Sarah Jessica Parker has urged New Yorkers to save Broadway.
Sarah Jessica Parker
The 55-year-old actress - who made her Broadway debut at the age of 11 in the 1976 revival of 'The Innocents' - penned an open letter on Variety in a bid to save theatres across the city from closure due to the coronavirus pandemic.
She wrote: “The current crisis New York is living through is a purgatory that is very unfamiliar, one that lingers on with a painful uncertainty. Sept. 11 was unthinkable, but we could walk ourselves through the grief and, crucially, grieve collectively. Nothing before has stopped lives, jobs and the economy like this. And the one thing I keep forcing myself to remember is that I can’t go to the theater to get through it.”
Although the ‘Sex and the City’ star acknowledges theatres across the country are in need of help, she has specifically called for action in New York due to all the various industries connected to the world famous theatre district.
She continued: “This isn’t just New York’s problem: I feel terrible about regional theaters, like the Cincinnati Playhouse, which I grew up attending. But New York especially needs theater because so many New Yorkers need theater — the thousands of people employed directly and indirectly by the industry, doing collateral work, from the servers at the surrounding restaurants to the people responsible for dry-cleaning costumes.
“Theater is the way we induce visitors to come to our city and plan those special afternoons and evenings, which keep such a vast web of my fellow citizens employed and afloat. All the people I know and all the people I don’t know who are out of work need theater for the rent, and the mortgage, and children’s educations — all the countless “ands” that are creating so much anxiety across the city and the nation.”
Sarah - whose husband Matthew Broderick is a regular performer on Broadway - asked stage fans to help the industry by “reinvesting” in theatres and small businesses.
She added: “I’m encouraging people to come back to New York and reinvest in our community. Whether it’s a theater or a small business, you can’t reopen a business until you have the patrons there - it’s a psychological thing. And I believe it’s incumbent upon people who’ve had success in this city to reinvest, to come home.”
Tagged in Matthew Broderick Sarah Jessica Parker