РІР‚СљAndrea? IРІР‚в„ўm supposed to meet you,РІР‚Сњ he said. The way Macasaet recalls it, Madjus stopped her on the street by calling out her name. (Another COVID-19 precaution: Everyone on site for the shoot had to present a fresh negative PCR test, including this journalist.)Р”В«ut the two only met each other this year after running into one another en route to work. Posing on the steps of the Broadway discount-ticket booth, Madjus and Macasaet laughed and draped themselves over each other like old friends. (All Broadway workers needed to have received two shots when the industry restarted.)

РІР‚СљIt was culture shock,РІР‚Сњ said Madjus, who first came back in May to get vaccinated because, at that point, it wasnРІР‚в„ўt certain that he would be able to get both shots in Canada before Moulin Rouge! rehearsals began in August. Meeting up for a Globe and Mail photo shoot in Times Square in November, Macasaet and Madjus traded memories about how surreal it was to move back to relatively open New York from cities still under restrictions in Canada in 2021. Jeigh Madjus, left, plays a drag artist called Babydoll in Moulin Rouge!, and Andrea Macasaet, brings great comic timing to gallows humour playing Anne Boleyn in Six. Stories of hiring people or enlisting friends to empty apartments in New York while the border was closed abound. visas often only allowed them to work only on a particular show. ThatРІР‚в„ўs a not uncommon pandemic tale for those Canadian actors whose U.S. Madjus, meanwhile, happened to be home in Toronto visiting his parents when the shutdown happened and ended up staying there. Macasaet stuck around for a month in New York after that, and then went back to Winnipeg and moved back in with her parents. Moulin Rouge!, an Australian-born mega-mix musical based on Baz LuhrmannРІР‚в„ўs film of the same name, had already run for eight months with Madjus in the cast when the Broadway district was first shut down back on March 12, 2020.Р”В«ut Six, a British musical that revives Boleyn and the other five wives of Henry VIII as a posthumous pop group, was only a month into preview performances when that happened indeed, Macasaet was just hours away from her opening night when the Governor of New York ordered the commercial theatre district to close. Jeigh Madjus, who plays a drag artist called Babydoll in Moulin Rouge! (and is a key part of its blast-off beginning number Lady Marmalade), and Andrea Macasaet, who brings great comic timing to gallows humour playing Anne Boleyn in Six, are two of the Canadian performers who reopened the shows they made their Broadway debuts in this fall.

Others are playing instruments on stage in David ByrneРІР‚в„ўs American Utopia or in the orchestra pit of Mrs Doubtfire РІР‚вЂњ and more than half a dozen Canadian performers were in Chicago this fall in musical shows aiming to end up on Broadway down the line such As You Like It and Paradise Square. There are Canadians currently in prominent roles in both of last two shows to win best musical at the Tony Awards РІР‚вЂњ Moulin Rouge! and Hadestown РІР‚вЂњ as well as the best-reviewed new musical of this season, Six, and the best-reviewed revival, Caroline, or Change. (Petrina Bromley, Tony LePage and Astrid Van Wieren at the moment.) While our own stages sputtered back to life more slowly, our musical-theatre talent found work en masse south of the border in New YorkРІР‚в„ўs commercial theatre quarter РІР‚вЂњ and not only in Come From Away, the Newfoundland-set show that always has a few Canadians in its cast.

While its future is again uncertain now, BroadwayРІР‚в„ўs reopening this fall was an inspirational story for the North American theatre scene.

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