Tuesday Night’s Literal Showstoppers: Clinton and Trump

[brooklynite]

The New York Times

Usually it takes a blizzard, a hurricane or a strike for the show not to go on at New York’s leading cultural institutions. But the Metropolitan Opera, more than half of Broadway theaters and the White Light Festival at Lincoln Center will all go dark on Tuesday evening rather than compete with the most compelling, consequential theater in town: the presidential election.

“Shows have to react to when an audience is going to be available,” said Kevin McCollum, the lead producer of “Something Rotten!” on Broadway, which moved a performance from Tuesday night to Monday, its usual night off. “Everyone is going to be so distracted.”

While performances have occasionally been called off on past election nights, many more have been canceled this year, as producers bet that it will be tough for music and drama to compete with history. That is partly a reflection of the unusually high interest in the race pitting Donald J. Trump against Hillary Clinton, which has already broken television ratings records at several points. And it is partly a bow to the ascendancy of the smartphone, which has left audiences more connected — and more distractible — than ever.

“I don’t mean to undermine the power of theater, but I’m not sure we could all escape into the world of a play on that particular day,” said Michael Walkup, the producing artistic director of Page 73 Productions, a small nonprofit theater company that moved a performance of “Ultimate Beauty Bible,” an Off Broadway comedy, from Tuesday night to Saturday afternoon.