There’s theatre on Broadway. You just have to adjust your sights.
More than a hundred blocks north of Manhattan’s shuttered theatre district but on that same famed thoroughfare, an actor recently read his lines from a huge stage.
But there was no applause. Instead, all that was heard was a strange command for the theatre: “And cut!”
Tony Award-winner Jefferson Mays was performing multiple roles for a high-tech “A Christmas Carol” that was being filmed for streaming this month at the empty 3,000-seat United Palace.
The one-man show is an example of how many who work in theatre are increasingly defying Covid-19 by refusing to let it stop their art, often creating new hybrid forms.
“Because it’s such a roll-up-your-sleeves business, theatre people figure it out,” said Tony Award-winning producer Hunter Arnold, while watching Mays onstage.
Live theatre is uniquely tested by the virus, one reason it will be among the last sectors to return to normal. Props and…