The Broadway opening night of Six, the propulsive pop musical focusing on the lives of the wives of Henry VIII, was due to happen a year ago tonight. It was the last Broadway show this reporter saw, the theater at that Saturday afternoon matinee already not full, and audience members noticeably nervous. Six didn’t open on March 12, 2020. Instead, Broadway, under the order of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, went dark. Everything shut. Nothing has been performed in the 365 days since.
If, as is now hoped, theaters reopen in the fall, Charlotte St. Martin, president of the Broadway League—the national trade association for the Broadway industry, which oversees 41 theaters—estimates that lost revenues will amount to $3 billion in ticket sales, and $22 billion when it comes to the wider economic impact on New York City.
“Reopening Broadway is going to be ten times harder than shutting down,” Kate Shindle, president of Actors Equity Association (“Equity”), which represents more than 51,000 actors and stage managers, told The Daily Beast.
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