September 11 (2001)

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      How a TV Ad Enticed Broadway Crowds Right After 9/11

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      Rudy Giuliani was meant to appear; Elaine Stritch arrived just in time. Recalling the “I Love New York” spot that helped dispel the fear in Times Square.Following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Broadway suspended performances for just two days, reopening on Sept. 13, 2001. But audiences were hesitant to return, and many shows performed to near-empty houses for weeks.To encourage attendance, the theater’s brightest stars — many in costume — gathered in a mostly deserted Times Square on Sept. 28 to perform the John Kander and Fred Ebb song “New York, New York.” (A studio recording session was held the day before to capture audio).Book ended by two of Broadway’s best-known voices, Bernadette Peters and Nathan Lane, the performance had the Phantom rubbing shoulders with the Beast, while “Lion King” puppets bobbed overhead. Brian Stokes Mitchell and Brooke Shields were there; so were the preteen urchins from “Les Miserables.”The footage was used for a 30-second commercial that ran on major television networks, as well as in movie theaters across the country. The goal of the ad, according to its director, Glenn Weiss: “I want people to not be afraid to come and see a show.”The week of the attacks, Broadway altogether grossed an anemic $185,490. After the commercial’s release, ticket sales steadily increased, and for the week of Nov. 11, shows brought in $470,845.Twenty years later, as Broadway braces for another nervous reopening, there are striking parallels to that morning in late September. Indeed, on Aug. 30, the industry set in motion its own post-pandemic marketing campaign, including a clip-filled video entitled “This is Broadway,” narrated by Oprah Winfrey.Here, those who were in front of the camera and behind the scenes for the 2001 ad reflect on the experience. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.JAN SVENDSEN FRIEDLANDER, then-marketing director of the Broadway League On the 12th, I did go to work. I went to the League offices and all these members — producers and theater owners and general managers — started coming. No one knew what to do. And then midday, the mayor’s office called and they said, “You’ve got to get Broadway reopened.” So we agreed to reopen on Thursday the 13th.Jan Svendsen Friedlander, the former marketing director of the Broadway League, with a poster signed by many of the participants in the Broadway-boosting 2001 commercial.Rozette Rago for The New York TimesRozette Rago for The New York TimesNATHAN LANE, performer Everybody was shaken by what happened. And people were concerned it might happen again. “The Producers” had opened and played through summer and then it was the fall. We went back on a Thursday, all because of [then Mayor] Rudy Giuliani — this is before he was a raging [expletive]. It felt wrong to be going back so quickly. And yet we were trying to do something positive.DREW HODGES, founder, SpotCo advertising agency Something like five days later we were back in the office and trying to figure out what to do. We had this idea of doing a TV commercial, getting everybody into Times Square. Barry Weissler, the “Chicago” producer, he was a friend. We went to him and said, “We have this idea, help us rock and roll it forward and get it to more powerful people.” And I believe he said, “I was thinking the same thing.”BARRY WEISSLER, producer We knew we wanted to sing “New York, New York.” What else? It was an idea that grew out of my meeting with Jed [Bernstein, former Broadway League president], saying we should bring the entire Broadway community together in one place to celebrate humanity — the tragedy aside, 9/11 aside. Let’s celebrate Broadway, humanity and life.BERNADETTE PETERS, performer Of course, New York was afraid. We were concerned: Is it going to happen again? But we just had to be brave and let people know that it was time to take back New York.JERRY MITCHELL, choreographer Drew Hodges called me and said, “We’re getting ready to do a commercial. We’re filming in Times Square. I’m going to get all the actors before their matinee. Will you choreograph it?” I said, “Absolutely, what do you need?” He sent me the song, and I had 12 dancers, I think, with me. I choreographed a little something for them that night. And the next morning, we met at the Booth Theater [functioning as a green room]. I went onstage, and there was the Broadway community, in costume, sitting in the audience.CHRIS BONEAU, publicist [Producers] were told, “We need two people to do this, and it has to be Nathan and Matthew [Broderick].” Or: “It can be three costumed characters, and these are the ones who we would like to get.” You got to hand it to the people who wrangled the whole thing. I mean, there were so many people behind the scenes who were doing every single thing they could to get this moment right, because you only had one shot at it.HODGES We were standing in Shubert Alley, waiting to go into the Booth while the shows filed in. And we heard this jangling sound, and we couldn’t figure out what it was. And it got louder and louder. And then around the corner came all the Rockettes. And they were in costume, in formation in one line, tap dancing, literally, across an empty Times Square.Faces in the crowd, from left: Tony Roberts, Peters, Betty Buckley, Joel Grey, Dick Cavett, Stritch and Cady Huffman.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesJOEL GREY, performer Everybody you ever knew in the theater all of a sudden was there, shiny and bright and ready to take on the world. Theater people believe in dreams, so we were all dreamers saying, “Everything is going to be all right.” We all needed to tell a story.MITCHELL I was standing onstage [at the Booth] and said, “This is the choreography; everybody stand up.” I think I played the tape three times. And then as each group went to their place, I put an assistant with them. They took them out to the platform and started reviewing it. Then I went out front, and I climbed the George M. [Cohan] statue, and I was standing on the statue yelling at everybody over a megaphone.PETER GALLAGHER, performer I remember Jerry, he couldn’t have been a more embracing and vibrant life spirit. And, frankly, it was just really reassuring to see everybody — just to see a lot of people you had known or worked with.HODGES The last line is, and Nathan says it in the spot, “Come to New York and let’s go on with the show.” But it was supposed to be Giuliani.FRIEDLANDER We kept hearing, “He’s coming, he’s coming. Don’t let anybody go, he wants to be in it.” So while we were waiting, a lot of the restaurants in Times Square came running out, and they were handing [out] cases of water and croissants and pastries and sandwiches and drinks.GLENN WEISS, director Fire trucks were heading right past us. And literally every cast from every Broadway show stopped, turned and applauded. The people who get applause were giving applause, and it was for our first responders. That vision will stick with me forever.PETERS We had our passion and our power and our love for New York and what it represents. Everyone was there. Of course Elaine Stritch, my dear friend, she just made it at the last minute, because she always would run just a little late.HARVEY FIERSTEIN, performer We were told to wear anything we wanted except white. That was emphasized a bunch of times. So we were ready to shoot and a cab pulls up through the police line and out steps Stritch, all in white. And then of course, everybody’s already in place, so the only place she can possibly stand is dead center — in white.LANE She thought, I think because of the success of “The Producers,” I would be in the front row and that if she stood next to me, she would definitely be on camera. She said, “Oh, no, no, no, I’ll be right here next to Nathan.” That I remember was very amusing. And very typical of her.Nathan Lane recalled how Elaine Stritch jostled for a prime position at the shoot.Jesse Dittmar for The New York TimesWEISSLER A few performers, when we placed them, insisted on pushing through to the front. I’m not going to name names. So take a look at who’s in front. She was a dear friend.HODGES We had to plan where everybody stood, and it was a grid of 40 shows. So people like Susan Lucci and Alan Alda [both had previously been on Broadway] were in the front, as they did not have a show to stand with. And of course, they were recognizable.FRIEDLANDER The concept was always to start really small with Bernadette. Bernadette symbolizes Broadway. And then the idea was just to go wider and wider and wider, so that you see Times Square, and you see that there was life there.PETERS Although I started it and I’m the first voice, it’s all of us. That’s what was important. The feeling of the love between us made us all stronger.HODGES Every single person did it for not a penny, which is kind of miraculous.FRIEDLANDER Seth Popper [the League’s director of labor relations] was my counterpart; he managed to get all the unions to give us concessions, so that we could actually shoot this spot. In the real world, if we had tried to pay for that spot, it would have been millions of dollars.GREY It was impossible to not want to be a part of it, to be somehow part of the solution. God, who would believe that there even was a solution?GALLAGHER Fortunately, none of us are accustomed to certainty in any aspect of our lives. And so it’s the kind of pluck: We don’t stop performing in a show just because it doesn’t work, or it’s going to close. You don’t stop because there’s a threat. You just keep going. More

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      What’s on TV This Week: 9/11 Specials and ‘American Crime Story’

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      Several networks will air specials timed to the 20th anniversary of Sept. 11. And “American Crime Story” will return for a third season.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Sept. 6-12. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY (1968) 10:15 p.m. on TCM. Clint Eastwood is slated to return to theaters this month with “Cry Macho,” a modern-day western. The role gives Eastwood an opportunity to dust off one of his signature looks: grizzled man with a cowboy hat. The quintessential example of that look can be found in this Sergio Leone odyssey, in which Eastwood plays a bounty hunter caught up in a plot that involves buried treasure and betrayal. While the movie — and its score, by Ennio Morricone — has become a classic, initial reception was mixed. This “must be the most expensive, pious and repellent movie in the history of its peculiar genre,” Renata Adler wrote in her review for The New York Times in 1968. “If 42nd Street is lined with little pushcarts of sadism,” she added, “this film, which opened yesterday at the Trans-Lux 85th Street and the DeMille, is an entire supermarket.” Critical opinion regarding “The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly” has improved since — though the same cannot necessarily be said of 42nd Street.TuesdayBeanie Feldstein in “Impeachment: American Crime Story.”Tina Thorpe/FXIMPEACHMENT: AMERICAN CRIME STORY 10 p.m. on FX. After dramatizing the trial of O.J. Simpson and the murder of Gianni Versace, the anthology series “American Crime Story” turns to the events leading up to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton for its third season. This telling focuses on the perspective of the women involved, with Beanie Feldstein starring as Monica Lewinsky, Sarah Paulson as Linda Tripp, Annaleigh Ashford as Paula Jones and Edie Falco as Hillary Clinton. Clive Owen plays President Clinton. Lewinsky is a producer of the season, and discussed her involvement with it in a recent interview with The Times. “The reality is that this story has been part of a collective conversation for 20 years,” she said, “and as I evolve, as the world evolves, it comes to have different meanings.”BITCHIN’: THE SOUND AND FURY OF RICK JAMES (2021) 8 p.m. on Showtime. The life of the funk singer Rick James is revisited in this documentary, which aims to give a holistic view of James’s complicated legacy. Directed by Sacha Jenkins (“Fresh Dressed”), “Bitchin’” looks at James’s roots — including his enlistment in the Navy — his music and his famously wild lifestyle while also examining his relationships with women. The film is one answer to a question that the critic Candice Frederick asked in a recent article in The Times: “How do you reckon with the man who is just as famous for committing sexual assault and perpetuating misogyny in the music industry?”WednesdayWOMEN OF 9/11: A SPECIAL EDITION OF 20/20 WITH ROBIN ROBERTS 9 p.m. on ABC. Women who were affected by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, share their experience in this two-hour special hosted by Robin Roberts. Among those interviewed is Genelle Guzman-McMillan, who spent more than 24 hours buried in the rubble of 1 World Trade Center before being rescued. Also at 9 p.m., Vice TV will air TOO SOON: COMEDY AFTER 9/11, which explores the impact of the attacks on the work of comedians. Interviewees in that documentary include David Cross, Ahmed Ahmed, Janeane Garofalo, Hari Kondabolu, Cedric the Entertainer, and Marc Maron.ThursdayBenedict Cumberbatch in “Doctor Strange.”Disney/MarvelDOCTOR STRANGE (2016) 8 p.m. on TNT. If you watched the just-released “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” over the weekend and are in the mood for more Marvel, here’s a chance to revisit “Doctor Strange.” The actor Benedict Cumberbatch plays a neurosurgeon who goes on a spiritual journey, while Chiwetel Ejiofor, Tilda Swinton and Rachel McAdams also have major roles. Manohla Dargis called the film “giddily enjoyable” in her review for The Times. “Doctor Strange,” she wrote, “is part of Marvel’s strategy for world domination, yet it’s also so visually transfixing, so beautiful and nimble that you may even briefly forget the brand.”FridayDATELINE 10 p.m. on NBC. On Friday night’s special episode of NBC’s “Dateline,” Lester Holt interviews the family members of passengers and crew members who died on United Airlines Flight 93. Several other networks will also air programming timed to the 20th anniversary of 9/11. On History Channel, 9/11: THE LEGACY, airing at 7 p.m., looks at stories of children whose lives were impacted by the attacks. At 8 p.m., CBS will air THE RACE AGAINST TIME: THE C.I.A. AND 9/11. And at 9 p.m., the documentary DETAINEE 001 (2021) on Showtime looks at the case of John Walker Lindh, who became known as the “American Taliban.”ILANA GLAZER PRESENTS COMEDY ON EARTH: NYC 2020-2021 11 p.m. on Comedy Central. For some counterprogramming, consider this hourlong comedy special, which brings together an array of stand-up performances that riff on life during the pandemic, with Petey DeAbreu, Alison Leiby, Larry Owens, and Sydnee Washington.SaturdayYannick Nézet-Séguin conducting the Met Orchestra in 2019. Nézet-Séguin will lead the orchestra in Verdi’s “Requiem” to recognize the 20th anniversary of 9/11, in a performance that will air on PBS.Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducting the Met Orchestra in 2019. Nézet-Séguin will lead the orchestra in Verdi’s “Requiem” to recognize the 20th anniversary of 9/11, in a performance that will air on PBS.GREAT PERFORMANCES: VERDI’S REQUIEM: THE MET REMEMBERS 9/11 8 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Saturday programming recognizing the 20th anniversary of 9/11 includes this special episode of PBS’s “Great Performances,” which features Verdi’s “Requiem.” Misty Copeland will host. The Met Opera’s music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, will conduct the orchestra, which will be joined by the singers Ailyn Pérez, Elina Garanca, Matthew Polenzani and Eric Owens.Sunday2021 MTV VIDEO MUSIC AWARDS 8 p.m. on MTV. The rapper and singer Doja Cat is slated to host this year’s edition of the MTV Video Music Awards. Nominees for the top prizes include Justin Bieber, Megan Thee Stallion, Ariana Grande and Taylor Swift; performers are to include Olivia Rodrigo, Camila Cabello, Lil Nas X, Foo Fighters and Kacey Musgraves. More

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      ‘Worth’ Review: Appraising Lives

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      This drama starring Michael Keaton is a surprisingly effective movie about a tricky subject — the creation of the Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund.The central question of “Worth” is whether it’s possible to reduce a life to a dollar value. The film, directed by Sara Colangelo (the American remake of “The Kindergarten Teacher”), dramatizes the creation of the Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund, which the federal government established after the attacks to limit lawsuits against the airlines. The lawsuits’ downstream effects, the reasoning went, could sink the United States economy.“Worth” follows Kenneth R. Feinberg (an excellent, Boston-accented Michael Keaton), the lawyer appointed as the special master of the fund, through the two-year process of defining the project’s parameters and of getting potential plaintiffs to sign on.Notwithstanding skepticism from others, including Camille Biros (Amy Ryan), the business manager of Feinberg’s firm, it takes some time for the film’s Feinberg to understand he has underestimated the grief of the bereaved. Cold and imperious, he barely gets a word in at his first town hall with the victims. He discovers he won’t be able to farm out every interview or clerical assignment. A man who shuts out the world by listening to opera on headphones, he will have to leave his rarefied comfort zone.Even assessing “Worth” as entertainment feels fraught. Only survivors can judge whether its Hollywoodized simplifications are appropriate. The screenplay, by Max Borenstein, substantially funnels the breadth of criticism directed at Feinberg into the character of Charles Wolf (a superb Stanley Tucci), who, as he did in real life, runs a website demanding fixes to the fund. The other potential beneficiaries are composites. Laura Benanti plays a firefighter’s wife whose husband left more obligations than she knew. Andy Schneeflock appears as a man whose same-sex partner died in the Pentagon attack. The deceased’s parents and Virginia law don’t recognize the relationship.With most characters standing in for swaths of people who didn’t fit Feinberg’s formulations, “Worth” itself risks reducing individuals to types. Still, it’s probably impossible to make a mainstream movie without such streamlining, let alone to make a movie like “Worth,” on a subject that is not only challenging but superficially too technocratic for a two-hour movie. There are not many classic films about heroic legal settlements.For all the ways in which it might give short shrift to the politics or policy of the fund, “Worth” is uncommonly moving by the standards of biopics and certainly by the standards of movies that risk addressing 9/11 so overtly. Colangelo directs with what appears to be conscious restraint, in ways by turns calculated and powerful. She keeps the faces of figures who will die in the attacks just out of view as they leave their spouses for work the morning of Sept. 11. She doesn’t re-create images of the burning towers except in a reflection in Feinberg’s train window. A lengthy pan gradually reveals the size of a wall of missing-persons posters.The principal performances are uniformly strong, even with actors who do not resemble their real-life counterparts. Is it possible to reduce such complexities to an absorbing procedural? “Worth” argues yes.WorthRated PG-13. Trauma from the attacks. Running time: 1 hour 58 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      Met Opera to Return to Indoor Performance for 9/11 Tribute

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      The company plans to perform Verdi’s Requiem to mark the 20th anniversary of the attacks, an event that will also be broadcast live on PBS.The Metropolitan Opera has not held a performance in its cavernous theater since March 11, 2020. The following day, it was closed because of the pandemic and has stayed that way for nearly a year and a half.But the company announced on Friday that it would finally return indoors on Sept. 11, with a performance of Verdi’s Requiem to mark the 20th anniversary of the attacks. The event will also be broadcast live on PBS, hosted by the ballet star Misty Copeland.Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Met’s music director, will conduct the company’s orchestra and chorus, the soprano Ailyn Pérez, the mezzo-soprano Elina Garanca, the tenor Matthew Polenzani and the bass-baritone Eric Owens. Five hundred free tickets will be made available to the families of victims of the attacks; the remaining tickets will be $25. Audience members will have to have proof of vaccination status and wear masks.The concert will come before the previously announced opening night of the Met’s season, on Sept. 27: the company premiere of Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones.”But a significant obstacle remains: The company has been in tense negotiations with the union representing its orchestra players, and has yet to announce an agreement. In recent months, the Met did strike deals with the unions representing its stagehands and its chorus, soloists, dancers, actors and stage managers. The company has been seeking to cut the pay of the musicians in its orchestra, who went unpaid for nearly a year after the opera closed. More

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      ‘The Outsider’ Review: Inside the Making of the 9/11 Museum

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      A new documentary focuses on one man involved in the museum’s creation. But it’s not clear why his voice deserved to be heard above others’.Documentaries often cast their subjects in a congratulatory light, but “The Outsider” portrays Michael Shulan, the first creative director of the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, as in effect the last honest historian of Sept. 11, 2001 — a man who wanted to pose “big questions,” per the voice-over, that America might not have been ready to ask.As the directors Steven Rosenbaum and Pamela Yoder tell it, Shulan was hired by the museum because he had become an inadvertent expert in Sept. 11 images. Shortly after the attacks, he helped turn a SoHo storefront he owned into a crowdsourced photo gallery. (The movie is weirdly vague about his background, but a New York Times story from 2001 described him as a writer.)The documentary — shot from 2008 to 2014, the year the museum opened — follows Shulan and several others involved in creating the museum as they decide what to exhibit and how to present it. Different goals (remembrance, education, preservation) are in tension. Shulan prefers an open-ended approach, in which visitors might come away with individual impressions of every photograph. The filmmakers cast Alice M. Greenwald, who came from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and is now the 9/11 museum’s chief executive, as Shulan’s adversary: “Michael wanted to engender questions,” the narrator says. “Alice wanted to provide answers.”Both perspectives have their purposes, but the filmmakers never clarify why they find Shulan’s vision more valid than Greenwald’s or the other curators’ — or why Shulan deserves some sort of monopoly on the memory of Sept. 11. Arguments will continue over the propriety of transforming Ground Zero into a tourist attraction. But it’s grotesque to turn that process into a monument to one man’s professional advancement.What’s especially peculiar about the focus on Shulan is that, in other respects, “The Outsider” is an ensemble piece, distributing screen time among a half a dozen people planning for the museum’s opening. (In another miscalculation, the film relegates families of the deceased to the periphery.) During a scene in which Shulan argues with a colleague, Amy Weisser, about a particular photograph, it’s even harder to see why the filmmakers tilted the scales toward him.The press notes suggest that Shulan emerged as the hero in the editing stage, which means the apparent self-aggrandizement shouldn’t necessarily be blamed on him. “The Outsider” might have unfolded as a dispassionate, Wiseman-esque institutional portrait, without the bizarre personality-based angle or amateurish, true-crime-doc voice-over. The Times reported last month that lawyers for the museum had requested changes for “inaccuracies and distortions.” The filmmakers demurred, but a complete overhaul is nevertheless in order.The OutsiderNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 23 minutes. Watch through virtual cinemas. More

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      Abrons Arts Center’s Fall Season Celebrates Trailblazers

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      Highlights include a photography exhibition on female leaders in public housing and a contemporary play about the life of Mary Shelley, the author of “Frankenstein.”Abrons Arts Center’s lineup for the fall season is a salute to groundbreakers and innovators in the arts, public housing and emerging technology.“As we emerge from isolation, we wanted to focus on work that’s still been happening and developing in different ways during the pandemic,” Craig Peterson, the center’s executive artistic director, said in an interview. “Because it deserves an audience.”Several of the productions scheduled at the 300-seat playhouse for the coming season were booked before the pandemic and postponed because of it, said Peterson, who curated the season in collaboration with Ali Rosa-Salas, the recently appointed artistic director of the center.“Lots of them got displaced when we stopped live performance,” he said. “But we never stopped supporting artists and always intended to present them.”The center has scheduled a concert, “Holy Ground: Land of Two Towers,” by the jazz ensemble Onyx Collective on Sept. 11 to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center.“It felt like an appropriate way to think about the long-term impacts of historical moments like the ones we’re in now,” Rosa-Salas said.A week later, the center will open a free outdoor photography exhibition, “Community Matriarchs of NYCHA” (for the New York City Housing Authority), celebrating five women who have transformed their neighborhood on the Lower East Side, where they organized food distribution, especially during the pandemic, to other residents of public housing. The exhibition, presented as part of the Photoville Festival 2021 in partnership with the digital storytelling platform My Projects Runway, will include portraits by Courtney Garvin and video interviews by Christopher Currence and remain on view through Dec. 1.“I’m really excited to uplift women activists in our community and reflect on the role of public housing in our neighborhood and city,” Rosa-Salas said.From there it’s on to Frankenstein, Bigfoot and Sasquatch as Abrons presents a streaming video adaptation of Sibyl Kempson’s “The Securely Conferred, Vouchsafed Keepsakes of Maery S.,” beginning Oct. 29. First performed as an experimental, four-part radio play in January, the production, presented by the 7 Daughters of Eve Thtr. & Perf. Co., is described as a visual journey through the layered universe of Mary Shelley, the author of “Frankenstein.” The new virtual video work will feature hand-cut collages, digital and analog animation and illustration and collaborations with more than a dozen artists. An in-person screening is also set for Halloween at the new Chocolate Factory Theater.Closing the season from Dec. 10-12 is a live motion-capture piece, “Antidote,” created in collaboration with Pioneer Works. Directed by the Jamaican-born choreographer Marguerite Hemmings and the new-media artist LaJuné McMillian, it explores the relationship between physical movement and motion-capture technology and how the latter can be used as a tool of personal power and liberation. The project is a collaboration with six young artists from high schools on the Lower East Side and in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood.“It’s an intergenerational experiment and a great way to end the season,” Rosa-Salas said.The full season lineup is available at abronsartscenter.org. More

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      in Theater

      Peek at Broadway Comeback: Times Event With “Me and the Sky”

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      When The Times staged a musical number for its live event series, the performance served as a sneak preview of a theater world preparing for takeoff.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.In March, Zoe Gertz, an Australian actress, was asked by The New York Times if she would be interested in singing the soaring anthem “Me and the Sky” for an episode of its Offstage event series, which examines the theater industry during its pandemic hiatus. The number is from the Australian touring production of the 9/11 musical “Come From Away.”After teams worked on in-house music and stage direction, Ms. Gertz belted the ebullient anthem to the rafters of a simple stage at Her Majesty’s Theater in Melbourne, sans audience but backed by six musicians and five castmates of the production’s female ensemble. And it all came together in just over two weeks.“I am suddenly aliiiiiive,” Ms. Gertz sang with an irrepressible smile as she told of her character’s love for flying.The sentiment seems to be spreading. Broadway’s reopening will now occur in August. In Australia, “Frozen,” “Hamilton” and “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” were running at or near full capacity in Sydney and Melbourne for months (though masks were still required) until a recent lockdown in Melbourne put shows in that city on hold again. The performance for the Times event served as both a reminder of theater’s vitality during the pandemic and a preview of the energy to come.The musical number began to take shape in early March after The Times’s theater reporter, Michael Paulson, suggested recording a special video of the inspirational song for the Offstage series, which streamed live on April 29 and is still viewable by Times subscribers.“We wanted a song that was both good and would make sense out of context for people who hadn’t seen the show,” Mr. Paulson said. “It’s also a song that works without a very elaborate band or orchestra and is essentially a solo number.”The four-and-a-half-minute track chronicles the tale of the real-life American Airlines pilot Beverley Bass, who was among the pilots with planes full of passengers who were diverted to Newfoundland on Sept. 11, 2001.“One of the many emotions captured in this song is Beverley having to come to terms with the job she loves being put on hold, and not knowing when she might fly again,” said Rachel Karpf, the director of programming at The Times who helped plan the event with Beth Weinstein and Rachel Czipo. “We saw some parallels to the experience of theater workers in Australia and around the world this past year, as their industry was brought to a near-total standstill by the pandemic.”Ms. Karpf said the Events team began discussing ideas for the episode in early January with Mr. Paulson; Scott Heller, then The Times’s theater editor; and Damien Cave, the Sydney bureau chief. Mr. Cave and Mr. Paulson were working on a story about the return of Broadway shows in Australia, which has been much more successful at containing the virus than the United States. More