First COVID-Safe Theater in NYC: How Cleansing the Space Helped Open the Doors

A Story About Creativity, Connection – and Hope

On April 2, an dramatic adaptation of the bestselling novel Blindness opened at the Daryl Roth Theater. It marks the first reopening of a commercial venue, on or off Broadway, since New York City went dark last March 12.

If a performance venue can be tailored to put post-pandemic audiences at ease, that’s reason enough for celebration. Art and theater enrich the universe.

Not so incidentally, the producer and the theater-cleanser in this story happen to be two of my close friends from college. We’ve followed each others’ adult lives and stayed connected since the mid-sixties. That’s also worth writing home about.

I’ll start at the beginning….

Three Friends

“Daryl asked me to do a space-clearing of her theater!” says my old friend Barbara Biziou.

She’s referring to Daryl Roth, our fellow “Sag” (Sagittarian) and sorority sister, who has spent the last forty years of her life finding and funding mind-opening theater productions – Proof, Wit, Kinky Boots, The Normal Heart, Indecent…I could keep going.

The three of us have kept in touch over these many decades through conversations and dinners. We share a love of things beautiful, creative, and spiritual.

Daryl’s and my work realms – theater and journalism – are easier to define than Barbara’s.  We fondly call her, “the ritual lady.”

Barbara is my go-to whenever I want to design a celebration or get rid of negative energy, or if I feel stuck. So it made perfect sense that Daryl would ask Barbara to “cleanse” the space in her theater.

“The play is called Blindness,” Barbara tells me. “Daryl brought it over from London. There are no actors.”

“That’s great!” I say, not quite understanding how one puts on a play without actors. But I’m thrilled to hear that any theater in New York is reopening in the wake of COVID – no less the theater that bears our Daryl’s name.

I make a mental note to call Daryl when we hang up.

Pandemic-Proofing The Play

Blindness, the  book, was written by Chilean Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago in 1997.  Reading the first two lines of the Wikipedia plot summary, it is easy to understand its appeal in 2021:

Blindness is the story of an unexplained mass epidemic of blindness afflicting nearly everyone in an unnamed city, and the social break down that swiftly follows….

Daryl later explains, “Simon Stevens [a Tony Award winner] wrote an adaptation of the book for the Donmar Warehouse in London. I wasn’t able to travel…” [This was last August; Europe was closed to Americans.] “…so they sent the audio file and photos. And I thought, I could do this in my theater.”

New York Times writer Michael Paulson describes the production as an “immersive audio adaptation” of the book.  The seating consists of two-person “pods” spaced 6-foot-apart. You listen to the prerecorded script through state-of-the-art headphones that are bathed in ultra-violet light between performances.

The experience is, by all accounts, riveting, if not at times, soul-piercing. After the London premiere, the Guardian headline read, “blazing pandemic tale is brilliantly too close for comfort.”

Undoubtedly, some might prefer a musical comedy as they emerge from isolation. Others – like me – might be game for a thought-provoking play but skittish about attending any indoor venue.

My heart broke when New York City theaters were shuttered. I worried, What will it take for me to feel safe enough to sit in an audience again?

I now  have an answer.

This production of Blindness was permitted, Daryl points out, “because there are no actors and no way for people to gather. No one is allowed in the lobby before the show. No late-comers will be seated. We’ve let people know that they should use the restroom before they enter the theater. ”

As one reviewer wrote after opening night, “The Daryl Roth Theater…has made the experience pandemic-proof.”

Instead of filling the theater’s 299 seats, only 86 tickets are sold for each 70-minute performance.  The theater has new air purifiers, as well as rigorous cleaning protocols and special training for the staff (“so they can answer questions”).

“I feel a huge responsibility,” Daryl told Town & Country reporter Christopher Barnard, “aside from the fact that I’m a Jewish mother and I’m naturally worried about everything.”

Space-Cleansing

Having Barbara bless the production provided an extra level of energetic and spiritual protection in the theater and, for Daryl, greater peace of mind.

“I wanted a fresh start for the theater. I always have Barbara come before a first preview, so that it will be a new beginning.”

She remembers what first  prompted her to call on Barbara fifteen years ago: The star of one-woman show had been rude and demanding throughout the run, always yelling at the staff.

“After the last performance, it felt like all this gook was in the air in my theater. I wanted to get rid of it before doing anything else in the space.”

Daryl trusted Barbara but didn’t know what to expect. “Did I know that she was going to come with a bell and clap and use her sprays? No!”

Barbara laughs, but is not surprised. In the early 2000s, when her Joy of Ritual was first published, the word ritual evoked the image of natives dancing around a fire. Today, the venerable Harvard Business Review writes about “the restorative power of ritual.” In part, corporate America and lay people are more receptive because research validates that rituals work.

“One century’s magic,” Barbara points out, “is the next century’s science.”

She has spent years studying how ancient cultures and indigenous people banish their demons. She explains how negative emotions can  build up: “Every thought and every interaction is imprinted in our physical space–anger, frustration, fear, loneliness.

“Part of any theater blessing therefore is a clearing out of anything that energetically could be stuck in the space before mounting a new production. It’s like taking a shower before putting on fresh clothes.”

Every action in a ritual – prayers, chants, written words on paper – and every ingredient – water, candles, herbs, incense, flowers – is symbolic and alchemic. Drums, rattles, gongs, bells, and loud claps can “move” energy. Salt purifies. Sage cleanses.

The reason a space feels lighter and more inviting after a cleansing is that the bad energy has been dispelled — not unlike removing rocks from a stream so water will flow more freely.

Not surprisingly, the need for spiritual spring cleaning is more pressing as we emerge from confinement. Barbara was hired to cleanse three different homes the same week Daryl called.

“They’ve been locked down. Sometimes with kids. They’re finding it harder to sleep. More anxiety.”

Simple acts can cleanse a space, say Barbara. “Before you move in, throw salt in the door and then sweep it out – that’s the old negative energy.”

In a recent blog post urging us to “spring forward,” she suggests:

As you walk around your home, open all the windows. Whenever you feel energy congestion, clap quickly to break up stuck energy.

When you are finished, create an altar to the new energy you want to bring in. I always like to use crystals, flowers, a special candle and some water.

Clearing the space is the first part.  By creating an alter or merely articulating the result you’d like to see, you are setting your intention.

The day before the previews of Blindness, Barbara and Daryl assembled everyone who played a part in mounting the production, including house staff. They joined Barbara in the cleansing and then came together to set their intention.  They talked about what they hoped for: a successful run in a space safe.

Did It Work?

Blindness is garnering positive reviews. For many performances, the 86 seats are sold out. “We are still building,” says Daryl.

I, for one, hope so. I love plays, musicals, concerts, readings – any performance in the flesh. It’s a privilege and an unparalleled experience to be amidst talented performers, up close and personal. It enriches us, shows us possibilities.

I was hooked when my parents took me to my first show, Call Me Madam with Ethel Merman, music by Irving Berlin. At age eight, I had no idea that “the hostess with the mostes’ on the ball” was the legendary Washington doyenne and diplomat, Perle Mesta, nor did I know what being “in love” meant. Not understand lyrics fully didn’t matter. We had seats close enough to see the actors’ eyes.  I was carried away.

Theater is truly a collaborative effort – actors, script, costumes, lighting, staging, musicians, sets – all integral to the whole. It takes discipline, hard work, and dedication. But when that curtain rise, it magically comes together.

Blindness has no cast, no curtain.  But it has a compelling story.  The theater employs nearly a hundred people – from creators and publicists to the fresh-faced twentysomethings who hand out programs and usher patrons to their socially-distanced seats. That is indeed a ray of hope.  Greg Evans recently wrote:

Broadway shut its doors and turned out its lights on March 12, 2020, an instant metaphor for Covid-19’s catastrophic impact on business, the arts and New York City itself. In the year since, Broadway has been a bellwether in the city’s ongoing hibernation, as one shutdown extension followed another until even Summer 2021 began to seem like a pipedream.

It is no longer a “pipedream.” Granted, one theater reopening is just a small start, but it is at least what Daryl hoped for: a new beginning.