9 - and the unconventional, small-scale work championed by the trio of January festivals has been even slower to resume in the city.
Broadway is reeling from closures - most recently, Manhattan Theatre Club halted “Skeleton Crew” through Jan. On Monday the Joyce Theater said it would not be able to go ahead with Ayodele Casel’s tap-dance work “Chasing Magic,” which had been scheduled to open on Tuesday.
The cancellations speak to the difficulties of producing live performance in New York during a pandemic, even assuming the most responsible health and safety practices. Kristin Marting and Beth Morrison, two of the founding directors of Prototype, spent Friday morning telling artists that, while the festival would pay out their contracts, they wouldn’t be able to perform. 23 that the conference would go digital, which made the subsequent cancellations less surprising, if no less sad. (One Prototype show, “The Hang,” will still open, a bit later in the month than scheduled.)ĭeveloped to complement the annual Association of Performing Arts Professionals conference, these three January festivals have grown to fill an essential niche, introducing presenters and civilians to innovative theater and performance - local, national and international. And on Monday, Prototype, a festival of avant-garde opera and musical theater, largely spiked its 10th anniversary celebration that was meant to open on Jan.
When he spoke on Friday, the Public had just announced the festival’s cancellation, citing “multiple disruptions related to the rapid community spread of the Omicron variant.” This was just after the Exponential Festival, a multi-venue, multi-arts program based in Brooklyn, had made the decision to go entirely online. With case numbers rising, jiggering only went so far.