5 Creative Ways New York City Is Bringing Back Live Events

NEW YORK—Over the past couple months, New York City has slowly begun resurrecting its live event scene. Although large-scale indoor events probably won’t return at full force for a while, several city- and statewide initiatives are embracing the great outdoors as the weather warms up.

Mayor Bill de Blasio recently championed the Open Culture program, a new permit type that allows for ticketed performances. Arts and cultural institutions, as well as entertainment venues, can secure a permit for socially distant performances at over 100 street locations throughout all five boroughs. Of course, as more folks get vaccinated and COVID-19 case numbers drop, the restrictions on indoor and outdoor gatherings will loosen even further, creating more opportunities for industry pros.

Here’s a look at what New York City event producers and venues are doing right now to bring back events—from portable staging to pop-up performances.

NY PopsUp
Launched on Feb. 20, NY PopsUp is a festival consisting of hundreds of pop-up performances, many of which are free and open to the public. With the goal of jump-starting the city’s struggling live entertainment sector, the private-public partnership is overseen by producers Scott Rudin and Jane Rosenthal, in coordination with the New York State Council on the Arts and Empire State Development. Most NY PopsUp events are unannounced, with the intention of being a welcome surprise rather than a planned event or concert that might draw a large crowd. For example, Patti Smith recently performed for the employees of the Brooklyn Museum. The events are slated to run through Labor Day.

The OpenStage NYC performance stages will utilize streets, plazas and other public spaces, and accommodate 50-person socially distant audiences.Rendering: Courtesy of Rockwell GroupOpenStage NYC
Architecture and design firm Rockwell Group has teamed up with TAIT, a company known for its complex touring stages and theater engineering solutions, to create OpenStage NYC, an initiative that utilizes portable staging to help arts organizations host outdoor performances.

“OpenStage NYC builds on our DineOut NYC initiative,” said Michael Fischer, studio leader at Rockwell Group, referring to the firm’s efforts to build outdoor dining experiences for the city’s restaurants. Now the team is “supporting another beloved New York industry that has been devastated by COVID: live performance. As warm weather approaches, we wanted to find a way to help arts organizations move to outdoor performances for New Yorkers to enjoy,” he said.

TAIT is using equipment from its inventory to create quick-deploying staging systems, which include a partial overhead truss, stage lighting and audio equipment. The company’s producing arm, ProductionGlue, will serve as the execution partner for the initiative. The performance stages will utilize streets, plazas and other public spaces, and accommodate 50-person socially distant audiences.

Rockwell Group is currently providing the portable staging to three different groups in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens—the Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance (BAAD!), BRIC and the LaGuardia Performing Arts Center. “These organizations not only have the infrastructure for programming, but they also have relationships with smaller arts organizations that can potentially utilize the stages,” Fischer explained. All revenue generated by performances will go to the arts organizations.

Lincoln Center’s Restart Stages
Lincoln Center recently announced that it plans to create 10 outdoor performance and rehearsal spaces. The initiative, known as Restart Stages, will include a cabaret-style stage, an area for families that will feature arts activities for kids, rehearsal venues that will be open to the public, an outdoor reading room and an outdoor space for public school graduations. The outdoor events begin April 7 with a concert for health-care workers.

Plus, the venue plans to partner with organizations such as the Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute, Harlem Week and the Harlem Arts Alliance, the Korean Cultural Center New York and Weeksville Heritage Center to offer programming beyond Lincoln Center’s in-house institutions like the New York City Ballet. It will also partner with the New York Blood Center and the Food Bank for New York City to offer services like blood drives and food distribution, in addition to the arts programming.

The Shed announced a live five-night indoor performance series, called “An Audience With…,” which will take place April 2-22. Attendance will be limited to 12% of the McCourt’s seated capacity with the audience seated in pairs and 6 feet apart.Photo: Courtesy of The ShedThe Shed's Indoor Performance Series
The Shed, a nonprofit arts center located on Manhattan’s West Side, recently announced a live five-night indoor performance series, called “An Audience with…,” which will take place from April 2-22.

The music and comedy series will feature singer-cellist Kelsey Lu, the New York Philharmonic, soprano Renee Fleming and comedian Michelle Wolf; performances will take place in The Shed’s flexible 18,000-square-foot McCourt space, which boasts a MERV ventilation system, 115-foot-high ceilings and distanced seating for 150 people.

To reduce person-to-person interaction, attendance will be limited to 12% of McCourt’s seated capacity with the audience seated in pairs and 6 feet apart. There will be contactless ticket scanning, timed entry and exit, and no coat check, intermission, food/drink concessions or merchandise sales. The artists will perform a single set no longer than 80 minutes and, with the exception of performers who must sing or speak, all performers will be masked and distanced by 12 feet onstage.

Plus, upon arrival, attendees will need to present one of the following: confirmation of a negative COVID-19 PCR/NAAT test taken within 72 hours of the event start time or a negative COVID-19 antigen “rapid” test within six hours of the event start time, or confirmation of having completed the COVID-19 vaccination series at least 14 days prior to the date of the event.

Shakespeare in the Park 
New York City’s Public Theater plans to present Shakespeare in the Park once again this summer at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. Instead of the usual two-play season that starts in May, the theater will put on one production, “Merry Wives,” with an eight-week run starting in July. Current state regulations would allow admittance of 500 people who have been tested for COVID-19 to the venue, but those guidelines are likely to change in the coming months.