Shuttered Indefinitely by COVID, Theaters in Broadway and Elsewhere Face Uncertain Future

Emma Mulhall ‘23
October 2020

Since early March of this year, the world has been enduring the Covid-19 Pandemic. The pandemic forced many businesses and schools to stop operating, leaving most of us at home with not much to do during the day. One industry has been hit very hard by the pandemic: The theater and entertainment industry. Even though theater and entertainment can be put in the same category, the impact Covid-19 has had on both of them are far different.

For many fans of the performing arts and theater in general, we were all shocked when the news came out that Broadway (and theaters in general) would go dark due to Covid-19 until 2021. This decision to shut down Broadway theaters forced some shows to stop performances permanently as there has been a lack of income flowing in. The Broadway shut down left thousands of workers jobless. If you really think about it, there are far more people working behind the scenes of performing arts than just the actors. Costume designers, makeup artists, directors, choreographers, ushers and musicians (along with more) are all out of a job. Some of these workers have decided to move away from the theater industry and focus on finding a new occupation in order to support themselves and their families. Every week, Broadway loses approximately 35 million dollars just in the loss of ticket sales.

With most of the population being on lock down, we needed to find ways to entertain and distract ourselves from the less than ideal news. This caused massive growth in consumer spending on streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+. Netflix reported that the company had made 1 billion dollars in revenue in comparison to losing approximately 500 million dollars at the same time last year. Streaming services started releasing long awaited movies that were originally going to be released in movie theaters making those wanting to see these films, to pay for the services. An example of this is when Disney Plus released the long awaited adaptation of Hamilton which boosted the company’s downloads by 74% on the weekend of July 4th.

Hopefully, life will return back to normal sooner than later. As for right now though, the entertainment and theater industry is being greatly affected. Streaming services are thriving while Broadway and its workers are struggling to bring profit in. We can only hope that after this is all over, Broadway will recover from these losses.