Broadway Has Dropped Vaccine Mandate, COVID-19 Testing Requirements

Caitlin Huston
·2 min read

In May, Broadway quietly dropped its COVID-19 vaccine mandate for Broadway actors and workers and moved to a more lenient testing model, which allows individual productions not to test cast and crew members on a weekly basis or to test as often as they want.

“The move away from COVID-specific protocols to flexible, long-term guidance on responding to infectious disease fosters continued collaboration between employers and Equity, and responsiveness to old and new workplace threats as they arise,” said Actors’ Equity Association Assistant Executive Director Andrea Hoeschen.

More from The Hollywood Reporter

The decision to let the vaccine mandate expire, which had been set by Broadway producers in July 2021, came as part of a periodic review of COVID-19 protocols by the Broadway League, the trade association for producers and general managers, according to a spokesperson. The language now reads:  “Employees are encouraged to stay up to date on COVID-19 immunizations.”

Asked whether individual producers could still require vaccination for cast and crew members on their shows, the spokesperson said the League was “not in a position to speak on that.”

Hollywood dropped its vaccine mandate on new film and television productions starting after May 12 and now may only require testing in the certain cases involving scenes of intimacy.

All of this comes after President Joe Biden signed a congressional resolution on April 11, 2023 that brought an end to the COVID-19 national emergency. The federal public health emergency ended May 11.

Broadway had already dropped its vaccination requirement for audience members starting in April 30, 2022. Wearing a mask became optional for audience members starting that July (though some productions have required audience members to wear a mask for select performances or seating locations).

The vaccine mandate for cast and crew members was put in place by theatrical unions and Broadway producers ahead of the industry’s reopening in fall 2021. There was a possible exemption, if allowed by the employer, in place for individuals who are not vaccinated due to disability or sincerely held religious belief.

COVID-19 testing on Broadway has contained a degree of flexibility for some time. For example, in the fall of 2021, the Broadway League and Actors’ Equity set out protocols that used the COVID Act Now heat map, which calculates the risk level of COVID-19 transmission in the area, to set the minimum number of times the company needed to be tested per week. But this minimum testing cadence was a suggestion, rather than a requirement. Amid the surge in the Omicron variant, at the time, many productions were testing more often than suggested.

Best of The Hollywood Reporter

Click here to read the full article.