And sexual assault accusations against leading producers were rampant. There’s a gross lack of diversity on and offstage - 58.6% of roles went to white actors in the 2018-19 season, and in a given season 80% of designers are men.
The Great White Way went dark for 18 months, and during that time the industry was forced to confront the way it perpetuates injustice. On Broadway, the urgency to speak to the moment is there. The latter gnaws at the heart of the nation as we are forced to confront the moral issues raised by racism, sexism and xenophobia. Everyone has experienced loss during the coronavirus pandemic, both experiential and existential. But now, what seemed localized to New Orleans and other cities wrecked by natural disasters - this measuring of time in trauma - lives with all of us. Theater artists were there capturing the devastation, compiling anthologies such as The Katrina Project and Katrina On Stage. Ron Simons has the formula for bringing more Black producers - and Black stories - to Broadway.Douglas Lyons wants to invite Black audiences for ‘Chicken & Biscuits’ on Broadway.Playwright Antoinette Nwandu is healing her audience, and herself.Red X’s spray-painted next to body count numbers still marked doors in the 9th Ward. It was 2011 and it had been six years since Katrina devastated the city, but there were still shadows on the ground where shopping centers once stood. People seemed to measure time as before Hurricane Katrina and after. (girl raised in the South) to set foot on Bourbon Street, to gulp down a hurricane at Pat O’Brien’s and soak it up with a beignet from Cafe Du Monde.īack then, I also noticed something else. It seemed like a rite of passage for a G.R.I.T. I was 21 years old the first time I went to New Orleans to celebrate Mardi Gras and St. It reminds me of another significant event in my life. I think about that night often, how we had no idea the ways our own reality would change within weeks. The last show I saw before the coronavirus pandemic shut everything down was the Tony Award-winning revival of A Soldier’s Play, a drama about the mysterious murder of a Black soldier stationed in Louisiana in the 1940s.
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