The Fall season means the reopening of some 20 big Broadway musicals, two of which began again last week to much hoopla, but it’s the large slate of new work, much of it unusual for Broadway — more of it on city stages (and screens still!) beyond Broadway — that by the end of 2021 could wind up defining New York theater.
There will be as usual new musicals and musical revivals in the Fall (Six, Diana, Mrs. Doubtfire, Company,Flying Over Sunset) but there are more straight plays — nine new dramas debuting on Broadway over the next four months, six of which are by and about African Americans (and this is not counting the one already opened, Pass Over.), and two of which are avant-garde dramas playing in repertory. (For every “Diana,” there’s a “Dana H.”)
And a question I asked (and tried to answer on Labor Day): Does the Reckoning Over Race + Class = Intriguing New Plays About Workers and Workplaces?
With tourists unlikely to replenish to pre-pandemic numbers in the Fall season, will New Yorkers fill the seats…and help redefine what theater means in the city?
Broadway 2021-2022 Season Preview Guide
Off Broadway 2021-2022 Season Preview Guide
September 2021 New York Theater Openings and Reopenings
Stageworthy News of the Week
What Theater Learned on Its 18-Month Vacation by Helen Shaw (NY Magazine)
“…But there has been some good news! The shutdown paradoxically empowered the labor sector. The pause freed workers from their 80-hour weeks, giving the unionized, the nonunionized, and even the unpaid time to organize…That level of empowerment and awakened consciousness won’t appear on a marquee, but it will determine what we see…So the theater is trying to rebuild itself into a more ethical shape, even as it’s trying to rescue itself from its greatest existential crisis. Thank goodness it’s a form accustomed to starting fresh with every show. “
Starting September 14, at 3pm TKTS Times Square is back up and running, selling tickets to same-day matinee and evening performances and next-day matinee performances.
Trans March on Broadway
Tisa Chang, founding Artistic Director of Pan Asian Repertory, will provide the evening’s keynote address. at the League for Professional Theatre Women’s first event of its 39th season, Monday, September 13 at 7 pm, free online
Rest in Peace
Andy Propst, 56, theater critic and journalist, author of biography of Cy Coleman, Comden and Green, and author of the 100 Most Important People in Musical Theater..
