Omicron is Exposing New York Theatre’s Failure to Change
By: Ryan Vasquez
Tags: Covid 19, Broadway, Theatre, New York City, Unions

Omicron is Exposing New York Theatre’s Failure to Change

You almost have to see it to believe it. After filing into the theatre upon showing your new form of ID to the front line of scrupulous vaccine-card examiners, passing the ghost-town concession stands, and taking in the thankless work of front of house staff reminding unruly tourists to put their masks on over their nose (many are still in need of that reminding), the lights finally dim, and for just a moment, the theatre begins to take on its familiar form, transforming the space and transporting a willing audience to a world beyond the noise outside. Actors take the stage, maskless of course, and for a brief moment, the artists do what they do best: give respite.

But behind the curtain, “normal” is nowhere to be found. Before even entering the workplace, cast and crew are taking part in (sometimes daily) testing. Masks are worn by everyone backstage, even those who shed them to walk onstage seconds later, and in the already cramped spaces backstage in New York theaters, the fear of spreading the most transmissible variant of Covid-19 permeates the building. A peripheral view of Broadway news from the last few weeks only exacerbates that fear. Shows are closing left and right, some temporarily and many never to return. It’s simply not possible to comfortably make art when a chance encounter with an endemic disease can gut the run of a show at a moment’s notice. Even wildly successful shows like Ain’t Too Proud, Jagged Little Pill, and Waitress have elected to close after getting hit with multiple outbreaks. The security of the theatre worker is, once again, at its most precarious.

Even for those in hit shows like Wicked or Hamilton, the risks run deep. Beneath the obvious concern of getting sick and infecting loved ones (which seems to have been thrown to the wayside lately in service of avoiding a shutdown), shows with deep pockets have still only allotted to pay for a fraction of the necessary time to quarantine, shouldering the cost of getting infected on the worker. Tours are shutting down, leaving their company members without homes (as most performers give up apartments to supplement living costs), expecting them to return to family, loved ones, or roommates after exposure to Omicron.

All this comes in light of a broader movement during the pandemic for the dignity of workers. Arts workers are notoriously undervalued, but between calls for social justice and lobbying of union leadership to ensure that safety was prioritized upon returning to work, it seemed that artists were following the lead of workers in health care to delivery workers in their demand for better conditions.

And for a while, it seemed to be working. Actors’ Equity Association fought Disney for acceptable working conditions in its parks, while organizers marched in the streets to demand the removal of Scott Rudin from the Broadway League and fundamental changes in the culture of Broadway theatre. IATSE authorized a strike by a near unanimous margin, and eventually reached an agreement with producers. Individual shows began implementing testing protocols that went above and beyond union requirements, even hiring social responsibility managers to better address issues of inclusivity in the workplace.

But when business begins running again, money does the talking. It should not have come as a surprise. This is a country where the largest company in the world, Amazon, openly engaged in union busting before a landmark vote in Bessemer, Alabama. It’s where we clap every evening for essential workers, but refuse to engage in meaningful discussion about raising the minimum wage. It’s where tens of millions expect health care workers to treat them for a contagious disease, but refuse to take precautions to prevent its spread.

Against this backdrop, the head of the Broadway League, Charlotte St. Martin, gave an interview where she haphazardly blamed the closure of Broadway shows on the performance of the understudies and swings, as if audiences were 1) aware of the fact that swings or understudies were performing and 2) that the performances were so atrocious that they were somehow keeping future audiences from purchasing tickets. Beneath the absurdity of the argument lies something much more insidious that should come as both unsettling and unsurprising. (Read Charlotte’s statement below.)

“My educated guess is the newer shows maybe have understudies that aren’t as efficient in delivering the role as the lead is. Some of the older shows have more experienced understudies and more experienced swings. I know one show last week where the lead was out, the understudy was on vacation, the swings were covering other parts, and they just didn’t have enough people to stand in.”

The Broadway League, like CEO’s of other companies around the world, are invested (pun intended) in making a profit, by (most) any means necessary. The customer, who is, famously, “always right,” rarely feels this pinch; it mainly comes at the expense of the worker. In all the talk about negotiating for better conditions, the crucial element of the modus operandi of those whom artists are negotiating with has largely been left out of the conversation.

A glorified Human Resources hire may briefly assuage the anxieties of those wondering if their workplace has “done the work,” but “it costs too much” to replace the people who perpetuated the harm in the first place, let alone put them through continued restorative justice work. When performers test positive for Covid during a performance (an event that is both typical and unbelievable considering the basic science of exposure), they are sent home, but “it costs too much” to stop the performance or cancel it altogether, leading to the performances finishing anyway, sometimes keeping the actor onstage until their understudy can get dressed and ready to replace them. (In these instances, the actor is often notified of their positive result just as the curtain comes down on the first act. What timing.) When actors cannot return due to a positive result, they have been replaced by non-union performers from their identical touring production (which only exists due to a refusal to pay for union salaries or benefits); after all, “it costs too much” to bring a union performer up to speed on an overtime rate. And when “it costs too much” to keep the shows open… well… you get the idea.

As depressing a reality this is for the workers, all is not lost. Millions around the country are refusing to return to jobs that refuse them basic dignities. Theatre is no different, with people stepping aside from shows or companies everywhere in protest, most notably Karen Olivo, who refused to return to the industry that remained “neutral” on the issue of producer Scott Rudin’s abuse. But in an industry already atop the most uncertain, and with pandemic expenses piling up, families to support, and health care to acquire, many have no choice but to walk into the grey, mask up, and hope for the best.

With more shows operating on a knife’s edge and the Omicron variant continuing to dominate the news, we are perhaps headed for darker days. But out of that darkness, there is an opportunity to rise together. No industry exists without its workers; artists must look in the mirror and feel that deeply. Companies that pledged to “be better,” but who turned back to old habits when money began to pour in, have had their wrists slapped by a world that no longer allows for egregious inequalities without accountability. Now, we have another opportunity to return, to reemerge, and there is hope that this is the test of the lessons we pledged we would learn while the industry was dormant for those painful 18 months.

It will be up to those at the bottom: the most numerous, the foundation, the most powerful. Not the Scott Rudin’s or the Charlotte St. Martin’s, or even their more amenable counterparts. Author of Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, adrienne maree brown, writes beautifully of our relationship to nature and how it can guide us toward a better society. Fractals, she notes, like in snowflakes or the rings of a tree, begin as small pieces of a whole, sometimes what we would deem insignificant, and ripple out, combining with others to create waves of change. Artists are, above all, those fractals that ripple out and create a better world. Let us be those fractals, and shape the world around us so that we may create new ones.