Reply to Are masks still required at Kennedy center shows now?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I went to a play at a theatre in Frederick last Saturday and actors had no masks but audience was required to mask.  Doesn't really make sense to me.[/quote]

To all the "we don't want to mask at live theater any more" posters:

As the house manager for one play we saw recently said, when she came out (masked) to thank the audience: "WE mask so the actors don't have to."

We go to theater a lot. And my young adult DC is an actor doing theater and has many friends in professional theater. Covid is still very real, and if even one performer in a cast tests positive, it can shut down a whole production temporarily. Before anyone leaps in to say, "But, understudies! This is what understudies are for!" you need to know that understudies are absolutely not a thing in every production everywhere, and even if there ARE understudies, Covid in the cast can mess with that system too. (We were lucky to see a play at Shakespeare Theater Co. in DC when just one cast member was out with a positive test; a few weeks later, the final shows were all canceled due to Covid spreading in the ranks of the cast.) So productions are still leery of audiences who aren't masked. Some productions are trying to function as "bubbles" as much as possible, asking actors in particular to limit contacts etc. -- not perfectly achievable, since actors do have this thing called families -- but believe me, in the theater community they're still extremely concerned because of how fast Covid spreads and how it can knock out a production entirely. Yes, even now. Yes, even with vaccines.

If we want to see actors who are performing without masks, audiences should do them the great courtesy of masking. Yeah, we're sitting more than six feet from them but there are hundreds of us in their airspace, every show, show after show.

Knowing DCUM, I'm sure someone will argue that at some point theaters can be so scared. Well, theaters and casts and crews by definition are groups, and working in very close proximity physically. If they're trying to stay uninfected off stage so they can perform for us on stage with less worry, the least we can do is mask. We mask so the actors don't have to. I dont' mind masking indefinitely. [/quote]

I seriously doubt the actors, crew and theater staff are all masked and avoiding crowds in their offstage lives. Masking in theaters is, yes, covid theater. The art world is complaining about how live audiences aren’t returning to theater. Maybe they need to get realistic about mask policies. Also, Broadway is mask optional. So this seems like another example of DC being an extreme covid outlier. [/quote]

Didn't read thoroughly, did you? I said: SOME are trying to stay as "bubbled" as they can; and I note that, yeah, actors and crew have families and lives. I never said they "all are masked" or "avoiding crowds" entirely.

[b]If you're cool sitting between, behind and in front of a crowd of unmasked strangers for two to four hours at a go, indoors, great for you.[/b] Not all of us are. Have fun with the upcoming winter of heightened flu (read a little current news -- worst flu season in over a decade, already) and new variants of Covid, which will end up shutting down productions eventually because audiences don't care any more. That sucks for everyone involved. [/quote]

It has been great.
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