You know what’s funny about Broadway? Nothing’s funny about Broadway. At least not anymore. A quick glance at the current lineup for the grand reopening of New York theatre will indicate more drama than in the male ensemble dressing room at “Kinky Boots.” And not “fun” drama like “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” or “The Sopranos,” I mean angry, political, “important” drama. The upcoming theatre season in New York makes “Nomadland” look like “Ace Ventura.” That’s not to say there isn’t anything lighthearted happening on the Great White Way. “Mrs. Doubtfire” is an unabashed farce, the hit musical “Six” is more upbeat than not, and the long running Disney commodities aren’t exactly Eugene O’Neill plays. Still, one can’t help but notice a palpable dearth of the good old-fashioned comedy on the Broadway stage. And it’s not just big budget productions either. Many Off-Broadway houses have announced programming that looks more like the Democratic National Convention than theatre seasons, tackling every issue known to man from gay rights to racism to abuse–scripts intended to “raise awareness” or push every agenda other than comedic escape or generalized merriment. While I am happy to report far more comedy happening in places outside of New York–regional houses and even community theatres seem more intent on bringing happy shows to people–it might be time for the New York theatre community to deal with topics other than gun control and the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. 

This begs the question: why is theatre so serious?  I don’t necessarily think that there is a shortage of desire to make people laugh. Television still, thank God, is producing regularly hilarious content. But a cursory dive into the arts scene reveals that Broadway is fundamentally averse to the idea of humor in 2021. It’s not just us, it’s happening in film too. Of the 2020 Best Picture Oscar nominees, there wasn’t a single comedy. “Requiem for a Dream” would’ve looked hilarious next to these films. Why are we scared of comedy right now? Is it because we think we aren’t allowed to have any fun because of the grim year and a half we’ve just experienced? That’s precisely the reason we need to laugh. It is the job of the cast of “Puppetry of the Penis” to provide a counterbalance to the drab, horrible world we live in.

So why can’t we laugh, then? Like most problems, it starts at the top. Producers and investors are  so reluctant to live on the edge, overwhelmed (understandably) by both the fear of being irreverent and the fear of being canceled forever (#FOBCF). Of the producers that are brave enough to try to make someone laugh in 2021, their writing sessions are taking place within a “woke pressure cooker” with creatives paralyzed by anxiety of what they can and cannot joke about. Word has it that “Mrs. Doubtfire”, based on one of the most financially successful films of the 1990s, is undergoing changes so as to not be transphobic. And now GLAAD (the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) is making appearances at many pre-Broadway workshops letting the authors know what jokes they can and cannot make. Because what could be more hilarious than a self proclaimed “media-monitoring” organization writing your jokes. Coming to Broadway next spring: a new comedy from Moms Against Drunk Driving.  

Book of Mormon, one of the most uproarious and brilliant comedies to ever grace a Broadway stage, just recently announced a reopening date in November. Their creative team convened after twenty cast members across different companies wrote to address what they felt was “problematic” language in the script. Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the writers of this as well as ‘South Park’, are inarguably two of the smartest, most sophisticated comedic minds that planet earth has to offer. As the composer Robert Lopez said, “They would rather close the show than make it politically correct.” While I know the show well, I don’t know first hand which specific moments of the script were called out as problematic, but I will certainly give these cast members my full respect and attention due to the fact the show was written over a decade ago and, yes, comedy itself evolves. Things that were funny in the early 2000s sometimes just objectively don’t warrant a laugh in 2021, and it’s not the fault of anything other than human evolution. And maybe, perhaps, some of “Book of Mormon” needs a second look not because it’s “problematic” per se, but rather the world we are watching it in has changed. Here’s what I do feel confident in saying: the point of the show is that it’s supposed to be overtly racist. It’s ironic.  Sometimes “problems” are a good thing in art, and in the case of “Book of Mormon” it’s problematic on purpose. I would posit that the authors’ very offensive depiction of Uganda isn’t intended to be a literal representation of the country onstage, but rather used as a vehicle to mock what ignorant Americans’ view of Africa is: it’s to poke holes and de-escalate the real problem of our cultural short sightedness. The reason it is poignant is because of the problematic language, not in spite of it.

We cannot, as artists, allow our knee jerk reactions to personal discomfort necessitate the forced rewriting of someone else’s show. By having to rewrite comedy as a response to feeling uncomfortable, we are catering to those who don’t understand irony, nuance, subtext, or deep thinking. As artists, why don’t we invite our audiences to rise to the intellectual level of people like Matt and Trey instead of asking writers to lower themselves to the level of people who don’t get it. How about we try really hard to see where someone is coming from and if we can learn from it head on, rather than crudely canceling something because of a setting or turn of phrase? The sanitization of art is not only going to be the death of comedy, but the death of culture and understanding of others. And while there is a well intentioned call for artists to feel “safe” in the creative process, it will be at the expense of both personal self-understanding and every show being boring as hell. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to watch “Joe Dirt.”  -NP

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Things on Broadway are bad right now. How bad are they? They’re really bad. Like “Britney Spears in 2007 meets Mel Gibson in 2010” bad. And here’s the worst news: they’re not getting better this week. Of course, COVID-19 is to blame for the decimation of live theatre, but it is time for us to admit that our prolonged closure can be blamed on none other than the utter incompetence of the theatre industry as a whole. 

It’s been over 13 months since Broadway has closed its doors, and there still appears to be no plan as to how to get us back. Broadway is going to have to want to come back. When an alcoholic goes to rehab the first step is admitting there’s a problem. Notwithstanding, the problem is no longer COVID-19, it’s our own inability to move on. We’re also now all alcoholics. We are now the problem. One of the most insidious effects of the pandemic is one of the mind in which we have mistaken surviving this ordeal for adapting to it. I’ve heard friends gleefully proclaim, “I’m not going to go out even after I’m vaccinated! I’m doing my part!” Your part in what? Shutting down human civilization?

 Different regions in the United States have taken vastly opposing approaches to the pandemic, but New York is currently one of the most cautious, with businesses still not at full capacity and people wearing two masks while sitting alone in Central Park. It certainly doesn’t help calm the fears of the people that when the media does a story on the perils of Covid now they show pictures of the beach, despite the fact that the beach is probably the safest place for you to be right now: outdoors, in the open air, and in sunlight. But with regard to Broadway, the industry is not going to open unless people insist that it reopen. Human beings are resilient by nature, and we must not allow the lethargy and complacency brought on by the coronavirus to obliterate the hustle and drive needed to jump start the arts scene. 

There is a great irony in the current state of Broadway. The entire industry remains closed, but it still appears to be one of the most tumultuous scenes on earth. How can these two ideas exist at the same time? Actors Equity, the national labor union of all professional actors and stage managers, has been increasingly under fire for providing unrealistic and unattainable reopening protocols. The members of the union demanded a virtual town hall with the leaders of the organization during which pressing questions were asked: when will Broadway reopen? What steps are you taking to ensure the safety of BIPOC and trans actors in the rehearsal rooms? Why won’t you let me work?! If you did not attend the meeting, spoiler alert: none of these questions were answered in a satisfying way, if at all. With regard to the question regarding BIPOC and trans actors, the union claims they are “working with organizations” to ensure that this happens. When asked what the organizations were, the members were greeted with radio silence. A Broadway veteran friend of mine was set to star in an outdoor Equity production in Georgia this summer. For months, the theatre corresponded back and forth with Equity ad nauseam urging them to approve their production which, by all accounts, took nearly outlandish measures to keep everyone safe. The production is outdoors for crying out loud, and Florida, the neighboring state, has theatres, bars, and nightclubs open at full capacity indoors. But the production was not approved by Equity. Needing to stay open, the theatre decided to do the production non-union. This is what scholars have termed a cluserf*ck. 

The other news racing around the entertainment world like a bull in a china shop is that Scott Rudin, famed Broadway and Hollywood producer, known widely in the community for decades of verbal, emotional, and physical abuse against his assistants, has announced he is “stepping aside.” While that certainly is good news, it raises the question: what is he stepping aside to? And what is he stepping away from? What the f*ck is “stepping aside” anyway?! Is he releasing himself from profits from these productions? While these answers remain unclear, what is certain is that a lead producer on Broadway for the past 20 years has crumbled. King Lear (not the one starring Glenda Jackson) has been dethroned. The news of this great falling has appeared only to exacerbate tensions within the community. Part of the reason this was publicized in the first place is that Tony Award winning actress Karen Olivo decided to leave her position at “Moulin Rouge” on Broadway in order to draw attention to an industry that has “no integrity.” It worked, and it was only when she made a public statement that the New York Times even reported Scott Rudin’s abuse allegations. But why does a member of the union have to take it into their own hands in order for something to happen? Actors Equity is still asking its members to pay their monthly dues, but the only way that anyone is being protected is by an actor sacrificing themselves to the cause. Where is the protection from the union? What is the point of even having a union then, if not to protect its members? How about we start a “we want our money back” campaign? Oh right, that would require action. 

So, people, how do we come back? We simply GO BACK. We’re theatre kids. Do you remember when you were at theatre camp and you only had six days to rehearse Annie AND The Miracle Worker? What did you do? You made it work by being flexible and driven to do so. You helped sew Helen Keller’s corset, learned your choreography as Pepper, took an online course in Braille, and fashioned a Sandy costume out of raccoon pelt you found in the boys’ cabin. You figured it out, because your mom and grandma were going to be there in four days and you knew this was going to blow their f*cking minds. When did we get lazy? When did it become okay for the show to NOT go on? This is our scene. This our job. So why aren’t we doing it? The only way to go back, is to GO BACK.  – NP

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Before you even read what I have to say, I’d be thrilled if this article got critically panned. No, really. If another publication reviewed this article, and called it “flat out wrong, inane, misguided, and slower than Nomadland,” I’d be thrilled. Because that means I would have maybe failed—and that’s not a bad thing. If there are any young kids reading this, the word “fail” is a word we used to have in school and it meant “to be unsuccessful in achieving one’s goal.” You might not have heard the word used, especially if you’re in the Fairfax, Virginia school district where a friend of mine teaches. She told me that her public school has told the teachers they are not allowed to give F’s to the students. You read that correctly. No matter what the idiot kid turns in on the test, you cannot fail them. He could submit a US History quiz answering only in Roman numerals and emojis and still get a D. He could pass. This mentality can and will be the end of true understanding as we know it. 

The idea is not entirely new. Millennials have been jokingly-or not jokingly-derided as the “participation trophy generation” for years. I’m not here to be the arbiter on whether or not that is true (it totally is), especially since technically I am at the old end of the millennial age range, despite the fact that I far prefer to claim membership of Generation X—don’t you dare think I’m not taking credit for Friendster. But what’s more important—and terrifying—is that we are raising a generation of kids who are told two things: no matter what they do they cannot fail and that failing itself is bad. In recent years, New York City schools have seen a huge increase in the number of high school graduates. Are the kids getting smarter? Watching “Chrisley Knows Best”  for five minutes will give you the answer, but the districts are being encouraged to pass kids through to graduation under any circumstances. “Madison, you missed 100 days of school. No problem! Graduation here you come!!” A part of this could be the residual effects of the truly catastrophic early 2000s education policies “No Child Left Behind” and “Every Student Succeeds” which, like their ironic names indicate, gave the completely delusional message to students that success is inevitable. The intent was to bring the struggling students up to the level of the more proficient but, not surprisingly, these plans had the opposite effect. But particularly since Covid came about, schools are lowering the bar further and further and not allowing students to receive F’s. Side note: all this really does is make the lowest grade a D which essentially just makes that the failing grade. I’d explain this in more detail but it’s something out of a Monty Python sketch or “This is Spinal Tap.”  It must be asked though: are schools themselves afraid of failure too? They often lose their funding if their kids fail. Principals run the risk of being replaced by someone younger and more woke if the district underperforms. Teachers get relegated to the “bad” classes if test scores are low. There are alternative reasons schools are not failing kids, and they are selfish ones at that. We are releasing a bunch of kids into adulthood with the notion that there is no possibility of failure and we are setting them up to be helpless.

Adult life is about recognizing and mitigating the risk of failure in your day to day existence. The only way to learn how to do this is through experience. It’s probably a good idea to learn as soon as you can that failure most definitely is an option. But the biggest disservice we do for students who are not allowed to fail is that we also don’t allow them to succeed. Failure is not merely an obstacle to overcome in order to succeed; it is a requirement for success. When taking away the notion that it’s impossible to fail, you also take away the agency of the student to do something great. So, if you’re still reading this, go fail as hard as you possibly can. You’ll thank me later. After all, I am the generation that discovered Friendster. – NP

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Hello everyone. Shhh…quiet please. I’m writing this from my “Safe Space” and I don’t like a lot of outside noise and I’m already feeling triggered. My “safe space” is a secret, magical, hypothetical place where nobody questions me or my values, uses “problematic language”, or tells me no. Back on earth, the organization Advocates for Youth states on their website that a safe space is “a place where anyone can relax and be fully self-expressed, without fear of being made to feel uncomfortable, unwelcome or challenged.” In short: a place that doesn’t actually exist. In recent years, college students have been welcomed into safe spaces like Hillary Clinton’s welcomed at CNN. But it raises the question:  what actually is safe and, more importantly, what are we safe from?  The ideals of this can’t be qualified, let alone quantified. They’re endless. While the original intent of a safe space probably grew out of a desire to give marginalized communities an opportunity to share their experiences–something I find as an LGBT person both necessary and moving–creating a space where “no one is made to feel uncomfortable” creates a utopian nightmare. In fact, for us to learn about these marginalized people and situations, shouldn’t we need to feel some sort of discomfort? No pain no gain, or does fear not exist in this dojo? Here is where the paradox begins.

During my last year of college, shortly after the James Polk administration, professors in the theatre department started putting up signs on their office doors that said, “This is an LGBT safe space”—this was before we added Q, I, A, and whatever letters are left. It was a little bumper sticker with a rainbow triangle which I suppose was to let the gay kids know that they would not be beaten up if they went into that office. This, of course, was intended to be a kind hearted gesture; a way to let the LGBT kids feel visible and heard, something I would actually like to see more of. But therein quickly arose a problem. Not every professor got the memo that the safe space stickers existed. By putting these virtue signalers on their doors, the professors then by process of elimination labeled all of the other doors in the hallways as (gasp) NOT safe spaces. When walking past the pottery teacher’s classroom and noticing the glaring omission of the sticker, the students had to ask, “Did she forget it, or is she a member of the Westboro Baptist Church?” By delineating a safe space, the faculty ironically also created an unsafe space. Not to mention, I really believe at least some of these people were definitely using safe spaces as a way to manipulate someone to have sex with them. The creepy janitor had both a rainbow bumper sticker and at least three severed heads in his freezer.

If you have been living under a rock, Broadway is still currently more shutdown than the Chernobyl power plant.. Actors Equity has been increasingly under fire from its members for not allowing theaters to reopen due to unattainable and unrealistic safety requirements–replacing ventilation systems, private transportation for all the actors, plexiglass onstage–to name a few. To be fair, the union’s job is to protect its members, but it is widely agreed upon in the industry that the protocols they have required theaters to implement create impossible scenarios that prolong the closure of the industry. They also recently released a statement saying they are intent on bringing their members back to work when it is “safe”. It must be asked though: what is this idealized version of “safe” to which Equity is referring? Let’s be optimistic and say that with vaccinations the United States is able to get the number of Covid cases to numbers resembling something like whooping cough, a virus that still exists but that no one really has to worry about. What about all of the other perils an actor faces by working on a production? No one really publicly talked about the number of deaths that the regular flu causes every year until 2020, but it’s in the tens of thousands. Are we going to shut down theatre until that’s under control too? The unions have been ok with us breathing in asbestos in all the Broadway theaters for the past 90 years and haven’t ever waited until that got taken care of. And is this the same union that didn’t close “Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark”, the show that was literally dropping flying actors in the audience? Equity needs to clarify their idealized version of “safe” because, all productions pose a risk to the performer as soon as they have to leave for the theatre. 

Speaking of leaving the theatre, the new role of “intimacy director” is a creative team position being added to increasingly more productions around the United States. An “ID” is a professional trained to oversee scenes involving intimacy, nudity, or sexual content. This newly created—and seemingly required—position appears to have been a by product of the #MeToo movement during which many actors expressed ways in which they’d been made to feel uncomfortable on the set or in the rehearsal room. Until recently, scenes of intimacy were to  be left up to the director to handle, but in the theatre of today this job is left to a “trained” intimacy director. While no doubt there are for sure benefits to this, there also appears to be an apparent overcorrection which has led to many shows proudly boasting their intimacy director credit without really requiring it. Does Dorothy hugging the Scarecrow at the end of Wizard of Oz really require an extra weekly salary added to production? Articles in the New York Times and other publications have detailed the rise of the intimacy director and its necessity in order to make actors feel safe. I don’t think anyone would argue that it is of paramount importance  for delicate scenes involving any kind of intimacy to be handled with the utmost sensitivity, and for producers to reassure their casts that they will be in the hands (no pun intended) of a professional who will make them feel comfortable. But here’s the part I don’t get: what if the intimacy director makes you feel uncomfortable? Sure, the person has been trained, but who is to say that they can be responsible for everyone feeling ok? We’ve just now appointed a different person who could potentially be abusive into a position of power. It’s all fun and games until you walk into your rehearsal room and the intimacy director is John Wayne Gacy. This is just another person who has been given the title of making you feel safe. And yes, it’s definitely better than someone who has no training or protocol in how to make people feel comfortable, but since when is this a guarantee to not make you uncomfortable? You can be weirded out at any time, intimacy director or not. 

The theatre scene of 2021 is throttling art. There is no safety. When we feel we have achieved safety, that’s when we realize it was at the expense of everything we truly hold dear: expression. Safety is the suppression of emotion. Safety is the embracement of fear. Safety is truly unsafe and unsettling to our souls. And don’t you dare disagree with me because I’m in my “safe space” and confrontation triggers me. –NP

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The 2021 Golden Globe Awards had a 68% drop in audience ratings from the previous year. No, there’s not a misplaced decimal in that number. That’s sixty-eight, a truly staggering decline in interest of one of the most popular annual award shows. A drop in 10% of the audience would’ve been significant, but a decline of nearly 70% is a virtual free fall; an actual ratings catastrophe. The show was hosted by Amy Poehler and Tina Fey, two of the most skilled and talented mega-stars in Hollywood. Anyone would be hard-pressed to find more adept and likable people to host a virtual award show, and the evening was still filled with major Hollywood A-listers even if they were, like Gillian Anderson said, “sitting alone in a hotel room in Prague.” So this begs the question: why did this show have worse reviews than “Gigli”? Well, to be fair, it didn’t help that the entire show was going to be held on Zoom. Humans are tired of screens, whether we know it or not. This didn’t make people clamor to their televisions to watch a pieced together Zoom disaster, but I suspect there was a bigger problem at hand. Audiences sensed intuitively, and correctly, that the Golden Globes were going to be a woke, virtue signaling nightmare, so 68% of viewers tuned out. 

This period in history will go down as one of the darkest periods in human civilization. Not only is there a raging pandemic that has taken the lives of over (at the time of writing this) 520,000 Americans, we are also in a period of civil unrest, economic despair, racial disparity, the brink of civil war and, to top it all off, we got a lot of snow. To quote Donna Summer, “Enough is enough.” The Golden Globes had a beautiful window of opportunity to put on a transcendent, imaginative production; one filled with comedy, joy, optimism and hope. This is true because 1) we could have used an escape from life in 2021 and 2) Americans have literally done nothing but watch television for the past calendar year. In fact, TV and film were all we had. Was this not the perfect year to celebrate the achievements in those mediums? It’d like being on a sinking ship and not taking a moment to thank your life raft. But the telecast was a pandering evening filled with less humor than “The English Patient,” despite the immeasurable talents of Fey and Poehler, and speeches from people’s houses. There were cringe worthy sketches that paired celebrities with actual doctors while Mark Ruffalo, an actor and activist worth $35 million, told the audience from his mansion, “we’re all in this together”. It should be noted that when Tina Fey and Amy Poehler can’t make something funny, you’ve got a problem. I suspect they were constrained by the producers and not allowed to do any of their own material, all of which would have been stronger. Instead we got three hours of, “We must stop the Dakota Access Pipeline. Because trans women.” The Globes were so focused on checking all of the boxes of political messages and virtue signaling to satisfy the Twitter mob that they forgot they actually had to entertain the audience. 

A recent press release showed that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the committee that votes on the Golden Globes, has zero black members out of 87. That’s right. There were more black people in The Brady Bunch than there are in the HFPA. This is utterly preposterous and, frankly, hard to reconcile, but I’m waiting to discuss it in my next think piece “Unsolicited Ideas About Race from a White Guy.” There was clearly well-founded outrage about this leading up to the day of the telecast. Hollywood has had a major come-to-Jesus moment with its race problems and, to be fair, we did see diversity on the stage, at least with regard to race and gender. The Golden Globes clearly felt an unprecedented pressure to present themselves as not racist and the effects of that were evident in the telecast. The two white hosts came out and called out the HFPA for not having any black members but…so what? It looks good on paper, but does any of this afford actual change? The HFPA should be on the stage addressing this, notthe hosts. It’s like hitting someone’s car and then sending your four year old over to apologize—and 7 pm on the evening of the telecast is a little late to address the issue. The Hollywood Foreign Press made every attempt in their last minute, frantic attempts to cover up their complete lack of diversity and in doing so forgot the most important part: the show itself. 

Now before everyone gets upset, I get it. Doing this event remotely and with no one in the audience had to have been a logistical nightmare on all accounts, and the fact that it even happened is probably a true testament to the technical crew working the Golden Globes. But, are you telling me this was really the best thing we could come up with a year into this? This looked like what the award show could have been if we did it one week into Covid. Alas, 365 days later no one could seem to find a way to make this event happen in a more creative way. Also, for the past four years, award shows have been recognizable largely by anti-Trump tirades with stars lecturing the audience both in person and from their gazebos about how the country needed to “vote with your heart” and “lead with love”. Two months into the Biden presidency with the Democrats controlling the senate, there wasn’t really that much to complain about besides the apocalyptic state of the world. And guess what? The show was boring as hell. Anti-Trump rhetoric wasn’t able to be used as a substitute for actual entertainment and Hollywood was now forced to come up with an actual product.

My nonagenarian Grandma Harriet (God love her) is alive and well, and has spent her entire life as an avid theatre goer. Growing up in the New York area, she was fortunate enough to see Broadway shows, like the original Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals, including Oklahoma and South Pacific. She unfortunately didn’t see the original production of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852—she was out of town. But I vividly remember her once telling me that it was great to go see a Broadway show during World War II because she could “forget about the war for a few hours.” This idea has stuck with me for my entire life; that theatre could be a form of escapism from the everyday world, especially during a time of great catastrophe. And this is where the Golden Globes, and much of the entertainment industry in general, have failed us so acutely. It didn’t allow us the opportunity to escape. The Golden Globes were an exposé of all our current social and political issues. Americans were asked to sit like Alex from “A Clockwork Orange” and listen to every moment of horror from the past year relived. They knew that this was going to leave them as empty as they have felt during this entire bleak experience which is why most of them watched episodes of “Mama June: From Not to Hot” instead of tuning in. Art has to be an escape, not a prison. 

We’ve been careening down this path long before Covid hit. Hollywood and Broadway have gotten extraordinarily lazy, with reboots and sequels dominating the movies and screen-to-stage musicals, or star-studded revivals taking over the entire purportedly creative theatre scene. With the shutdown of all live performances we’ve proven to ourselves that the moment the status-quo dissolves, we are not the creative people we’ve claimed to be all along. It’s all a fraud. Being artificially woke is the low hanging fruit du jour, and it’s what everyone thinks they have to artificially embody to be relevant. Well, here’s a hard to swallow pill: it’s complete inaction and entirely undermines the relevance you crave above all else. The least creative way to confront a problem is to talk about it, especially in the droll, pathetic ways we’ve been trying to. We need to let art itself fight the fights, prove the points, and incite people to think; we need to let art itself provide the escape. This is why we write. This is why we perform. This is why we create. We are artists. We can get through the pandemic without a musical set in the Cedar Sinai coronavirus ward. Let art do its job. More dance, less woke. As Mark Ruffalo once said, “We’re all in this together.”

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It’s not really any surprise that theatre people love seeing themselves on camera. And there are many situations in which I would say it is entirely appropriate-more than appropriate, in fact- to host a photoshoot of yourself. Your college graduation. At your Opening Night. On the day of your release from prison. But when I think about times when you should not be wearing makeup and surrounded by lighting equipment, there is one place that immediately jumps to the front of my mind. And that is at your Covid vaccination. And if you think that I’m making it up that people are doing this, then wash a Xanax down with a White Claw and open your Instagram.

I should preface this by saying I’m not sure why we have adopted this fashionable trend of sharing staged photos of your inoculation and publicly documenting them like it’s your Bat Mitzvah, but my social media is currently flooded with perfectly lit, cropped, and edited photos of people in the vaccination chair proudly holding (boasting?) their vaccine card like they’ve just received the Congressional Medal of Freedom. Now before anyone cancels me, I’m in favor of the vaccine. In fact, I’m as excited to get it as I am for the next season of Ozark (Wendy is just out of control, you guys). And I actually think sharing the information that you’ve received the vaccine is profoundly important to its dissemination. We want to further the scientifically correct narrative the vaccine is our way out of this mess. I’m just not a fan of vaccine photo shoots. How did we get so broken as a society that this looks like a good idea?

One particularly egregious post I saw contained a strapping, young actor whose name has been removed but I will call Tucker. Tucker was holding his vaccine card and wrote a caption that read: “I did it for my family. I did it for my friends. I did it for the gays. #BidenHarris.” Wait…you did it for the gays?? Congratulations on the vaccine, Tucker, we can now socialize with you. Not that anyone would want to after this post. Tucker is acting as though he deserves the accolades of having served in Afghanistan. Here’s another one from a young artist named “Denise”. She posted this caption with a photo of herself in full hair and makeup getting injected.

“I never thought this day would come. Today I take one step forward for science. 

(a long poem with no author listed)

Stop. Killing. Trans. Women*”

*a hand clapping emoji followed every one of these words

Now first of all, I must say I agree with Denise. We need to stop killing trans women. If you’re reading this, and you are someone who kills trans women…STOP. I’m serious. But this raises more pressing questions: are there people on Denise’s newsfeed that are regularly killing trans women? Because if there are…unfriend them, Denise. And call the police. I don’t want anyone on my newsfeed that has killed a trans woman. Or that has killed anyone for that matter. I’m not a psychopath. Every cloud has a silver lining and this one is that thanks to Denise’s vaccine parade, we can now all finally deduce that it’s not ok to kill.

Another good one from someone named “Crystal”. 

Today I got the first dose of the Moderna vaccine. Let’s do this. #Broadway #YourVoteBringsTheLightsBackOn #FinallyOutofQuarantine

This brings me to a truly urgent call to action; a real emergency. If anyone is reading this and knows Crystal, can you please let her know that it’s ok to leave your house? I’m really, really worried about her because from the sound of her Instagram post she has been locked in apartment since March 2020. This would also explain the current mental state that led her to photographing her Covid vaccine.

Social media is a drug, and we are using it like heroin or cocaine. It’s an escape from reality, a way to mask our problems, a simplification of something complicated and, more than anything, it’s really addictive. We are feeling a societal pressure to document every moment of our lives by creating an alternate universe where things are what we want. What does this have to do with getting a vaccine? I have no idea. But STOP. KILLING. TRANS. WOMEN. – NP

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A friend of mine recently posted on Facebook a picture of the West Village on a Saturday night. It was a long, narrow look down Christopher Street. What would in any other year be a bustling, raging party was a completely deserted, dreary wasteland, looking like something out of “I Am Legend” without the dog. There was nary a drag queen or topless NYU student in sight. As I robotically scrolled through the comments waiting for my laundry to finish drying, I had to rub my eyes and reread them since the majority looked something like this (and no, I’m not kidding):

… “Good!” … “HELL YES!!!” … “Awesome!!”…“THANK YOU” 

as well as the dreaded hand clapping emoji now used as a hallmark of the virtue signalers. I thought maybe the mushrooms on my Chop’t salad that afternoon were hallucinogenic but, no, I was in fact seeing this correctly. This creepy, goosebump inducing photo not only looked like something out of the zombie apocalypse but also indicated grave economic devastation. And, from what I gathered, people seemed to be…celebrating?! Now let me be very clear. I’d like to think of myself as a sane, rational person—although I do musical theatre for a living so that pipe dream is likely crushed at this point—and I enthusiastically support any science that is going to help get us out of this mess: vaccines, masks, social distancing. And if someone were to post a picture of outdoor dining, socializing while in masks, or being responsible in any capacity towards eliminating a virus that has killed 400,000 people, believe me, I’d be the first person to hit the “Care” button. But I could not help feel the incongruity of a photo of a decimated New York City with a series of comments that seemed to revel in it. And sure, I know it was just one photo and, like all of social media, it can’t possibly represent every single person’s (or anyone’s) viewpoint, but I do believe this convoluted mentality has permeated the country and, in particular, the arts community. 

The country has bizarrely carved itself into an idealogical and political divide: wanting to reopen = “bad” (and Republican), while staying closed “because it’s the right thing to do” illogically equates to “good” and a more left wing point of view. The argument of whether or not to reopen and in what capacity has taken on a far bigger, messier discourse regarding our freedom and the role government can and should play in this crisis. But even though most musical theatre creators feel comfortable talking about topics they know nothing about, I’m going to abstain from going into a diatribe on constitutional law. I understand that the divides are far blurrier and complex. Only a fool would think it’s as cut and dry as “Team A wants to stay shut and Team B wants to reopen”. But any regional theatre announcement of an upcoming season is met with hundreds, if not thousands, of comments from other artists labeling the theatre reckless, insane, and calling for it to be shut back down. If you don’t believe me, just read the most profound source of news on planet earth: the Broadwayworld message boards. We are in an existential health crisis. I would not support any theater attempting to endanger the lives of its patrons. (Would anyone?) But putting aside the health metrics for a second, you might notice what seems to be an apparent victory from the theatre community that comes with the “security” of theatre remaining shut down. Just ask ElphabaGrl38. She is thrilled Wagon Wheel Dinner Theatre can’t open “Sunset Boulevard”. 

Now I can’t entirely blame anyone for being reluctant to jump right back into things. The first day back in the rehearsal room will undoubtedly be awash with more tears than the final 25 minutes of “Dear Evan Hansen” but, at the risk of sounding overly pessimistic, I worry the days after the return of theatre will be fraught with a new kind of anxiety and pain mixed in with the joy. Reopening is going to bring up all sorts of PTSD for the theatre community. This extended period of shut down has been deeply traumatizing for artists, and it’s going to take years of healing to fully allow us to embrace our art in the ways we used to. All theatrical life is going to look very different. It will be like walking into your house and seeing all of the furniture rearranged. And the basement flooded. And your attic filled floor to ceiling with Easter grass. While theatre is of course going to return, the entire business model is going to have to be reimagined but…we can do it. F*cking Nascar already figured it out for Christ’s sake!! In order to survive, Broadway is going to have to break out of the traditional proscenium spaces and open itself up to more creative and site-specific theatre. Not to mention, the unions need to start being a part of the solution. Actors Equity recently told a number of regional theatres that they had to replace their entire ventilation systems (!!) before they would allow Equity actors to work there. Umm…ok?

Isolation, shutdown, and closures are a short term solution. We’re going to have to actually want things to open again. Or at least act like we do. My Facebook friend’s photo and the subsequent comments cannot be used as a representation of every single person in the industry, but there were enough comments—mostly from artists, I checked—overjoyed to see everyone locked in their homes that I could not help but think this mentality has become the norm in certain parts of the US. We have Stockholm Syndrome, the plight of kidnapped victims who start to identify with their captors. “No, really, I love being closed!!! I feel so safe!!!” Human beings are resilient by nature, and we cannot mistake our adapting to this period for being ok with it. A friend of my mother’s recently confessed, “I’m going to stay in even AFTER I get the vaccine. I just want to be safe!!”. We cannot use the public cry for remaining shut down as a way to give ourselves societal status. The performative virtue signaling of the community cannot be our driving factor or else we are never going to be able to get our lives back.

I’m not entirely sure I can explain this phenomenon honestly, partly because I’m not a psychologist and partly because it makes no sense to me. And I suspect this will in fact be studied by medical professionals for years to come. Celebrating a photo of a vibrant neighborhood being closed down is like a friend posting a picture of themselves starting chemotherapy and you commenting: “F*CK YES!!!” We need to treat New York City like our fallen friend. The arts community can walk and chew gum at the same time: we must strive towards and be proactive about safely, responsibly, and realistically reopening, while at the same time being optimistic and open minded to the new wave of theatre that will be coming our way. Covid will be looked at as one of the darkest periods of human civilization, on par with World War II and, well, all the other pandemics that have already happened. But we are about to turn a corner, and we have to fix our attitude towards this. My friend Allison and I have a date next weekend to go out for pizza, if anyone wants to join. I’ll leave you with the timeless, theatrical adage: “If Nascar can do it, anyone can.”

Nate Patten is a Broadway music director, conductor, pianist, and writer. A world renowned theatre artist, Nate is known primarily at Applebee’s and in parts of Staten Island. Well-loved, but often simultaneously hated, Nate is the host of the popular satirical podcast, “Booked It” where he is lauded for providing scathing commentary on the state of theatre. Keep posting: you will be found out.

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Letter From the Editor

I’ve always prided myself as a bit of a soothsayer, visionary, a creator of worlds for my community and clients. And with one of my worlds being dark at the moment, anything pertaining to in-person performing arts, I thought I’d ask the legendary visionary Nate Patten on the future of Broadway and things to come.

Zoltar Speaks: We’re Coming Back, Baby

Broadway Is Going To Open Immediately & Everything’s Going To Be Fine With No Problem Whatsoever: A Treatise By the Disenfranchised Nate Patten

Full disclosure: I’m not a writer. I work on Broadway so, let’s be honest, it’s only by the grace of God I can read. What I am, however, is a gay, progressive-curious, moderate who graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in Spanish who has spent the last 14 years working as a Music Director on The Great White Way but now gives piano lessons to four year olds. I’m also known for being the host of a popular satire podcast called “Booked It: A Broadway Musician’s Guide to Theatre, Facebook, and Being #Grateful”. Please subscribe to me and help me heal the wounds of my past. But more importantly, I must ask… “What makes me equipped in any capacity to talk about the future of the theatre industry?” Well, I’m on Facebook all day and I’m a theatre artist, so I feel utterly confident to talk about topics I know nothing about.

And speaking of not knowing anything, we are experiencing a time filled with so many unanswered questions. When will Broadway reopen? Will tourists feel comfortable coming to New York? How long until Caitlin Jenner is playing a role in Chicago? I guess to speak on the future of Broadway seems a little absurd since we don’t know the future of anything and, realistically, the success of Broadway is going to depend on many outside factors: tourism, the economy, the distribution of the vaccine, and whether or not Aaron Tveit will lose the Tony Award despite being nominated against no one else. There are countless articles (including now this one) predicting what the future of the industry has in store, and many contradict each other, but they all have one thing in common: they are all, at best, a guess. The New York Times named 2020 one of the four most “eventful years” in American history along with 1865, 1945, and 1968, coincidentally the last three times Glenda Jackson was on Broadway before last season. But despite the fact that my Quiznos VIP membership has now rolled over into 2021, we are still very much in the same mess we were in last year. Trying to get a good handle on what’s happening would be like the passengers of the Titanic writing the screenplay for the film while they were still getting into the lifeboat.

Oh and speaking of lifeboats, there isn’t one, at least not for anyone who previously made a living tap dancing. Artists across the country are shocked and outraged that there’s no federal funding for them. And they’ve even taken to doing what any rational person would do in an emergency: camping out in Times Square holding cardboard signs and singing songs from Rent that were originally intended to be about the AIDS crisis. They demand “financial support” for arts workers during this unprecedented time. Although, frankly, I’m not really sure what financial support to actors, musicians, painters, etc. would even look like. “Artist” is about as vague of a term as I’ve ever heard. Is the federal government supposed to provide financial aid to anyone that merely calls themselves an artist? That means whether you’re Scott Rudin or making an origami duck in your basement you’re supposed to be entitled to some form of compensation. But here’s the hard to swallow pill…we’re all freelancers. This is the ultimate gamble you take when you freelance: there’s no guarantee to be taken care of or provided for in a crisis. The only way to provide viable support for theatre artists is to reopen theatres. And as I said before, there’s no way to predict what the scene will look like when it reopens.

But I may as well try. So when Broadway sputters back to life, what the hell IS going to happen? Well I guess now is when I give my own predictions. Although I should caution you, my predictions mean nothing. Trying to predict the direction of this industry is like shaking a Magic 8 Ball… “Will Kevin Spacey come back to Broadway in a revival of Our Town? All signs point to No.”, but I’ll try. After this period of shutdown and a cultural reckoning on Broadway (that’s a separate article), we are going to see a resurgence of two things in a particularly intense way: well known, “beloved” titles and uproarious comedy. I know there is an inclination by many to think we are going to see an explosion of political, angry, woke theatre (and I suspect it will arrive, but less commercially successfully). In times of crisis, people long to connect to what feels like home to them. And theatrically speaking, that means Phantom of the Opera, Wicked, Lion King, Chicago. Audiences initially will want to feel comfortable, safe, and at ease and that will happen with Christmas shows (Elf, A Christmas Story/Carol, Suzanne Somers’ Christmas Workout Onstage at the Lyceum) and family favorites (The Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan, and The Sound of Music). In short: anything that makes us remember life before March 2020. Similarly, we have experienced such collective grief in the past year that a resurgence of comedy seems almost inevitable (although I think this will take a minute). And, with the ever ominous “cancel culture” looming overhead, even some of the most fearless comedians are understandably timid right now. Even pre-Covid, the last slew of Best Musical winners have been (while all brilliant in their own ways) about as funny as Schindler’s List: (in reverse order) Hadestown, Band’s Visit, Dear Evan Hansen, Hamilton, and Fun Home. The last comedy to win Best Musical was “A Gentlemen’s Guide To Love and Murder” in 2014, so it is time for a return to the days of the big, fast, funny musical comedy.

I sense the Broadway community has a fantasy in its head that we will one day throw open the blinds and exalt, “Guys! It’s over! We’re back on tonight. Drinks afterwards at Buffalo Wild Wings!” But sadly, the more realistic scenario is that Broadway will open slowly, probably starting with (big f*ckin’ surprise!!) Hamilton and then slowly adding the other big mega-hits one at a time. And then the other shows, if they return at all, will follow. It’s worth noting that nobody knew when the Dark Ages had ended until we looked back at it centuries later. There won’t be a specific point in time that was “the moment” Broadway reopened. It will have been over time. It’ll only be when we are too busy running to beat the bathroom line at the Golden Theatre that we, at least for a second, might not even remember this time happened.

Oh, but what do I know? I can barely read.

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