When Will Broadway Be Back?

Robert Gruszka, Reporting Journalist

It’s been a little less than a year since one of New York’s biggest attractions, Broadway, shut down. The once-vibrant New York that bustled with performers, happy tourists, and excited children now sits still. The packed theaters, now empty. Thousands of jobs have been lost. As of right now, Broadway is set to reopen on May 30, 2021 but this currently looks very unlikely. 

Over the course of this year, many shows have been forced to shut down permanently like Mean Girls, Beetlejuice, and Frozen, and many more that were set to debut on the Broadway Stage have been rescheduled. But there is some hope: on February 2, 2021, Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Pulitzer Prize, Grammy, and Tony Awards winning show, set a returning date of October 12, 2021. This is the first show that has announced a 2021 return date.

When these shows do finally come back, it is going to look a little different then it did before. In an article by Deadline featuring many prominent faces in the Broadway world, including many producers, directors, and the President of the Broadway League, many say that it will not be possible to have all the shows come back at once, suggesting that 4-10 shows open and see how that works. Others are concerned about how they will get ticket sales, because many of their tickets are bought by travelers who are not traveling as much as they used to. Right now it is uncertain about what shows will come back first, what you are going to have to do to secure a ticket, and when those tickets will become available so all we can do right now is hope, hope that these shows will be able to open up soon.

But do not worry if you are not able to get to Broadway when it first opens back up, because Broadway will be coming to your home this fall. The film adaptation of Dear Evan Hansen will be released on September 24, 2021, A pro-shot of Come From Away will be released in September of 2021, and a film adaptation of Wicked the Musical is in the works with no official cast list or production timeline.