Yo-Yo Ma on the Artist’s Role in the Time of Covid-19

[After much of the country closed down, esteemed cellist Yo-Yo Ma put out a call for artists, especially musicians, to take up a role in the struggle against the pandemic and its consequences.  He especially focused on the issues of raising the spirits of Americans who were struggling under the health threat and the psychological burdens of being confined to their homes.

[On 13 March, the day after theaters and other entertainment venues in New York City were closed down, Ma took to social media with the mission: to share music that gives him comfort.  This gave birth to the project he dubbed “Songs of Comfort.”  Over the weeks and months that followed, PBS NewsHour aired several reports on this effort, including interviews with Ma. 

[I’ve collected these segments between 18 March and 21 July and am running them together on Rick On Theater in an effort to disseminate Ma’s worthy message.]

“YO-YO MA ON ENCOURAGING ‘SONGS OF COMFORT’ AMID GLOBAL CRISIS”

by Jeffrey Brown

[This interview of the cellist by arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown aired on PBS NewsHour on Wednesday evening, 18 March 2020.  It initiated the discussion of Ma’s project on NewsHour as part of the program’s Canvas segment, its ongoing coverage of arts and culture.]

Yo-Yo Ma, one of the world’s most renowned and beloved musicians, is trying to provide comfort in this time of crisis. Ma has been posting videos of himself performing short pieces and encouraging other musicians -- of all levels -- around the world to join him in offering “Songs of Comfort.” Ma joins Jeffrey Brown to discuss the project and play [Antonín] Dvorak.

Judy Woodruff: At a time of national and, indeed, global trauma, a leading artist offers us songs of comfort.

Jeffrey Brown has that for our ongoing arts and culture series, Canvas.

Jeffrey Brown: He is one of the world’s most renowned and beloved musicians, and now he is reaching out in a new way in this current crisis.

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma recently began posting videos of himself performing short pieces and songs that can speak to those most in need and to all of us.

Yo-Yo Ma joins me from his home in Massachusetts by Skype.

And, Yo-Yo, it’s nice to talk to you. Here we are. You are stuck at home like most of us, but you’re still playing. Tell us about this idea that you have, the project called Songs of Comfort.

Yo-Yo Ma: Well, this idea came by pretty much spontaneously.

I was in the office one day, and we were talking and said, you know, let’s do something, because let’s do something in this time that actually serves people’s needs.

And we thought that, somehow, music always has been comforting to me, this is what I do, and this is the best that I can offer. And I know many people are doing everything they can from what they know. And this is just something that I can do.

Jeffrey Brown: This is what you do.

I mean, in what sense — what’s your sense of what music or art can do? I mean, we talk about this all the time. People have real needs. We have just had a whole program talking about hospitals and medical needs and food and money, of course. What can music and art do?

Yo-Yo Ma: Well, I can tell you one thing.

When I was 19, I had a teacher who said, Yo-Yo, you haven’t found your voice.

And I said, OK. And so I kept looking for my voice. And I think my voice is in finding the needs of others and then representing them. And that’s — and so, everywhere I go, it’s always about finding what people are thinking, feeling, how they think about themselves in the world.

And if I can find something that they need, and if I can actually offer a little bit of something that is comforting, then that’s how I would define my job.

Jeffrey Brown: So here you are now playing and posting pieces, but it’s more than that, right? You want others to join in, to send in their own songs, and it doesn’t even have to be music.

Tell us about what you’re hoping will happen.

Yo-Yo Ma: Well, you know, what’s amazing is that what’s already happened is that, since just a couple of days ago, there are people who have posted from the Mayo Clinic. Two doctors have actually sung something.

The lead singer from a rock band, Mashrou Leila in Lebanon, actually put in a song. And two women from Ireland and Germany sang something on in sync, on — in troubled times.

And so the idea is music is for everyone. It’s not the practitioners doing music, but it’s something that does something for us. Now, a virus is something that travels globally. It knows no borders, no walls, no boundaries.

And music is something that actually looks into the inside, and that also knows [no] boundaries. And if we can actually express what is on our insides and show that, then this is the beginning of a deeper understanding of one another.

Jeffrey Brown: We want to join you, your organization. We at the “NewsHour” want to join and encourage people to send in their own videos to #SongsofComfort, post them on Twitter, or Instagram, Facebook, wherever.

And then what are we collecting? What are you hoping that we get?

Yo-Yo Ma: We’re collecting what is personal, what is true, what is trustworthy, what is community, because community is nothing, except what is based on trust.

And when you say something in music, it better be true, because, otherwise, it doesn’t communicate.

Jeffrey Brown: All right, so we’re going to do this together.

And I want to tell our audience, please post some videos, and we here at the “NewsHour,” we’re going to post — update this project as we can on digital and broadcast, Canvas, for our arts coverage as well, joining Yo-Yo Ma in this.

And I want to say thank you to you for doing this. And it’s a pleasure to be part of it with you.

And, before we go, Yo-Yo Ma plays Dvorak for us.

(MUSIC)

Jeffrey Brown: #SongsofComfort.

Yo-Yo Ma, thank you very much.

Yo-Yo Ma: Thank you so much, Jeffrey.

Judy Woodruff: Thank you, Yo-Yo Ma.

I can’t imagine anything more welcome at a time like this.

And, as Jeff pointed out, we hope that, if you have art to share, you will join us. Upload your videos to Twitter, to Instagram or Facebook using the hashtag #SongsofComfort.

We will be watching, and we may use them in the future on air and online at PBS.org/NewsHour.

[The musical portions of this broadcast can be heard on the video of the segment on the NewsHour website at https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/yo-yo-ma-on-encouraging-songs-of-comfort-amid-global-crisis.  Other sources include YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wczq8RjxA9M.]  

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“YO-YO MA CALLS FOR #SONGSOFCOMFORT AMID PANDEMIC. HERE’S HOW YOU CAN JOIN THE EFFORT”

by Joshua Barajas

[Joshua Barajas’s report below was aired on PBS NewsHour’s Canvas arts and culture segment on Tuesday evening, 24 March 2020.]

Yo-Yo Ma has brought joy to listeners for decades with his virtuosic musicianship. Now, he is using his music to offer some comfort to a global audience in the midst of a pandemic that has sparked widespread anxiety and pain.

He started posting videos of himself performing what he dubbed #SongsOfComfort on social media. Last week, he played a short piece — Antonín Dvořák’s “Going Home” — via Skype for the PBS NewsHour.

He encouraged people to create and share their own art from home during this time, and use the #SongsOfComfort hashtag on different social media platforms to showcase those creations.

Some songwriting legends have joined the chorus. James Taylor shared a clip of himself performing his 1977 song “Secret O’ Life” to his Instagram account, saying it’s a tune to “lift our spirits during challenging times.” Carole King tweeted a demo version of “Tapestry” cut “Way Over Yonder.” In their at-home live stream concert last week, Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls cited Yo-Yo Ma’s project — and shouted out the PBS NewsHour — before playing “Galileo.”

Hamed Sinno, lead singer of rock band Mashrou’ Leila, posted a series of Instagram videos of him singing “Not While I’m Around,” from Stephen Sondheim’s 1979 musical “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” saying that the “lyrics make me warm inside.”

“Being forced to employ social distancing has really made me think about the value of community,” Sinno said in the Instagram caption. “Hoping you’re all staying sane and healthy, and doing whatever you can to protect the vulnerable communities around you.”

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 “YO-YO MA’S MUSICAL EFFORT TO SHARE #SONGSOFCOMFORT AMID CORONAVIRUS”

by Jeffrey Brown, Anne Azzi Davenport. and Joshua Barajas

[The following brief PBS NewsHour report on some of the responses to Yo-Yo Ma’s appeal was broadcast on Wednesday night, 25 March 2020.[

Last week, the NewsHour joined master cellist Yo-Yo Ma in asking the public to join the #SongsOfComfort effort and contribute music both old and new. Chief arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown shares some of what we have received here – moments of respite and zen in the age of coronavirus. You can post your own offering on social media platforms using the hashtag #SongsOfComfort.

Jeffrey Brown: Yo-Yo Ma began his #SongsofComfort project with a performance of his own, and an appeal to our audience.

Yo-Yo Ma: We’re collecting what is personal, what is true, what is trustworthy, what is community, because community is nothing, except what is based on trust.

Jeffrey Brown: People of all kinds have responded, Paul Simon with his classic [“American Tune,”] Hamed Sinno, lead singer of the Lebanese band Mashrou’ Leila. The famed folk rock duo the Indigo Girls also answered the call [‘Galileo”].

And members of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra found a creative way to perform while keeping social distance.

Most of all, ordinary people all around the country and the world created their own musical moments. Outside Chicago, a woman played for her neighbors, as is happening more and more.

In Omaha, Nebraska, 9-year-old Annabel Blake, her father and a family friend performed a traditional Irish folk song.

A man played a song for his granddaughters, wanting them, as he wrote, to feel good about themselves. And they did.

Dira Sugandi was joyful in Indonesia.

Two friends, one in Ireland the other in Germany, harmonized on a Beatles song. And from Copenhagen, pianist Niels Lan Doky shared jazz.

Perhaps most fitting and hopeful for the times, two Mayo Clinic doctors in a video posted by a new fan.

Just a few of the songs now being shared.

For the “PBS NewsHour,” I’m Jeffrey Brown.

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“HOW YO-YO MA’S ‘SONGS OF COMFORT’ ARE INSPIRING MUSICAL COLLABORATION”

by Jeffrey Brown and Anne Azzi Davenport

 [This PBS NewsHour report from Jeffrey Brown, part of Canvas, the NewsHour’s arts and culture series, was broadcast on Wednesday evening, 13 May 2020.]

The ‘Songs of Comfort’ project world-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma launched on social media continues to expand in new directions. Jeffrey Brown looks at the growing collaboration in these mini performances, as tough times bring people together through music -- and technology. It’s part of our ongoing arts and culture series, Canvas.

Judy Woodruff: Finally tonight, our occasional look at the Songs of Comfort project that world-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma launched on social media.

Jeffrey Brown looks at the growing collaboration in these mini-performances, as tough times bring people together through music and technology.

It’s part of our ongoing arts and culture series, Canvas.

Jeffrey Brown: In a time of isolation, a desire to connect through music.

As the psychology of pandemic changes through the weeks, you can see that play out in the #SongsofComfort project through more and more collaborations.

That includes the man who started it all, Yo-Yo Ma, who recorded a distanced duet with celebrated West African singer Angelique Kidjo, and another with Syrian-born clarinetist Kinan Azmeh.

The urge to merge is often a family affair, as with this young mother and father in their Berlin, Germany, living room, their new baby adding a little percussion.

In Arizona, six women family members put the ’70s song “I’d Like to Teach the World [to Sing”] to multistringed accompaniment, joined by the whistling of the person capturing it all on camera.

And a violinist with the Washington, D.C.-area National Philharmonic sat down with her guitar-playing son for a piece by Astor Piazzolla.

There are also more elaborate cross-genre collaborations, a delightful Bach to the Barre breakfast scene created by musicians from the Toronto Symphony and dancers with the Canadian National Ballet, plus two children, who performed their roles to perfection.

Much older children at Potomac, Maryland’s St. Andrews Episcopal School sang, “Oh happy Day,” joined by alumni and faculty. And 24 student cellists from around the world managed to get together for a performance of [Camille] Saint-Saëns “The Swan.”

In Houston, members of the symphony, used to playing together on stage, created a virtual quartet. And while it can be a lonely time for many, technology allows another kind of quartet, all the parts performed by one individual.

Songs played alone, songs played together. And, as we saw in that Berlin living room, some things don’t change, the desire to share and maybe inspire the next generation.

For the “PBS NewsHour,” I’m Jeffrey Brown.

Judy Woodruff: Songs of Comfort, that has to continue after this pandemic.

*  *  *  *

“YO-YO MA’S HEARTFELT CALL TO ACTION TO ARTISTS DURING THE PANDEMIC”

by Isabelle Di Rita and Amna Nawaz

[PBS NewsHour aired the following Canvas arts and culture interview by correspondent Amna Nawaz with cellist Yo-Yo Ma  on Wednesday night, 29 July 2020.]

The coronavirus pandemic can make us feel small, or hopeless, but Yo-Yo Ma says artists, musicians especially, have a role in this crisis to help lift each other up.

Now is the best time to make a personal connection with an audience of one, the cellist said, “because as a musician, your job — our job — is to actually move one person at a time.”

Ma’s call to action for artists starts simple: Pick someone. Record yourself performing a song for them or making whatever art you’d like. Add a personal message. Hit send.

During this time of crisis, Ma has been providing solace through his #SongsOfComfort project, connecting people through music online. Despite a global pandemic putting a damper on live music, theater, or any type of performance, Ma believes it’s also a time when musicians, poets and painters can reflect on why and for whom they make art. Part of building our collective resilience in this crisis, Ma said, is “making sure that no matter what you do, you’re trying to do something in the service of somebody else.”

Ma is also releasing new music — recorded pre-pandemic — at a time when he and other musicians aren’t able to perform in front of a live audience. (A Taylor Swift concert still provides a different experience than listening to an album alone, Ma noted.) His new album, ”Not Our First Goat Rodeo,” is a collaboration with Americana musicians Chris Thile, Edgar Meyer and Stuart Duncan, nine years after the group recorded their first album together.

Ma spoke with the PBS NewsHour’s Amna Nawaz about what it’s like to release an album right now, the future of live performance in the COVID era, and why he encourages anyone to write, make music or create art at this time.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Tell me a little bit about “Not Our First Goat Rodeo.” You brought the band back together after nine years. Why now?

When we first got together, we were so excited to be able to make music together in a way that is, in so many ways, ideal. Everybody has great respect for one another. Their egos are checked at the door because it’s total and creative fun. I think the musicians that I’m working with are some of the greatest people I’ve ever met, in terms of not only technical virtuosic ability, but head and heart. They’ve got both going so strong. Imagine working with people with very strong egos who actually all have their egos in the right place, not in front, and never picking on each other’s vulnerabilities, just willing to try everything with the highest standard and laughing all the way.

So, nine years later, we’re saying it’s “not our first goat rodeo,” meaning a sense of people coming together in a chaotic situation, but then finding a way through. And that’s kind of how music is made: You put so many jumbled thoughts, feelings and ideas together. I think we thought about doing this right after the first time and it took nine years to get us back together again, because everybody is so incredibly busy. But they nevertheless made time to make this album.

What’s it been like to introduce new music to the world at this time?

I think people are always thinking and doing things, whether they’re physically together or not. Yes, our lives are on hold. I’m at home, I’m with my wife every day. She looks at me in the morning, noon, night, sort of “still the same guy there,” not going away. It’s kind of a blessing because life is never like this. But we then use what’s available to us — zooming, making music, and sending music around — because that’s one of the things people need, and I see that in the next not-such-a-long-period of time, the idea of drive-in concerts. People are experimenting with that idea. I know there was a comedian who actually did stand-up comedy in New Jersey for a thousand cars. Instead of applause, people just honked and flashed their lights because stand-up comedians need an audience, a live audience. The idea is we want to be together. We can find ways to do it. Drive-ins are actually part of our culture. A friend of mine, we’re thinking of going on flatbed trucks and going into communities and trying things out. But it’s possible. And I think the four of us [for “Not Our First Goat Rodeo”] will do live performances, or we might do things online. I think whatever we do, the attempt will be made to reach out to people because music is a service. I think we need it, we need each other. So if people want it, we will be there in one form or another.

Whether it’s a giant concert hall or a small, more intimate venue, do you as a performer miss being in front of people and presenting them with that music and watching how they receive it?

Tell you the truth, I think that I’m so used to performing in front of live audiences, but also so used to recording — and I think the two are slightly different — but I have to say that being live allows us to use all of our senses. So music is energy, it moves air molecules, and it touches our skin — we see it. We feel it. So much of music is physical, but also ephemeral — the sixth sense that we have about one another, the chemistry we feel for one another. My wife always says if she feels I’m nervous, she immediately gets nervous in the audience because she has that tactile reaction. And you go to a Taylor Swift concert, and you see people just going crazy because she’s close by, and that kind of chemistry is palpable. And that doesn’t happen virtually, even though you get physically, in terms of sound, the same things, and you can get a visual, but you can’t feel the atmosphere. And so, I think in that sense, it’s like sports events. We’re going to see live sports events. But is it the same as being in the stadium?

We should mention that over the summers you do perform at Tanglewood in Western Massachusetts and all of those concerts series have been moved online now.

Yes.

So for you to perform in this way, is there something different that you do to prepare or the way that you present the music? I mean, what is that experience like for you?

I think intention is everything. Again, we pick up not just words from people or sounds from people, we pick up tiny little cues, you know, body language. I’m sure you’re so aware of, as a person who is broadcasting, what the effect of what you say or act or move has on the person that’s listening to you. And I think I don’t do that very well, but I try to actually focus as intensely as I can because these things — the whole idea of learning technique for cellists like me — is to transcend it so that you don’t think about technique. You’re thinking about, what is this person saying? What is the meaning of what someone would say?

Long term, are you worried about a decline in support for the arts? At a time when a lot of people’s priorities are shifting to much more immediate needs, right? Especially at this time, we’ve seen efforts in other countries like the UK government, for example, offering billions of dollars to support the arts to make sure that they remain supported. Are you worried about that here in the United States?

I think at one level, absolutely. There is the crisis that is hitting everybody in terms of who does not have a job. And you can only have a certain amount of bailouts, and we have to pay for it. So what is it? What service do musicians, poets or actors or illustrators or designers have on people’s well-being? I’m not worried in the long term because if the economy is there to create value, culture and the arts are there to create values and to sustain values. And so, when we’re in crisis, what everybody is asking us to do is to be resilient. And what creates resilience? It’s when we go back to our basic values. And the values of making sure you tell the truth. Making sure that whatever you do, you are building trust. And then to making sure that no matter what you do, you’re trying to do something in the service of somebody else because that’s why you’re on Earth.

So, if we actually — all of us — follow those values, I don’t worry about a thing. This is a moment where actually we can take stock, and that’s why people are saying we need a reset. That’s why people are saying that this is actually a good moment to consider what kind of world we actually want to live in, and to serve certain needs, things need to be changed. Well, what does it take? How do I give from substance to actually create a better world in this great American experiment?

In this moment when there are so many people who are going through that crisis, I’d like you to talk to the musicians out there, the ones who were working gig to gig before the pandemic, who have seen all those gigs dry up, who don’t know if this is sustainable moving forward. What is it you would say to them in this moment?

What I would say is that for anybody who owns a smartphone — and I hope most musicians do — is to actually practice the “one-on-one principle,” because as a musician, your job — our job — is to actually move one person at a time. So pick a person that you know, or maybe you don’t know, but let’s say that you know, that may need what you do as a service. Maybe it’s someone who’s healthy, maybe someone who’s ill, maybe it’s a child who has been stuck at home. Pick what you think is the right thing to play for them. Make it personal, because it’s always personal, and record it with a little message and send it to them.

I would start there and build from there, because if all musicians did that, if all actors would just say to someone, “You know, I thought of a poem for you.” “I’m a painter. You know what, I just drew something for you. Because I know you love this color. I know you’ve always talked about this thing, and so I just thought I made this little drawing for you. Would you treasure that?” I hope so. I hope the answer is yes, because that’s the first principle of music. Your first principles in science, the first principles in everything. But now we’re getting down to the first principles of what you and I can share together. And it’s that important. That’s how we rebuild our humanity. Yes, we can go abstract and say, “Yes, we need policy, [or] whatever,” that’s systemic, that’s long term. That’s 30 years. But people want to do things now. So create the value of that one-on-one for each musician, for each actor, for each poet, for each artist to say, “Pick a person. Pick a person a day.”

That was such a beautiful answer. I am so sorry. And I know why that made me tear up when you were talking about it. That was so lovely.

Because it’s personal.

It absolutely is, it is.

[“Beyond the CANVAS” showcases some of the nation’s leading cultural creators — musicians, playwrights, comedians, among many others — who show us how they turn their visions of the world into art.]

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“YO-YO MA ON HOW MUSICIANS CAN ‘REBUILD OUR HUMANITY’ DURING THE PANDEMIC”

by Joshua Barajas and Amna Nawaz

[Amna Nawaz and Joshua Barajas’s report below was broadcast on PBS NewsHour’s Canvas arts and culture segment on Friday evening, 31 July 2020.]

When Yo-Yo Ma was asked what he’d say to musicians who had seen their gigs dry up due to the coronavirus pandemic, he said music makers and other artists can act on the “one-on-one principle.”

“As a musician, your job — our job — is to actually move one person at a time,” Ma told the PBS NewsHour’s Amna Nawaz.

Ma said to pick a person that you may or may not know — maybe it’s someone who’s ill, stuck at home, or having to work during the crisis — who “may need what you do as a service.” He suggested that a musician play something for this person, record themselves performing it, along with adding a personal message, and then send it to them.

Ma said artists can build from that — reaching out to one another during this crisis.

“That’s how we rebuild our humanity,” he added.

Ghosts, Curses, & Charms: Theater Superstitions – Part 4

MORE GHOSTS

[You have reached the final installment of “Ghosts, Curses, & Charms: Theater Superstitions,” my series on the paranormal beliefs of theater people.  The last two parts have been the stories of ghosts that haunt theaters around the country; Part 4, below, is a collection of tales of haunted New York City houses, especially those on Broadway.

[If you’re just coming upon this post, I invite you to go back and read the first three segments.  Parts 1 and 2, posted respectively on  Rick On Theater on 14 and 17 August, covered the superstitions held by actors and theater workers; Part 3, posted on 20 August, was my selection of ghost stories connected with several of North America’s regional playhouses  (one was a Canadian theater).]

Moving back to New York City, where there are lots of theater ghosts—some even with famous names, let’s go over to Brooklyn to the home of the Irondale Ensemble Project in Fort Greene.  Founded in New York City in 1983, the troupe’s home since 2008, the Irondale Theater, was converted from an abandoned, 160-year-old church Sunday school.  The theater has a wrap-around balcony surrounded by stained glass windows

“When people have stayed overnight, the sound of heavy boots walking in the capacious attic rumbles the ceiling,” has said the company’s executive director.  “We also have a storage room with a staircase that leads nowhere and often the temperature changes drastically there.  Needless to say that while the boots are walking and the temp is dropping, no one explores further.”

But the major league of U.S. theater is still Broadway, and the major league for theater ghosts has got to be the Great White Way.  Actor Tim Dolan, having gathered a passel of stories about haunted theaters while on a cross-country tour of Gentlemen Prefer Blonds, returned to New York and decdied that with all our theaters, “there must be crazy stories [here].”

Apparently he was right.  He began to research the legends of haunted Broadway, and in 2010, Dolan launched Broadway Up Close Walking Tours, followed in 2018 by The Ghostlight Tour: Haunted Broadway to follow through on his original idea.  For an hour and 45 minutes, tour participants cover a half mile of Manhattan’s Theatre District as the Up Close guide tells spooky stories about some of Broadway’s 41 houses.

(Broadway Up Close is providing virtual tours at this time.  For information in this service and other offerings, log onto the company’s website at https://www.broadwayupclose.com/.)

Arguably the most prominent theater ghost, if you don’t count Thespis (see Part 3), is the spirit of David Belasco (1853-1931), the theatrical producer, impresario, director, and playwright.  He built what is now the Belasco Theatre, which opened in 1907, at 111 West 44th Street, east of Broadway.  Originally named the Stuyvesant, the “Bishop of Broadway” (so called because he liked to wear a cassock and Roman collar) renamed it for himself in 1910; it’s now a Shubert theater, part of the holdings of Broadway’s largest theater-owning firm.

The penthouse was a 10-room apartment-office duplex for Belasco, and many theater folk believe the impresario remains in residence.  Some performers in the shows that played there have even claimed to have spotted him, dressed as he did in life and looking quite alive—no filmy, gauzy blur for David Belasco!—in the balcony or wandering the lobbies, sometimes speaking to theatergoers.  He might also step up to actors, shake their hands, and compliment them on their performances. 

It’s said that after Oh! Calcutta! an avant-garde musical revue created by Kenneth Tynan and renowned for full frontal male and female nudity, played at the theater in 1971-72, Belasco’s ghost stopped coming around. 

                                                                                                                

Performers and stage hands who’ve worked at the New Amsterdam Theatre, at 214 W. 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues (now operated by the Walt Disney Company), have seen nearly all the forms of haunting at one time or another.  They all blame onetime Ziegfeld Follies chorus girl Olive Thomas (1894-1920). According to Playbill magazine, Thomas manifests so often that the Disney management puts her photograph at all the entrances to the theater so employees can greet her when they arrive for work every day.  This is supposed to keep her mischief to a minimum.

Thomas’s death was tragic, though not really connected to the New Amsterdam.  She performed as a chorus girl at the theater for about a year, then in 1916, she went off to Hollywood and began a successful career in silent films.  In the same year, she married Jack Pickford (1896-1933), a film director and producer who was the younger brother of “America's Sweetheart” Mary Pickford (1892-1979).

Jack Pickford had a reputation for living a wild life—as did Thomas as well.  On a trip to Paris in 1920, Pickford is believed to have told Thomas that he had syphilis (the story varies in several details, though the infection was quite real).  That night, Thomas consumed her husband’s medication, mercury dichloride, a deadly poison if taken in large amounts. 

Whether she took the overdose accidentally—she was likely drunk and the label on the blue vial was in French—or deliberately is a matter of debate.  Nonetheless, Thomas died at the American Hospital outside Paris; she was 25. 

Thomas began haunting the New Amsterdam very soon thereafter.  She appeared throughout the ’20s and the ’30s, but her spirit became quiescent during the years starting in the middle of the century when the Theatre District began to decline.

When Disney took over the theater and started renovations in 1995, construction workers reported seeing a woman carrying a small, blue bottle.  When shows started being staged in the theater again, Thomas’s appearances became frequent, and they’ve continued through today.

The manifestations, which run the gamut from mere noises to full apparitions, are apparently non-threatening—though startling.  One night watchman in the early Disney era, however, quit on the spot when he saw a woman walk across the stage and disappear through a solid wall.

Thomas’s appearances are unpredictable, however; she doesn’t “‘perform’ on cue,” according to Playbill.  “She doesn’t appear on Halloween, for instance,” said the vice president of operations for Disney Theatrical Productions.  “When people try to find her, they can’t.  She tends to appear just at the moment we forget about her—when we’re busy putting in a new show or putting a new office in.  When there are changes happening.”

The Richard Rodgers Theatre at 226 West 46th Street, between Broadway and 8th Avenue was built in 1925 as Chanin's 46th Street Theatre; purchased by the Shubert brothers in 1931, it was renamed simply the 46th Street Theatre.  It went through a series of owners until the Nederlander Organization, Broadway’s second-largest theater-owners, purchased and renovated the theater and in 1990 renamed it in honor of the composer Richard Rodgers (of the famed Rodgers and Hart and Rodgers and Hammerstein collaborations).  

The Rodgers has a history of incidents with the color red—the theater’s principal interior color.  According to actress Blanca Camacho of In the Heights, which played the Rodgers from 2008 to 2011, “There are reappearing red lipstick smudges in the ladies room.  They get painted and wiped but inevitably return.”

“Then three different people told me about the ‘Redheads,’” added Camacho, speaking of regular sightings of redheaded women.  Another Heights cast member, Tony Chiroldes, reported that he twice felt the presence of his mother (Vilma Carbia, 1930-2000), a sometimes-redheaded actress on Puerto Rican television during the ’50s and ’60s.  “Our beautiful red theatre must be a beacon for them,” concluded Camacho. 

(No source says so, but I wonder if this paranormal phenomenon is in any way connected to the fact that the Shuberts produced the spooky Herbert Fields-Dorothy Fields-Sidney Sheldon-David Shaw-Albert Hague murder-mystery musical Redhead in 1959 when the theater was still known as the 46th Street Theatre?  The show was directed and choreographed by Bob Fosse, 1927-87; starred his redheaded soon-to-be wife, Gwen Verdon, 1925-2000; ran for 452 performances; and won six Tonys, including Best Musical.)

Other happenings, including apparitions usually attributed to the Redheads, are bathroom stall doors opening by themselves, dressing rooms issuing strange sounds, objects spontaneously falling off shelves, bizarre after-hours howling sounds, a door opening fully and closing slowly by itself, and chandeliers moving. 

Yet another actor in The Heights claimed to have seen the ghost of a small child just off stage during a performance.  Camacho, however, has been “assured that these are benevolent beings that like musicals as nothing bad ever happens during those times when music fills the Richard Rodgers Theatre.”

Ghosts mostly haunt old theaters; Playbill suggests houses built before 1930, but I’m not sure the spooks put that fine a point on it.  At least three spirits are believed to inhabit one of New York’s newer theaters: 1971’s Gershwin Theatre at 222 West 51st Street in midtown-Manhattan in the Paramount Plaza, on Broadway.

The building, a 48-story business high rise, was constructed by the Uris Building Corporation and was originally named the Uris Building; the theater incorporated in it was, therefore, called the Uris Theatre as well.  The skyscraper was sold and renamed for its new owners, the Paramount Investment Group.  In 1983, the theater was rechristened in honor of the brother team of composer George (1898-1937) and lyricist Ira Gershwin (1896-1983).

Reports suggest that there are three ghosts residing at the Gershwin.  The only one with a name is Drew (or Dennis); the two unnamed spooks are one who’s seen in a blue, 19th-century suit and the other in a white t-shirt.

A dancer in the Gershwin’s current, long-running Wicked (opened in 2013) was about to go on when he felt a tap on his shoulder.  He turned around, but there was no one near him.  When the dancer told other members of the cast and crew of this encounter, a wardrobe supervisor said he’d had the same experience from time to time though the years—always in the same spot in the theater.

Some years earlier, a stage manager working the same production was standing stage left with a cast member.  They looked up and thought they saw another performer watching the show from the wings.  The person disappeared suddenly behind a curtain, but the actor they thought they’d seen was actually on stage just a few feet away from them.

Reputedly the most haunted Broadway house is the storied Palace Theatre at 1564 Broadway (at W. 47th Street just east across 7th Avenue from Father Duffy Square and the TKTS discount-ticket booth).  From 1913, when it opened, through 1932, the Palace was the most sought-after booking in vaudeville.  “Playing the Palace” was the dream of all vaudevillians. 

(The reference even made it into the lyric of a Broadway musical—though it was a punning reference.  The song is “Very Soft Shoes” from act two of Once Upon a Mattress with book by Jay Thompson, Marshall Barer, and Dean Fuller; music by Mary Rodgers [daughter of Richard Rodgers, namesake of the Rodgers Theatre; see above]; and lyrics by Marshall Barer. 

(The première starred Carol Burnett and was directed by the legendary George Abbott and it débuted Off-Broadway at the Phoenix Theatre at 2nd Avenue and 12th Street, on the old Yiddish Rialto, in May 1959 before moving to Broadway where it played in four different houses—but not the Palace—until July 1960, a total of 470 performances.

(In the act two number, Matt Mattox, playing the Jester, sings about his father, a jester before him:

I am far from sentimental or romantic,

And I like to think I’m strictly up to date.

But at times the dancing gets a bit too frantic

in these hectic days of 1428.

          

So indulge me as I pause to raise my chalice

To a quaint and charming dance they used to do

In the days when my dear father played the palace,

Back in 1392.

(The play’s a retelling of “The Princess and the Pea,” so it’s set in the fairy-tale Middle Ages.  The “palace” the Jester sings of is, of course, the royal palace . . . but the reference to “playing the Palace” slips through nonetheless.  I have always loved this play, which I saw with Imogene Coca and Buster Keaton in Washington, D.C., in 1961—when I was about 14½.  “Very Soft Shoes” was one of my favorite numbers from the show and the line about the Palace just really tickled me!  It still does.)

But I digress . . . .  We were talking about ghost stories, not fairy tales.

In 1932, the Palace’s days as a vaudeville mecca ended and the theater began screening movies and hosting concerts.  It became a premier venue for concert performers like Judy Garland, Ethel Merman, Liza Minnelli, Bette Midler, Diana Ross, Josephine Baker, and Shirley MacLaine.

(The Nederlander Organization bought the Palace Theatre in 1965 and the house went legit the next year with Cy Coleman. Neil Simon, and Dorothy Fields’s Sweet Charity directed and choreographed by Bob Fosse and starring Gwen Verdon.)

Garland set box-office records at her sold-out 19-week run of Judy Garland at the Palace “Two-A-Day” in 1951-52 and she returned to the theater in 1956-57 (15 weeks) and 1967 (4 weeks).  She was the darling of the Palace and its audiences. 

Her spirit is said still to haunt the great, old theater (which has mounted exhibits in its lobbies of Garland memorabilia and old photographs), especially on the “the Judy Garland Staircase.”  Garland would post herself on this hidden staircase at the house-left rear of the orchestra and smoke a cigarette or two before entering the stage.

During the run of the 2012-14 Annie revival, one actor claimed that when he was in a dressing room alone one night, he thought he heard a voice call “Judy.”  Now, Garland is the queen of the Palace’s celebrity spirits, but who could be calling her, and why, remains a Broadway mystery.

The Palace Theatre is reputed to be home to more ghosts than any other Broadway house.  “Among them,” lists Playbill, “is a mysterious figure who passes open doorways late at night, a child ghost who plays peekaboo in the mezzanine, a musician dressed in white who appears in the orchestra pit and a tight-rope walker (presumably from the theatre’s vaudeville days) whose appearance is said to foretell the viewer’s death.”

The musician, a cellist who played in the orchestra pit, last appeared to actress Andrea McArdle (the first Annie in 1977-78 at the Alvin Theatre) when she was performing Beauty and the Beast at the Palace in 1999.  The tight-rope walker is said to be Louis Borsalino who fell to his death during a performance when he was working without a safety net.

According to the New York Post, “Stagehands say that when the theater is empty, the ghost of [the vaudeville acrobat] can be seen swinging from the rafters.  He lets out a blood-curdling scream, then re-enacts his nose dive.”  Other sources have seen him walking a tight-rope from the house-left box up to the mezzanine. Either way, as a harbinger of death, this is not a ghost you should want to meet.

(The New York Times of Wednesday, 28 August 1935, reported the accident involving the 31-year-old Borsalino; however, the report listed him as “in a serious condition” with “a fracture of the pelvis, possible internal injuries and lacerations of the left arm.”  After a lifetime of performing, Borsalino died in 1963 in Pennsylvania.) 

One count is that there are over 100 ghosts haunting the Palace.  Regardless of the number, though, the Palace’s spooks have apparently been quiescent in recent years.  Reports of apparitions and inexplicable happenings have been few lately—though some of that may be attributable to the theater having closed for major renovations in September 2018 and isn’t expected to reopen until 2021.

So far, all the New York theaters about which I’ve been writing still exist, at least in some form.  Here’s a supernatural tale about one that been lost to the wrecker’s ball: the Lyric Theatre, which used to stand at 213 W. 42nd Street between 7th and 8th Avenues.

The Lyric building has a somewhat odd history.  Built in 1903, it operated as a playhouse until 1934, but a line of flop productions closed it and it was converted into a movie theater.  Garth Drabinsky’s Livent, Inc., bought the building in 1996, gutted it, and combined it with the adjacent Apollo (223 W. 42nd Street) to create the Ford Center for the Performing Arts.  All that remained of the Lyric was the 42nd Street façade.

The new theater revolved through a series of owners and names.  Drabinsky and Livent went bankrupt in 1998 and in 2005, after having become a property of Hilton Hotels Corporation, it was renamed as the Hilton Theatre.  In 2010, under an agreement with Foxwoods Resort Casino and the newly-formed Live Nation, the theater was renamed once again as the Foxwoods Theatre.  In 2014, after yet another change of management, the theater regained its original name, the Lyric.

Of course, nothing but the front of the old building remains today and, as we’ve seen, old ghosts seem not to stick around new structures that replace old theaters.  In some cases, as we’ve seen in playhouses built on sites of older buildings, spirits linger.  That doesn’t seem to have happened in the Lyric, even with the old name having returned.  But back on the day . . . .

An incident occurred on Tuesday, 21 December 1909, at the old Lyric Theatre.  It was the opening night of The City, the last play written in his lifetime by Clyde Fitch (1865-1909); the audience numbered over 1,000 people.  Largely unknown now, Fitch was the most prolific playwright of his day, author of hits like Beau Brummell (1890), Barbara Frietchie (1899), and Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines (1901), among others.

(Sidelight: Hollywood movie star Barbara Stanwyck, born Ruby Catherine Stevens; 1907-90, purportedly took her stage-and-screen name from the first name of the title character in Fitch’s Barbara Frietchie and the last name of a British actress, Jane or Joan Stanwyck, who appeared in a 1906 production somewhere.  No one who’s tried to verify this legend, which the movie actor frequently repeated, has been able to confirm the existence of an actress named Jane or Joan Stanwyck—in any spelling variation—or of a production of Barbara Frietchie in 1906.)

The City has two claims to theatrical fame.  One is that it’s the first play in which a curse word was ever uttered on a Broadway stage: “goddamn.”  The second is more in the supernatural vein:

According to published accounts (as related by Playbill magazine), “as the cast of The City was taking its final curtain calls, women in the audience screamed and fainted as the unmistakable figure of the . . .  author emerged from the wings, strode to center stage, took a deep bow—and vanished right before everyone’s startled eyes.” 

Why all the consternation over Fitch receiving the grand accolades every playwright loves?  Well, you see . . . Fitch had died in France at age 44 of sepsis after an appendicitis operation the previous 4 September.  The playwright’s body was at that time entombed at Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx.  (He would later be cremated and his ashes reinterred at Woodlawn.)

Fitch’s curtain call was apparently his only manifestation at the Lyric or anywhere else—at least, I haven’t found reports of a revival.  Maybe the playwright only intended a one-off appearance—at the opening night of his final play—or maybe something interfered.  Folk lore says that the most effective way to exorcise a ghost is to burn the bones of the deceased, so perhaps Fitch’s cremation in 1910 put the kibosh on his future apparitions. 

The City ran at the Lyric until May 1910 and then transferred to the Hackett Theatre across 42nd Street at number 254 until June.  The next Fitch play to open in New York was a revival of his 1907 script The Truth, which played at the Little Theatre in the spring of 1914, long after the playwright’s remains had been cremated.

Changing a theater’s name can confuse ghosts, but it’s just as likely to anger them as to make then go away. 

The Martin Beck Theatre, at 302 W. 45th Street, was Broadway’s farthest-west house, located west of 8th Avenue.  It was built in 1924 as a vaudeville house by vaudeville promoter Beck (1868-1940).  In 1965, Beck’s estate sold the theater to Jujamcyn Theaters, the third and smallest of the Broadway theater-owners.

On 25 September 2002, Rocco Landesman, president of Jujamcyn, announced that on 21 June 2003, the Martin Beck would be renamed for Al Hirschfeld (1903-2003), the caricaturist beloved for his 76 years of chronicling Broadway performances and performers, in recognition of his 100th birthday.  Hirschfeld knew of the plans, but unfortunately he didn’t live to see the honor bestowed.  The man known as “The Line King” died of natural causes on 20 January 2003, five months shy of his centenary.

The cast and crew of the revival of Wonderful Town, the musicalization of Joseph Fields and Jerome Chodorov’s My Sister Eileen which had only opened at the Hirschfeld on 23 November 2003 (running until 2005), a scant five months after it attained its new name, suffered a rash of lost props and things being mysteriously moved and removed from dressing rooms.  This seemed to be an unhappy ghost, and the feeling was that it was the spirit of impresario Martin Beck, who just hadn’t accepted the change-over.

Henry Miller’s Theatre, at 124 West 43rd Street, between Broadway and 6th Avenue—one if the few Broadway houses east of the Great White Way—went through far more changes of identity than had the Martin Beck/Al Hirschfeld.

(There are five working Broadway houses, until the pandemic shut-down, between 6th Avenue and 7th Avenue/Broadway.  The one farthest east is the Belasco at 111 W. 44th Street; the next is the former Henry Miller.)

Henry Miller’s Theatre was built in 1918 by and named for actor-director-producer Henry Miller (1859-1926).  (The theatrical Henry Miller is not related to the novelist of the same name who wrote, among other works, the scandalous Tropic of Cancer, published in France in 1934 and banned in the U.S. until 1961.)  It had a couple of different owners until, in 1970, it became a movie theater called the Park-Miller Theatre and then a porno house called Avon-at-the-Hudson in 1972.

In 1978, the former theater was converted into a disco named Xenon, a competitor to the hugely popular Studio 54 (now also a theater).  Believe it or not, I actually saw a performance in Xenon in 1982—not a traditional play, but a jazz-rock adaptation of an opera, The Coronation of Poppea (1643) by  Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643), presented by the New York Lyric Opera Company.

In 1985, the space became SHOUT, a nightclub featuring music from the 1950s and ’60s, which closed in 1991 and reopened in 1995 as Club Expo.  In 1998, the room returned to performance use as the Kit Kat Club, named after the Berlin nightclub in the 1966 musical Cabaret, a popular revival of which was mounted by the Roundabout Theatre Company in the space. 

Due to an accident at a nearby construction site, the facility had to close in July and Cabaret moved to Studio 54, which Roundabout still operates as a theater.  The Kit Kat Club, however, continued to be a club until it closed in 2000.  It reopened as Henry Miller’s Theatre once again in 2001 with the very successful Off-Off-Broadway and Off-Broadway transfer of Urinetown.

The theater closed again in 2004 and the interior was demolished and then rebuilt as a 57-story high rise.  A reborn Henry Miller’s Theatre was built underground in the new skyscraper, one of only two such theaters on Broadway (the other is the Circle in the Square Theatre beneath the Gershwin Theatre; see above).  It reopened in 2009 with the Roundabout’s revival of the musical Bye Bye Birdie.

The Roundabout rechristened the theater once again in 2010 in honor of distinguished theater composer Stephen Sondheim’s 80th birthday.  The Stephen Sondheim Theatre opened in September 2010 with the limited-run Pee-wee Herman Show with Paul Reubens, TV’s original Pee-wee Herman. 

In the spring of 2014, a cast member in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical (2014-19 at the Sondheim) wrote that he

had stayed late one night at the theatre, walked up to the stage door and realized that I had forgotten something in my dressing room.  I noticed the old “Henry Miller” sign, which hangs over our security desk at the stage door, as I returned to the elevator to go back downstairs.  I murmured, under my breath, “Wow, I wonder what Henry Miller thinks of his sign being relegated to the stage door?”  And the elevator bounced.  And stopped.  I was stuck.  I screamed for about five minutes and finally, Adolf, our head of security, came to my rescue and pried the doors open.  I have NEVER said Henry Miller’s name in this theatre again.