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Broadway’s industry trade association announced last week that it will put an end to its mask mandate for audiences that have been in effect since September.
The Broadway League said it will reevaluate conditions in mid-July. Theaters are currently opened at 100 percent capacity and all 41 official theaters will continue to mandate COVID-19 vaccinations, The New York Times reported.
The Trends Journal has long pointed out that Broadway was a top industry impacted by the coronavirus outbreak and subsequent lockdowns. (See “READY FOR A BROADWAY SHOW?” (11 May 2021), “BROADWAY GOING DARK, COMMERICAL REAL ESTATE ON THE EDGE” (16 Dec 2021), and “NEW YORK, NEW YORK… IT (WAS) A WONDERFUL TOWN,” 30 Jun 2020).
Broadway producers, like restaurant owners, rely on near capacity crowds in order to turn a profit. Theaters pulled in $1.8 billion in ticket sales in 2019 and now see about half the revenue, the paper reported. The government lockdowns forced them to close on 12 March 2020.
Broadway, like many industries, is trying to regain its footing. Businesses are learning that just because doors are open doesn’t mean people will walk in.
The paper spoke to a few actors who said they were “unnerved” by the trade association’s move to end its mask mandate.
“We’re doing theater in the round,” Sam Rockwell, an actor in “American Buffalo,” told the paper. “The other day I had a guy coughing four feet in front of me.”
TREND FORECAST: “The other day I had a guy coughing four feet in front of me” is a perfect example of the COVID War fear and hysteria that still persists. Once-upon-a-time, before 2020, when some “coughed four feet” away, no one would pay any attention. Now each cough or sneeze is attached to COVID. Therefore, with this mentality ingrained into the hearts and minds of the masses, the socioeconomic damage inflicted upon businesses will be lasting and incalculable.
Staying Stupid
Ignoring the hard science, facts and media reports of groups of people attending events who were totally vaxxed and totally tested getting the virus, Rockwell said actors “have the privilege” of taking off their masks because they test regularly.
“We have the privilege to take the mask off and spit saliva on this stage. I don’t know if it occurs to the audience that they’re protecting the actors on stage. If someone is mad because they have to wear a mask, they have to know that we are testing everyday,” he said.
Actors’ Equity Association, the labor union representing American actors and stage managers, told its members that the Broadway League’s decision to drop the mandate was “made unilaterally, without input” from the union, Deadline reported.
The Broadway League told Deadline that the announcement was “consistent with our fully negotiated safety protocols.”
Dr. Mark Cunningham-Hill, the Actors’ Equity Association’s chief public health consultant, said in the letter that the union is working “hard to enhance ventilation in all your workplaces.”
He wrote that ventilation “is critical in reducing the risks from airborne diseases such as COVID by filtering out, diluting and even killing viruses circulating in the air. Investments in ventilation will not only help keep everyone safer during this pandemic but also help protect against influenza and other airborne diseases now and in the future.”
TRENDPOST: As Gerald Celente said when the COVID War was launched and rules on social distancing, crowd-size limitations, curfews, mask-wearing, etc., were being imposed on citizens without scientific data to support them: “They’re making this crap up.”
Dr. Monica Gandhi, professor of medicine at University of California, San Francisco, told Healthline last week that she supported masks early on and wrote seven or so papers on the issue. But she said she has since re-evaluated the data.
The report said current data on mask effectiveness showed mandates did not make a difference.
“We didn’t see that major of a difference with transmissions,” she said. “The strongest predictor of how places did was vaccination rates.”
From Wall Street to Times Square, from Broadway to the Meatpacking District… East Side, West Side, all around the town, the “light fantastic on the sidewalks of New York” are burned out.
There’s no dancing in the street.