The Broadway League extended its shutdown through June 7, the original date of the Tony Awards, guaranteeing that Broadway will be closed at least three months due to the coronavirus pandemic.
In a release this morning, the League, a trade association of theater owners and producers, didn’t provide a reopening date. When it closed Broadway on March 12, the League said that performances would resume the week of April 13.
Charlotte St. Martin, president of the League, said in a statement today that its top priority is the health and well-being of theatergoers and the thousands who work in the industry.
She previously told members that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo hasn’t given the industry a return date and it needs that to come back. “Our intel in Albany does indicate that they think the mass gatherings may be the last area of business to come back,” she wrote to members.
The League and the American Theatre Wing have indefinitely postponed the Tonys. Several Broadway shows scheduled for this season have been cancelled, most recently Beetlejuice. It was to vacate the Winter Garden Theatre on June 6, to make way for the Scott Rudin-produced revival of The Music Man, starring Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster.
Broadway has lost about $140 million in box office sales since the shutdown. But the economic pain is much greater when including the halt in new development work, fundraising and other casualties of the uncertainty about when society returns to normal.
