Theatergoers are worried the lights may go out on Broadway a threat of a theater strike looms.
Two powerful labor unions representing Broadway performers, musicians and stage managers have authorized a walkout in a contract dispute with theater owners, and theater patrons aren’t too thrilled.
“New York is nothing without Broadway: you can’t get this experience anywhere else,” Alexis Rohan, a 38-year-old tourist visiting from California, fumed to The Post.
“I’m a little surprised that this is even a thought being entertained given how much money Broadway shows bring into the city – after the show, you grab dinner or head to Times Square,” she added.
“These shows bring in so much money, you would think that asking for higher pay would be the obvious,” said Christopher T., 40, visiting from Canada with his girlfriend.
“I really hope that they do everything they can to keep it going – it’s what people come to New York to do.”
Possible strikes have been authorized in recent days by the Broadway musician union Local 802 and the Actors’ Equity Association, who have each stalled in negotiations with the Broadway League.
Both groups — who are working on contracts that expired in August and September, respectively — are demanding higher wages, improved health care coverage and layoff protections as the Great White Way has been seeing booming business.
The theaters have reported a $1.89 billion in grosses – a 23% increase over the year prior – and an attendance of 14.7 million during the 2024-25 season, marking it the second-best attended season to date, according to the Broadway League.
“On the heels of the most successful season in history, the Broadway League wants the working musicians and artists who fueled that very success to accept wage cuts, threats to healthcare benefits, and potential job losses,” Local 802 President Bob Suttmann, who represents Broadway’s musicians, said in a statement after the union authorized a strike Sunday night.
“Faced with such an egregious erosion of their working conditions, Local 802 Broadway musicians and other artists are ready to leverage every ounce of their collective power, up to and including a strike,” he added.
“Good-faith negotiations happen at the bargaining table, not in the press,” a rep for the Broadway League responded in a statement to The Post. “We value our musicians and we are committed to working in good faith to get a fair contract done.”
A strike could impact dozens of Broadway theaters ahead of the busy winter holiday season, according to Playbill. A shutdown could also spell trouble for the city, with Broadway contributing more than $14 billion to the city’s economy during the 2018-19 season.
The last major Broadway strike happened in 2007, which resulted in a 19-day shutdown across more than two dozen shows via stagehands.
Dozens of Congress members signed a letter Oct. 9 imploring the unions to come to an agreement with the Broadway League, claiming “significant economic disruption to not just the New York metropolitan area but harm theater workers and patrons across the country and around the world” should a strike happen.
The musicians’ union is set to come back to the bargaining table on Friday – but a Local 802 rep told Playbill that the union is ready to call a strike in the next two weeks if negotiations continue to fail.
“Anything is on the table right now,” Death Becomes Her” hairstylist Mark Capalbo told The Post.
Capalbo, 40, who is in a separate union, said other unions would likely join the strike in solidarity, prompting Broadway to totally “shut down.
“It will be hundreds and hundreds of people out of work,” he said. “I hope it doesn’t come to [a strike], but honestly, being a union person through and through, I’ll do anything they need us to do.
“It does cost a lot to produce shows … but it’s very easy to blame the unions as a scapegoat,” he added. “We live in the most expensive city in the world, and everyone deserves basic things they need to survive in this world.”
“It’s very hard because people enjoy the show but they don’t see the hours and work that people put into making it perfect,” one box office agent, who declined to provide his name, said.
“Hopefully it doesn’t come down to that but if they strike, I think they will get a lot of public support.”
Malik T., a 27-year-old Brooklyn native who brought his mother to see The Lion King for her birthday, told The Post the unions already have his backing.
“If that’s what they have to do to get paid fairly,” he said, “who are we to stop them?”
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