Amy Costello: Welcome to Tiny Spark, a podcast of the Nonprofit Quarterly. We focus on what is required to build a more just society—in matters of race, health, the environment, and the economy. I’m Amy Costello.
Hiram Delgado: Every actor dreams to be on a Broadway stage. That’s like the highest you could get, in my opinion. And, being a Hispanic man, I was raised in Puerto Rico. English is not my first language. Being given the opportunity, to play a Hispanic character and to be surrounded by such amazing and creative people, it’s the sort of thing that you dream of, honestly.
Costello: And dreams finally came true for actor and writer Hiram Delgado. He was working in a cafe in Bushwick, New York to pay his bills, when his agent called. He’d been cast in the drama Take Me Out. It was going to be Delgado’s debut on Broadway. The show was set to open for previews in April last year.
Delgado: I can’t describe to you the feeling of, like, having your passion be the thing that gets you out of a day job that you don’t really like. It’s the most amazing feeling in the world. It was just like a big high, obviously. I think that Broadway is great, yeah, but also what is greater is that I can pay my bills and buy my groceries, and I can do it just by rehearsing and putting on a show and playing with people. That’s what gets me excited about it, is that I can make a living off of this.
Costello: But then, COVID hit. And Hiram’s rehearsals for Take Me Out suddenly came to a stop. At the time, he didn’t grasp the enormity of the virus…
Delgado: Yeah, we thought we were going to come back the same day, that next day or a couple of days after. But that wasn’t the case, yeah.
Costello: …and the impact COVID would have on his beloved theater community across New York.
Delgado: It’s hard. Right now, I know a lot of my friends that had to leave, because they were just like, I can’t afford to live here if I’m not doing what I’m supposed to be doing. And it’s been really, really sad to kind of see the impact that this has had on every industry, but especially on artists.
Costello: It’s been 18 months since the world went into lockdown and social isolation. Slowly, some venues are beginning to open again, including Broadway. Here’s theatre star Lin-Manuel Miranda at the stage door on the night of Hamilton’s reopening…
Lin-Manuel Miranda: Hi, everybody! Hello, New York. Broadway is back! Thank you for supporting live theatre. It has been a hard year and a half…
Costello: Broadway is finally back, and so in this podcast, we’re speaking to actors, writers, and directors with ties to the New York theater scene to learn how the pandemic affected them, and to hear about the surprising ways that the mandatory break has changed their relationships with the New York theater scene. And we’ll hear a little bit about…
Read More: Broadway’s Break: A Deep Breath For The Industry? – Non Profit News