Broadway considers the path for shows to go on

happen,” McColl said. “And in the long term, how to figure out how to bring it back to close to what it was before.”

Broadway could learn some tips from the feisty, experimental downtown theater company The Wooster Group. If city authorities demand social distancing at its 110-seat performance space, the nonprofit will comply — just increase the number of daily performances.

“We are small and flexible,” said associate director Kate Valk, who is already at work on an audiovisual work tacking the pandemic. “I feel for the theatrical artists who depend on a commercial production. The bigger the machine, the harder it is to reinvent.”

Barrington Stage Company in Massachusetts offers another model — it’s reducing its 520-seat main theater to one-third, increasing the distance between rows and seats and deep cleaning the theater after every show. Audiences will be required to wear masks. Additional entrances and exits are also being built, and there will be no intermissions for performances.

Some creators see an opportunity for change. One of the most outspoken is Theresa Rebeck, an award-winning playwright and creator of the Broadway TV series “Smash.”

“There are many, many people living right at the edge of disaster, and this is really going to destroy a lot of lives and careers and there’s no way to pretend that that’s not happening right now,” Rebeck said.

Right now, perhaps one-man and one-woman shows will be deemed smarter than shows with large casts. Perhaps outdoor shows will be more attractive than cramming people into a conventional theater.

“I think that for a while, theater might look like it did before all of the technology that we’ve accomplished over the last centuries,” said McColl. “I think it’s going to be stripped down to storytelling.”