Wang Theatre

It’s lights on for the Wang and Shubert theaters at the Boch Center in Boston, and CEO Josiah Spaulding said that the theaters are taking every precaution to keep it that way amid the COVID-19 pandemic. “You get emotional, I’m almost ready to cry, because we’ve been dark for almost 18 and a half months,” Spaulding said. Theatergoers will...

COVID testing has made its way to Boston’s theater district.

The beginning of 2020 was an exciting time for Boston’s theater district. Theater directors recall tickets selling at record numbers, venues packed with people and new performance line-ups. That is, until the week of March 12, when the coronavirus pandemic hit. “I can’t believe it,” Peter DuBois, the artistic director of the Huntington Theatre, recalled thinking. “I can’t believe...

It may seem like theaters have nothing to do in Boston, given the coronavirus shutdown, but some are getting creative to keep their patrons connected. ArtsEmerson Executive Director David Howse, Boch Center CEO Joe Spaulding and Huntington Theatre Company Artistic Director Peter DuBois shared their plans for moving forward online.

The coronavirus pandemic forced theaters to close across Massachusetts, but Joe Spaulding, CEO and president of the Boch Center, the Wang Theatre and Shubert Theatre, plans to keep theater alive online through his “Ghost Light Series,” named for a long-running tradition in stage management.

The curtains may have closed on Boston’s once-bustling theater district, but it might not mean that shows are canceled. On March 12, as the coronavirus pandemic took hold in Massachusetts, the doors to the Wang Theatre were shut, leaving 3,500 seats empty and scuttling any hopes of future performances. Just a few days later, 200 employees were let go, one…

Folk artist Chuck McDermott performs “Here’s the Thing About America” to an empty Wang Theatre, as a preview to the Boch Center’s new virtual video “Ghost Light Series.”