It's been more than 10mos since theatres across the country closed their doors due to the pandemic

[Roland99]

Actors' Equity Association
Tell your members of Congress: We need COBRA subsidies!

It's been more than ten months since theatres across the country closed their doors due to the pandemic. Theatre artists around the country remain out of work, and expect their industry to be among the last to reopen.

https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-your-members-of-congress-we-need-cobra-subsidies

[Galileo126]

1. Bummer...

Why pay $25 for 10-cents worth of popcorn? Why pay $50 for ticket to watch a business franchise scream for validation?

People want FOOD, not entertainment.

[Initech]

6. I think that this article is more about live performances theaters, not movie theaters.

But both are in the same boat because of this damn virus and it sucks!

[gibraltar72]

2. The manager of the local theater is in a FB group I belong to.

She said her company had announced fall of the year at earliest.

[Klaralven]

3. Subsidizing entertainment for 15% of Americans

https://www.statista.com/statistics/227494/live-theater-visitors-usa/

[frazzled]

9. Wrong metric

If theaters, as well as other arts venues such as museums, galleries, concert halls, etc. go under, then an entire array of other businesses and industries go under with them, affecting the economy gravely.

Why do people come to cities across the nation—from New York to Chicago to San Francisco and all points between? It’s to partake of the cultural offerings they can’t get in the rural areas, towns, and suburbs.

Why do people from all over the world (and from other areas of the state and country) travel to New York City, for example? Largely to see a Broadway play or to visit the Metropolitan Museum or to see an opera or concert at Lincoln Center. They take an airplane and they stay at a hotel and they eat at restaurants and they take taxis or ride shares, and they shop in the stores while they’re there to drink in the culture.

So flight attendants and baggage handlers and hotel maids and restaurant servers and store clerks and Uber drivers ... all these people also lose work and income, in addition to all the actors and musicians and museum curators and guards.

The arts represent a huge chunk of the American economy, and you snub them as elitist only out of ignorance. They are also the soul of our nation.

[Doremus]

11. Great post. People don't stop to think that we are all connected in some way.

Ripple effect. Hurt one, hurt all, eventually. Sales in our mom & pop shop have a direct relation to the financial condition of our customers. If they're holding on to extra $$ because their job is insecure, we buy less from our vendors and make fewer personal purchases.

When our customers are thriving, so do we and those we buy from.

[Klaralven]

12. At most, 4.7% of the population of the New York metro area attend the Metorpolitan Opera annually

It puts on about 220 performances annually in a hall seating 3850. There are over 18 million in the New York metro area. So if every seat in every performance were filled with a unique opera goer, only 4.7% of the population could attend physically.

Actually, given season ticket holders, repeat attendance by other opera fans, and the tickets bought by tourists, I'd bet that way less than 1% of the NY metro population attend the Met in a given year.

Public funds should not be devoted to subsidizing entertainment for the elite.

Now maybe the Met does break even from ticket sales, donations, etc. but other elitist, high-culture institutions do not.

[frazzled]

13. Still looking in all the wrong places

If you’re determined to act the Neanderthal in denying the importance of the arts, cumulatively, as important to both the economic and spiritual/intellectual/aesthetic health of the nation, including the well-being of millions of workers, there’s nothing anyone can do to change your mind.

Ticket sales from a single venue are not the answer, but knock yourself out.

https://www.artforum.com/news/mayors-call-for-federal-response-to-us-arts-crisis-84944

[frazzled]

4. Not just theaters and actors

But arts and music organizations across the board ... a huge sector of the economy that has been largely ignored.

The mayors of ten major US cities have penned a letter to the Biden-Harris administration asking it to take an integrated federal approach to supporting the arts. In their missive, the mayors noted that the September unemployment rate for those in the arts ranged from roughly three to six times that of the overall national unemployment rate of 8.5 percent, according to the National Endowment of the Arts.

Citing an NEA white paper on the benefits to communities when the arts are positioned “at the table with land-use, transportation, economic development, education, housing, infrastructure, health, climate change, diversity and public safety strategies,” the letter’s authors call for a coalescent approach that would employ cultural and arts workers in the aid of federal programs for infrastructure, education, job creation, and health, with the goal of benefiting both the cultural sector and the programs it is put in service of.

According to 2020 reports by both the NEA and the US Department of Commerce, the arts sector, whose GDP blossomed by 69.5 percent between 1998 and 2016, by 2017 was valued at $877.8 billion and thus responsible for 4.5 percent of the US GDP, contributing more to the national economy than the construction, transportation and warehousing, travel and tourism, mining, utilities, and agriculture industries.

https://www.artforum.com/news/mayors-call-for-federal-response-to-us-arts-crisis-84944

[Roland99]

7. And all commercial/entertainment companies that employ them

Theme parks
Municipalities
PR firms
Ad agencies
Film/Music industry
...
...
...

[wishstar]

5. Last time I went was exactly a year ago and I caught a bad cold shortly after

I attribute catching cold to being in crowd there and also having to feel all over seats and armrests to finding buttons to work the unwanted heater that was burning my lower back and other adjustments that both me and my friend were not familiar with in a newly remodeled theater.

But my mistake was not going to wash my hands at end of movie or having hand sanitizer with me and friend didn't have hand sanitizer in car either going home.

[Roland99]

8. This is more along the lines of Broadway theater vs movie theater

But movie theater chains have suffered, too. And the film industry and its related vendors and contractors

[GumboYaYa]

10. My daughter works in theater. She is an aspiring playwright.

She does not know a single person working in the industry right now. Many of her peers have given up and are leaving the arts. She is struggling to survive, but is determined not to give up. The brain drain from the arts from COVID is going to hurt us for years to come.