“Law & Order: SVU” has been a merit in the Playbill biographies of stage actors for many years, but when Broadway closed it became an even more important part of their work diet – also because flying into the stars was made difficult by quarantine rules, and in part out of a conscious effort to help the New York theater community.
“When everything was shut down, we all said, ‘What do we do now? “Said Adriane Lenox, a Tony Prize winner who played a judge on SVU just a few months after testing positive for the virus at the start of the pandemic. Ms. Lenox said, like many other actors, she would have to get unemployed at some point tried to make ends meet by searching for jobs like dog walking on sites like ZipRecruiter.
According to Warren Leight, her showrunner, she was one of more than 100 local stage actors to appear on the show this year.
“I just called early on, ‘Let’s make this the year the first pool of actors we go to is the Broadway actors, the off-Broadway actors,” he said. “It really seems to be the right thing to do. From a logistical point of view, it is easier to rent on site. “
The effects of the pandemic were felt most clearly in cities like Los Angeles and New York, which at least during the prepandemic period were home to about two-thirds of the country’s film, television and theater assignments. In New York City, for example, officials have estimated that employment in the arts, entertainment and leisure sectors fell 66 percent from December 2019 to December 2020.
But there are signs of recovery. According to FilmLA, the official film bureau for the city and county of Los Angeles, television shooting days in Los Angeles had rebounded to around 62 percent from 2019 by the end of last year. After a winter hiatus when a California outbreak hobbled, TV production in the city is nearing normal pre-pandemic levels, FilmLA reported last week, although other sectors of the entertainment industry are lagging behind.
