The new masking policy at “The Kite Runner” on Broadway was devised at the doctor’s office.
Tracey McFarland, one of the show’s producers, was taking her son to his paediatrician, a theatre buff. The paediatrician told her that while he would have liked to see the play, he would not attend if masks were optional, as they are at most Broadway shows these days. That got McFarland thinking: Why couldn’t they put on some performances at which masks are required, and others where masks are optional? She brought up the idea with colleagues.
“Everybody on the phone was like, ‘You know, I’ve had friends who have been asking for that,’” McFarland said, recalling one of the conversations that led to the show’s decision to start requiring masks on Fridays. “We just realized that there is an audience out there that is not being served.”
“I’m sure there are some outliers who won’t come to the Met because they don’t want to wear a mask,” Mr Gelb said. But he said that he believes there is relative “mask harmony” among operagoers. “Age is a factor,” he said. “Older audiences feel safer wearing masks. And our younger audiences are respectful of that.”
“If a singer goes out with Covid, they are out for 10 days and that can mean they lose three performances,” he said. “Our recent audience survey also indicated a very strong desire for continued safety protocols in the auditorium.”
“The Kite Runner” is not the only show experimenting with offering both masks-only and masks-optional performances. Shakespeare & Company, in Lenox, Mass., has been offering masks-required performances twice a week in its indoor spaces.
“You find that people are either very emotional about having to wear masks or very emotional about people not being masked around them,” said Allyn Burrows, Shakespeare & Company’s artistic director. “And you never know where that split is going to happen.”
“There are people who feel very strongly about it, but it’s a small number,” she said. That is why the company is planning to go a different route when its fall season begins and it plans to make masking optional.
At “The Kite Runner,” the decision to require masks on Fridays was met with so much positive feedback that the show decided to add a mask mandate for Wednesday matinees as well.
At a mask-mandated performance of “The Kite Runner” last Friday, staff members scanning tickets just inside the theatre were once again asking patrons who arrived without a mask if they had one. They had a supply of black masks on hand for anyone who had come unprepared. Further inside the theatre, staff members wore buttons that said “MASK UP” and held signs in the aisles reminding people to wear their masks during the performance.
“We are masking on Fridays,” an attendant told one woman who had managed to make it well inside the theatre without a mask on her face. The woman apologized and drew out a mask from her purse.
So far, producers said things have gone smoothly at the performances of “The Kite Runner” at which masks are required. One of the producers, Victoria Lang, said that adding the mask requirement to some performances did not yet appear to have had any impact on ticket sales to those performances.
But the show has sold at least one ticket to a patron who otherwise would not have come. Dr Marc Wager, the paediatrician whose refusal to attend a mask-optional performance had helped inspire the producers to require masks at some shows, attended a masked performance on Friday.
Feeling emboldened, Dr Wager said, he had emailed the producer of another Broadway show whose children he cares for, noting that “The Kite Runner” was now requiring masks at select performances.
“Maybe you want to, too,” he wrote.
Source: Ghanafuo.com
