Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 2020 - 8

and to deny guidance from history would
only allow us to repeat mistakes.
"On Thursday, the governor ordered
Broadway's theatres-which played
through war and the 1918 Spanish
flu-to close down as he forbade
gatherings of more than 500 people."-from "New York City to close
America's biggest school system"
by Joshua Chaffin, Financial Times,
March 17, 2020
"The present calamity of the influenza plague which inspired the authorities to this action calls for drastic
treatment, and through we regret exceedingly the deprivation which this
suspension inflicts upon so many
working under us, there is only cheerful compliance with orders to be
considered. We adhere to our belief
expressed to the officials of the Board
of Health that the theatre is the least
harmful of all places of gathering, and
claim that the providing of amusements for the people would appear to
be most necessary in these threatening times that portend panicky conditions."-from a joint statement by the
Association of Theatre Managers of
Boston and Motion Picture Exhibitors
of Massachusetts, Sept. 26, 1918
I began to inquire into the effects
and lessons learned from the so-called
"Spanish" flu, which ravaged the world
between 1918 and 1920. Broadway
theatres not shutting down in 1918
was being used to scale the response to
COVID-19, often ignoring the nationwide
and international response. Blanket closure of venues occurred in almost every
city in the United States.
As an American, I was tuned to
some excellent research and journalism

on the history of the decisive (and sometimes greatly differing) responses from
cities across the country, notably the
slow response in Philadelphia and its
disastrous effects, and the comparatively
quick response in St Louis. With less understanding of the science of infectious
disease than we have now, governments
at the time of the 1918 flu arrived at
generally the same policy prescriptions
as those today: reducing crowding and
modifying personal hygiene to slow the
spread of the disease and limit the number of people infected.
The biggest question everyone wants
answered is "when?" When will we return to our seats, our dressing rooms,
prompt desks, fly floors? New dates are
announced (or pushed further into the
future) each week, but the timeline of
resuming normal operations is still the
realm of speculation.
The pace of reopening will, of course,
be related to ongoing capacity and social
distancing restrictions. The methods of
reopening under reduced capacity (and
the economic viability of doing so) are being constantly evaluated and discussed.
The return to live performance will
happen, and indeed performances will
look almost the same as they did before
the pandemic. Just as the devastating
death toll of 1918 and the rapid contagion of SARS were overcome, COVID-19
will similarly be viewed as a moment in
time. We wish to envision what our performance buildings, and to some extent
performance practice, will be like upon
the full return to live performance.

Lessons from the Spanish Flu

When looking back at history, it is important to consider how COVID-19 differs
from the 1918 flu. On one hand, the geographic impact of the 1918 flu was less

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I began writing this manuscript in the last week of March 2020 and it was published
online by Charcoalblue in the first week of April. Versions of the article have since appeared both in the
U.K. and U.S. press, with updates appropriate to each moment in time. An earlier version of this article
appeared in the spring Sightline (Association of British Theatre Technicians) published in May 2020. This
version, updated in the middle of June 2020, reflects the thinking and guidance appropriate as of that
date. In many parts of the world, blanket closures of venues have ceased, but social distancing mandates are not allowing full return to performance activities. Cancellations continue to push out through
the autumn and even into the spring of 2021.

8 | THEATRE DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY | SUMMER 2020

globally synchronous than we have seen
with COVID-19. The onset of the 1918
virus was many months apart in different countries. The flu continued to affect
parts of the world well into 1920, consistent with less international travel and
longer travel times than we have today.
But the epidemic curve of the COVID-19
outbreak will be longer in duration than
any given local outbreak of the 1918 flu.
Its incubation period can be measured
in days or weeks rather than hours, as
was the case with 1918's strain of H1N1.
And with a better understanding of epidemiology and virology, our public health
authorities have-by mandating lockdowns-chosen a less deadly, but longer
path.
Therefore, a historic timeline of the
1918 flu does not represent a prediction
or even a "what might have been," but
rather an indication of the magnitude
of the impact. Speaking purely on the
impact on the population, it is generally
accepted that 675,000 Americans died of
the "Spanish" flu-a number more than
five times greater than the current reported death toll for COVID-19.
Using data from the historical collections in the University of Michigan
Digital Influenza Archive, I charted the
timing and duration of theatre closures
in representative American cities. During
the 1918 flu, it was generally larger municipalities that set policies for places of
entertainment. Along with these closure
periods, each city's date of peak excess
deaths is also shown.
Closures were commonly three or
four weeks but extended to nearly eight
weeks in the Western United States.
Theatres reopened about 10 days after
the number of deaths peaked. Multiple
waves of the virus were experienced,
with the second often being worse than
the first. Omaha closed its theatres a second time after being open for five weeks
of performances; Denver's theatres were
open for just three weeks before being
shut again.
Drawing from the news and state
government executive orders, as well as
data from COVID-19 data aggregators

Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 2020

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