Marquees become a question of their antiquity at the heart of Midtown Manhattan. By some rite of passage we have been graced with the epicenter of live theater in New York City Broadway, which has been in shutdown since some of the first traces of coronavirus in the U.S. on March 12, 2020. Forty-one theaters closed in an effort to ensure the safety of casts, crews, and spectators from all around the world. Finally, after an entire year without seeing our favorite musicals on stage, September 14 marks the first round of performances for audiences that have been patiently clutching onto their tickets since they last ordered them online.

As for the showrunners, actors, and musicians, it is evidenced that they as well are overjoyed to be returned to the craft that they have perfected their entire life up to every runtime of a Broadway performance. Permanent closures of certain shows were announced amid a lack of resources to collaborate. The in-person quality of Broadway that has enchanted tourists and New Yorkers is no longer to be ceased.

All that said, artists in showbusiness come face-to-face with many obstacles simply by the schedule and demand of the work alone. Climbing flights of stairs becomes less of a chore once you’ve completed the show the week before, and the week before that. Mandatory costume fittings and rehearsals blend into each other. You snap your guitar case back together at the end of playing a three-hour score, prepared to rinse and repeat the next day. 

I never quite understood the nuances behind the curtain (or in the pit) as an amateur theater connoisseur. My mother would buy balcony seats for us on Ticketmaster, drag me out of bed, and open the car door for me so we could transport ourselves from suburbia to the traffic on the Washington Bridge. The first musical that I can remember as far back as I could was Chicago when I was merely seven years old. And also by my limited memory, the first one that resonated with me was Wicked. I fell in love with the character of Elphaba, one of the first prototypes of a modern antihero.

Broadway at its ultimatum is an umbrella term. The broader, commercially recognized medium when storytelling decides to surpass the dimensions presented by a flat surface. Months of preparation lead to one-and-done spectacles keeping you occupied through sight, song, and the thespian touch. It becomes the playground for the all-encompassing drama and orchestra nerds you find at college. These sentiments remain true from the opening monologue to the chatter during the interlude to the well-anticipated final bow. 

Take the word of esteemed actress and recording artist Syndee Winters. “Whatever Michael Jackson was doing, I wanted to do it.” she affirmed. “And he was doing all the things at the same time when he was playing the scarecrow in the Wiz.”

Syndee is a vocal powerhouse whose talent led to her roles as Nala in The Lion King and the Schuyler Sisters in Hamilton, serving as an understudy for countless others. Her father claims that she could sing before she could talk, a skill that became quite handy once she attended Five Towns College. 

Growing up in Brooklyn, every time she visited her mother’s hairdresser, she would be asked a question as old as time itself: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” 

Although her mother insisted that she respond, “Pediatrician,” Syndee pursued the aspirations she had to be a singer without any glimmer of doubt.

When she first entered the world of New York theater sixteen years ago, she quickly realized that Broadway easily falls apart without realizing that she was only as “valuable as an asset to the project as is everyone else”: it is just as necessary to fully comprehend the role of the writer as the role of the casting director. The entire spectacle and story is only possible with the different actors in the room that aren’t shone under a spotlight and caked in makeup. She says that as critical as the public’s perspective of artistry is, it is not just about singing, dancing, and acting for laughs and claps.

The musical theater industry at large is predominantly non-person of color, or has been since its incarnation. Knowing that she had the opportunity to vocally train artists and creators of color with her immense talent, Syndee began The Roar School. There, she tells her students that although there is a strength in musical technicality, there is greater a pulse in the emotional value and narrative behind whooping riffs and healthy, mixed belts. 

She brings up Cole Porter, a composer esteemed for his urbane wit in his oftentimes complex style of songwriting. He was a godfather to the scripted plays of today that interpolate music, directly driving the story forward. Before then, it was structured like a drama that unfolded with music as a supplementary item. However, it is key to note that musicals are essentially, at its core, like any other organic art form. But many theaters have adapted to the modern concept of having the soundtrack as the backbone to the hours-long performance itself: “If you go into Rodgers and Hammerstein, or Hart, they move the story by integrating it into the music, and that is how everything pushes forward.”

Michael Aarons is a music coordinator for musicals including Dear Evan Hansen, School of Rock, and Hamilton. Like Syndee, music was always a first instinct for him, another language that he communicated while practicing from instrument to instrument. He started playing piano when he was four or five, and began playing guitar around age nine. He joined quite a handful of rock bands, heavy metal bands, and other group-oriented music groups throughout his teenage years.

At age 15, he went to live with his father in Washington D.C. after being accepted into the Duke Ellington School of the Arts after his mother passed away. He attended the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in New York City.

Michael attended LaGuardia’s nationally renowned jazz program, meaning that after academics and a bit of jazz band in the morning, he would have advanced jazz classes from one to five everyday. He became especially keen on playing the guitar in particular.

He continued his studies of jazz in New York when he turned 18, back in 1994. Like most musicians, he began teaching and taking up all kinds of gigs to hopefully reach the potential of “making it.” Which, in fact, as we know now, he hit the jackpot.

He went on to be in good company with the likes of Lisa Minnelli and her band around the 2000s, and through her producer husband, he was able to book television spots, concerts, and related events. He afterward was able to network with several composers and musicians until he landed on Broadway, what he now considers to be a great honor to be involved in.

The formula to Broadway is also benefited by its evidently popularized location. Michael always just knew that New York was where he belonged. “I had to be here. If I was going to be a musician, there really isn't another place to really choose over the other, you know? There's LA and there's New York. The only plausible decision was the latter.”

He didn’t always have a fervent passion for Broadway, and starting out, preferred to be in the pit orchestra (even before considering theater as a viable option). The visibility of being onstage was not ideal for someone who wanted to place all his emphasis on the quality of the musical performance. 

“You might find yourself next to a musician [on broadway] who's played on like every major record from the 1970s and eighties with all your favorite artists.” Michael also remarks that any musician who craves steady, even pay and constant inspiration at work should consider working in showbusiness.

Recently, the streaming platform Disney Plus released the videotaped performance of Hamilton with the original cast at Rodgers Theater (which I have guiltily watched a few too many times). As musicals are slowly but surely becoming films that aren’t simply records of previous runtimes, but full production sets with Hollywood involvement (noteworthy examples include In the Heights and Dear Evan Hansen). 

Syndee and Michael gave their two cents on the evolution of digital content and how it will leave long-lasting impacts on live theater moving forward. But first, it was necessary to have a discussion about the similarities and discrepancies between what we consider modern music (pop, EDM, R&B, hip-hop, etc.) and showtunes.

“Popular music is subjective to its historical context,” says Winters, bringing up Hamilton and Rent as how most audiences view music of the current times. Nonetheless, she admits that for many, Broadway music takes some getting used to. “Like any genre that is unfamiliar to someone, the vast majority of people who don't listen to musical theater don’t love it since their ears aren’t keen to that particular sound.”

The Hamilton Mixtape, a studio album that invites a pantheon of popular artists to reimagine the musical’s tracks into potential hits, is the prime example of conquering the strict divide between what is heard in an auditorium and what is heard on Spotify. Syndee also mentions that modern production and mastering techniques have been playing more intensively into the live aspect of Broadway due to the opportunities that open when this bridge is crossed

Michael voices that as much as he himself believes that digitizing Broadway has its benefits, the drawbacks are critical to contemplate as well: Digital soundtracks and published footage of performances can undercut musicians because one, they're hidden in the pit, and two, the art of playing live is completely stripped. Streaming also has its own consequences with payment for musicians, but as long as they’re given royalties, I don’t necessarily mind it.”

There is a possibility for musicians of the original ensemble to be exploited from their fair share in the mass distribution of recordings and remixes on the Internet, he adds. A believer in creative identity, Michael is an advocate for the musician union and for change in a culture that more times than not depreciates artists and their work.

Whether or not feature films or remixes, instant accessibility to musicals is not comparable to the experience of being presented with talent in its truest form: right in front of your eyes. Convenience is not a term that audience members should become familiar with, as it has never been a possibility for the artists, technicians, and coordinators. There are no “replays”; performers must give it their all to the select audience that had booked the theater that night. After having hundreds of potential performances lost in the global epidemic, the best that can be done to account for the casualties is to pick up right where we left off–giving the creatives and minds behind each performance that we are given the greatest standing ovation.