 2018-19 season. The total represented a 7.1% increase on the 2017-18 figure of 13.79 million across a 53-week period.
Attendance, gross takings and playing weeks had increased year-on-year on Broadway since the 2016-17 season, with revenues having doubled in the decade before the unprecedented impact of Covid-19.
Image: George Hodan
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