Covid ain't done yet... Curtain down on Rockettes

[TimMc]

Radio City Music Hall Scraps Rest Of Rockettes' Christmas Shows Over COVID

"We had hoped we could make it through the season," the company said in a statement.

www.huffpost.com

 

[SteveB]

Our long closed facility, with new managers anxious to re-open and generate rental income, are talking about a major rental for April. As they would need to be signing a contract in a month or two, we doubt that neither the City University nor the college committee that regulates room and space usage for Covid, are going to approve this. I'm thinking with the way things are going currently, we are 6 mos. or more out before we start seeing 2400 audience members in about space again.

 

[Footer]

We've been doing mask required, vax per artist request since we got going again in July. Starting Jan 1 we're doing mask+full vax... and it looks like within a month or two full vax in New York State will mean booster as well. Luckly for us we booked Jan thru mid Feb very light so hopefully as this wave goes away we can hit the ground running in March. So far though we did 70-ish shows without much incident. Few times had state police in to toss people who wanted to pick fights about masks with security.... and had to pull my entire crew offstage once because a road crew member refused to wear a mask. But... we made it.

 

[GoxBoxSocks]

We've been rapid testing cast and crew before every show, PCR tests weekly and having crew masked plus a sanitizing crew hitting everything post show. Audience has been masked and vax'd/neg test results. All that and yet, we still had to cancel a 4 show weekend after an actor had symptoms. They eventually tested positive.

I'm so thankful to be working at a place that is taking it so seriously and going beyond AEA regs but it just doesn't seem sustainable.

 

[NJJerrySmith]

I'm also grateful that my company is vaxed/masked/and 2x weekly testing.

I'm also concerned about the state of the last batch of Broadway cancellations happening at/after curtain. Specifically how that isn't sustainable from a business prospective. While I'm all about doing things safely, and as a stage manager that's my number 1 creed, I understand that if people don't come to see shows, shows aren't going to happen. People definitely aren't going to come to see shows if they're being cancelled last minute.

 

[TheaterEd]

People definitely aren't going to come to see shows if they're being cancelled last minute.

Much-less plan trips across the country months in advance. I'm not looking forward to us having to shut things down again because of people playing politics with public safety.