Broadway’s Been Here Before.

So, Why the Shut Down?

Well, It Comes Down to Two Points

1/3rd of the people that contract COVID-19 don’t exhibit symptoms. The Spanish Flu had most people showing symptoms. Once you got it, you were so sick you wouldn’t even want to leave your bed. COVID-19 causes more people to become infected by people who don’t know they’re sick.

It’s 2020, not 1918. The internet wasn’t around to amplify everything. Events that weren’t written about in the paper went mostly unknown. Western medicine was at its infancy, so no one knew all the risks of inhabiting enclosed spaces, not remaining six feet a part, and washing ones hands.

“Articles in papers in every state put the status of theaters in their communities on the front page above the fold.”

— AmericanTheater.org

Theater was Everything Back Then

Theater was their main form of entertainment that was economic and accessible. The status of theaters remaining open was a direct indicator of a city having their ducks in a row for controlling the virus. Royal S. Copeland was the Health Commissioner of New York at the time.

Former mayor of Ann Arbor, MI, he made sure to keep New Yorkers safe and took strict measures, akin to Governor Cuomo. Mr. Copeland had faith in people. He had faith his citizens would keep others safe by following precautions he put into place. With this healthy mentality for the population, he was able to keep theaters open.

Copeland famously said, “I’m keeping my theatres in as good condition as my wife keeps our home.” Copeland stagged curtain times (sound familiar?!), assigning each theater to a group (15 minutes at a time). He did, however, shut down theaters with very weak air filtration and circulation systems. These were mostly “hole in the wall” joints downtown.

It should be mentioned that people did become infected if they went to the theater, but far less transmission occurred than what was anticipated.

“It is important for people to go about their business without constant fear [and a] hysterical sense of calamity.”

-Royal S. Copeland

Let’s remember that context is everything. 1918 was the height of WW1 and Americans were preoccupied with fighting. War plays were the norm and Ziegfeld Follies was wrapped in patriotism. The war effort gave patrons a reason to fill up theaters: help them escape from the horrible reality.

*Side note- can you imagine non-profits doing a patriotic show today? LOL: MTC’s Salute to America!

“The 1918 flu pandemic received no comparable attention, either then or now. Major literary figures of the 1920s and after ignored the flu in their work and offered audiences no representations of the disease that rivaled the Great War in its body count.”