As my friend and I walked back to the theater for part two, I had the sense, without being able to fully articulate it, that we might not continue our run to the final performance, scheduled for that coming weekend. That very day, a story had broken about an usher at a Broadway theater testing positive. The virus was rumored to be spreading through companies of certain shows. The post-show stage-door Playbill-signing ritual had been discouraged everywhere. And at my own play, access to backstage was now tightly restricted to cast and crew only. Even I was not allowed.
As I stepped inside the theater, I expected to encounter a half-empty house. But part two was completely full. From curtain up to curtain down, it was a brilliant performance—the actors all at the top of their games, their voices and bodies strong, their spirits high. Something told me not to duck out during the curtain call like I normally would, but instead to stay and watch, and to make a point of looking at each of the actors’ faces as they bowed.
On my way home, I texted Tom Kirdahy, our lead producer: “I think I just saw the final performance of The Inheritance.” He wrote back, “I hope you’re wrong, but I’m glad you were there tonight.”
The next morning, I received a text from the play’s director, Stephen Daldry: “Rumor is they are about to shut down Broadway for 30 days with immediate effect.” Around noon, my husband, a private school administrator, texted to tell me they had decided to close the school. Then, a little after 2 p.m, the announcement came that all Broadway theaters would be shuttered for at least 30 days.
I called Andrew Burnap, Sam Levine, and Kyle Soller—the trio of leads who had been with the show for more than two years. “We talked about it in our dressing room last night,” Andrew confessed. “We all felt we had just given our final performance.” We hung up, and they went to the Barrymore to clean out their dressing rooms.
My husband and I left the city that night for our house upstate, and I noted the irony of life imitating art: We were repeating the actions of two of my characters—leaving the city in the midst of an epidemic to quarantine in relative safety. We questioned whether we were engaging in an act of escape or one of self-protection. As a lifelong asthmatic, I was acutely aware of my vulnerability to the virus, but given how contagious the virus seemed to be, would we be any more protected upstate than we would in the city?
Our answer came swiftly. A few days after we arrived, I began to develop what I suspected were symptoms of the virus: low-grade fever, headache, and difficulty breathing. The fever and headaches vanished within a day, the breathing trouble persisted for a week. Testing was at that point nearly impossible to obtain where we live, and so I hunkered down at home.
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Will Theater Come Back? What Will It Look Like When It Does? - Vogue
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