Christmas is cancelled, says NY City Ballet

Robert King says:

The run-in times for creating any theatrical production are considerable. Not just casting and scheduling many weeks of prior rehearsals, but also scheduling and coordinating all the behind-scenes work: whilst sets and costumes etc may for this production be largely ready to roll out again, there are still several months lead-in required to get all these up to speed. Then there’s marketing – for a long run which needs to sell to high capacity audiences that’s a massive (and very expensive) operation that starts many months ahead of curtain up.

And then there’s the risk – now surely uninsurable – that if there’s a second, winter Covid spike, the whole run could be cancelled, which would presumably bankrupt the company (and maybe the venue too if that’s separate from the company).

Even if theatres are open by December, no-one yet knows what the audience distancing rules will be – a run like this probably needs to sell at 80% capacity just to break even, so if you can only sell every second seat (and that’s far more optimistic than current models), you are going to be earning a maximum of 50% – but still paying 100% of costs for venue, marketing, company, orchestra etc. So therein lies bankruptcy too.

And that’s the reason why only nationally subsidised theatres, orchestras, ballet companies and suchlike right across the world can have any real chance of performing for the next many months. The rest – the majority – are in desperate straits.