"The Inheritance," Last fall, Arturo LuÃs Soria
made his Broadway debut in a much-heralded two-part play about the legacy of
the AIDS epidemic and New York's gay community. Soria, who landed his part in
June 2019, called the experience a "dream come true."
In any other year, the role might have opened doors for
more high-profile opportunities on Broadway, where attendance last season
reached 14.77 million.
With his industry at a virtual standstill and performance
venues indefinitely shuttered, Soria, who has taken to wryly calling himself a
"vagabundo" (vagabond) actor, said he has no idea when he will return
to New York City.
"I've watched the industry slowly disappear," he
said in a phone call from Moab, Utah. "I want to be hopeful, but my gut
feeling is that theater will be closed longer than we think."
The situation has the feeling of a dystopian "A Chorus
Line" or a three-act play with an unfinished script: No one quite knows
how it will end.
Soria is one of thousands of Broadway performers
— actors, singers, dancers
— whose professional livelihoods and financial circumstances
were dramatically upended after the coronavirus crisis forced theaters and
productions to shut down in March.
A massive blow to an industry that last year contributed
more than $14.7 billion to the city's economy and supported 96,900 local jobs,
according to a leading trade group. New York theaters, with their crowded
lobbies and tightly packed seats, are hardly spaces for social distancing.
The $600
weekly federal stimulus benefit has expired.
The shutdown also spells financial peril not only for the
performers, directors and lighting and costume designers, but also for enormous
behind-the-scenes crews, many of whose members rely on state unemployment
assistance and feel even more economically insecure now.
In candid and wide-ranging conversations, Broadway performers
described hastily patched-together backup plans, including switching to new
careers or permanently leaving New York City, and their worries about a
possible "mass exodus" of artistic talent from the city.
The disruptions of the last few months have been especially
stinging for performers who spent years trying to get on stage in a famously
competitive and necessarily ephemeral artistic profession, only to see the
curtains unceremoniously fall.
New roles, new stages
Trista Moldovan, an actress who most recently appeared as
Carlotta in a reimagined version of "The Phantom of the Opera" that
toured North America last year, recognized early in the pandemic that her plans
for the year — auditions, seeking out new projects — would be derailed. It was
a sobering realization for an artist who had spent years amassing stage
credits.
"It became apparent that this would be an extended
shutdown, so my husband and I had a long conversation about how we could
possibly sustain ourselves," Moldovan said from her apartment in Hudson
Heights, a neighborhood in upper Manhattan.
Inspired by what her mother once did to support the family,
Moldovan, 40, decided to enroll in a training program to get certified as a
nurse's aide — a job she hoped could tide her over until the entertainment
industry got back on its feet.
But she recently learned that she could lose the
unemployment benefit she receives from the state of Maryland, where the
administrative offices of her production company are based, if she were to enroll
in a six-to-eight-week certification course. She now feels caught in a COVID-19
Catch-22, uncertain of her next move. She cannot continue to live solely on
unemployment benefits and simply wait it out; nor can she eschew those small
payments.
"It's almost like they punish you for pursuing a skill
set that would presumably make you more employable," Moldovan said.
"Plus, there's no guarantee of a job. I would be stepping into health care
as a newbie and competing against people who have a lot more experience than
me."
Moldovan's husband, Stephen Tewksbury, 49, an actor who has
appeared in Broadway musicals such as "Kinky Boots" and "Miss
Saigon," is also looking to make a career change, at least in the short
term. He is exploring job opportunities with the U.S. Postal Service and Amazon
warehouses in the region.
Art in the time of coronavirus
The vast majority of Broadway performers are not household
names. For every luminary — Lin-Manuel Miranda, Idina Menzel — hundreds of
other actors hone their craft in relative obscurity for entire careers.
In the wake of theater closures, those Broadway performers
who cannot swiftly swing into lucrative or fulfilling ventures have felt
creatively stifled, cut off from the electricity of live audiences and the
embrace of a communal experience.
Christopher Howard, a dancer and actor who most recently
appeared in the national tour of "Anastasia," moved in with his
mother in upstate New York when the curtain fell on Broadway in mid-March. He
is grateful to his mom, but he is feeling artistically "frustrated"
and concerned that he will not be able to move forward in his career.
0 Comments