BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2021: Sign posts of progress mark Black successes nydailynews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from nydailynews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Advocating and Agitating, Connecting and Inventing
With their field rocked by unprecedented challenges in 2020, these people and groups some notable, some new stepped into the breach.
The composer Andrew Lloyd Webber has been one of the most high-profile advocates for the theater community.Credit.Damon Winter/The New York Times
Andrew Lloyd Webber
There are producers serving on committees. Performers signing petitions. Then there is Andrew Lloyd Webber, the most successful living musical theater composer, who offered his body in an effort to resuscitate his beloved industry. The 72-year-old Briton, whose hit list includes “Cats” and “The Phantom of the Opera,” in August joined a vaccine trial in England, taking a shot of the experimental drug in his left arm while wearing a “Save Our Stages” T-shirt. And he’s been a relentless champion of theater’s return: In July he hosted the first West End pandemic show at his Palladium Theater in London (“This is a rathe