How the Broadway Community is Helping to End COVID-19
The Broadway community is stepping up in a major way, y’all.
Hamilton star Javier Munoz is leading the charge as one of three co-organizers of the Broadway Relief Project, which is uniting Broadway seamstresses, actors, and other people in the community to meet the need for 10 million surgical gowns the local government had requested earlier this week, as The Advocate reports.
In a matter of days, the project has recruited over 600 eager volunteers.
“I got on calls and found so many people ready to participate and volunteer,” Javier, a gay man living with HIV, cancer survivor, and a staunch activist, told the magazine. “There were so many people who were already trying to implement their own efforts, and so instead of having five, six, seven efforts going at the same time, [I thought], Why don’t we all join together and make one Broadway effort? One big umbrella to house all of us and do it together.”
Jeff Whiting, owner of Open Jar Studios in midtown Manhattan, has also donated his theatrical studio space as the project’s central manufacturing facility. Molly Braverman, director of Broadway Green Alliance, has stepped in to help with fabric donations and transferring materials.
Earlier this month, Governor Cuomo announced that Broadway theaters would be closing amid COVID-19, which has put many theater professionals out of work.
“We are on the ball here trying to provide support,” Javier said. “All of the PPEs being manufactured directly from Cuomo’s office, these are not endless resources, these are limited resources. We need manufacturing to happen. We got the green light from the city. We’re just waiting for the last piece of the puzzle.”
That piece, he added, is the “officially-approved specification” of the gowns themselves. Once that pattern comes in, organizers will have that pattern pre-cut so they can give it to a handful of stitchers to see how long it takes them to manufacture just one gown, The Advocate points out.
From there, “We’ll have solid numbers, and then we can start manufacturing them,” Javier explained to the magazine over the weekend. “That should start today, that’s really where we’re at. Manufacturers can start today, a week later after just starting to organize. I think that’s a statement to not only the incredible people in our local governments who were willing to work with us but the incredible passionate volunteers who were waiting and chomping at the bit to help — and that’s a beautiful powerful thing we’ve been able to organize. It’s a lot of work, but it’s well worth it.”
From all of us, thank you Broadway!
If you’re in the New York City area and would like more information on how to volunteer, visit OpenJarStudios.com.