by Emily Claypoole. IG: @playdohpoole. Twitter: @thisisemilyok.
NEW YORK, NY – Earlier this month, the Broadway League announced that they will be extending mask requirements in all 41 Broadway theaters until at least May 31st, citing the success these requirements bring in muffling your aunt’s questions about the show.
“Yes, COVID is still very much an issue,” commented Broadway League representative Marcia Devlin before buying Hadestown tickets for her and her Cleveland-based Aunt Janice. “But our real concern is how chatty out-of-town visitors can get during the show. They always have so many questions. I mean, just look in the playbill at intermission. I don’t know where you recognize Reeve Carney from, Janice.”
Geena Mills, an NYC transplant originally from South Dakota, has recently changed her tune on the mask requirements.
“I used to think that you had to ask questions during the show,” noted Mills while throwing her “I Heart Sioux Falls” pin in the trash. “Now that I’ve been in New York for a year, I finally feel self-sufficient enough to find the answers to those questions myself. Good on the Broadway League. I don’t want to hear Aunt Clarissa ask me five times why Elphaba is green. If she’s wearing a mask, I can just pretend like I don’t hear her.”
Aunts visiting their nieces and nephews from Phoenix, however, have gathered on the TKTS steps to protest the continuation of mask requirements.
“How could they do this to us?” questioned Sharon Turner, after asking another protester why Pamela Anderson looks like such a “hoochie” on the Chicago billboard. “I specifically scheduled my visit so I could see Six with my family without a mask. How else am I supposed to ask my nephew why all the actresses aren’t white?” Turner continued, raising a sign in the air reading “My Questions, My Choice!”
Another unnamed source close to the Broadway League provided further information about the future of vaccine requirements on Broadway.
“We’re hoping to extend those too. We really want to prevent people’s southern uncles from seeing the gender-bent production of Company”.