Coronavirus in NY Showbiz and Celebrity Breaking News

The Theatre Development Fund, the not-for-profit organization with services including the hugely popular TKTS discount ticket booths in Times Square and other New York City locations, is launching a fundraising drive to “sustain critical operations” during and after the COVID-19 Broadway shutdown.

A magical night for Mouse House and Broadway raised $609,479 for “Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.”

Jazz legend Giuseppi Logan died of the coronavirus at a Far Rockaway nursing home, according to a report. He was 84.

Shakespeare in the Park is the latest major New York event to fall due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Quarantined couch potatoes apparently were desperate for a new episode of “Saturday Night Live.”

Wynn Handman, co-founder of American Place Theatre, the Off Broadway non-profit company that championed a young playwright named Sam Shepard and cast such actors as Dustin Hoffman, Rául Juliá, Faye Dunaway, John Leguizamo and Robert De Niro early in their careers, died of complications from the coronavirus Saturday, April 11, at his home in New York. He was 97.

When you’re a Jet, you’re a Jet … all the way, from your first Broadway preview to your last Zoom call.

Broadway can’t go on with the shows just yet.

Hal Willner — the respected producer who worked with Lou Reed and Marianne Faithfull, was a long-time “Saturday Night Live” staffer and compiled a series of eccentric all-star tribute albums — died Monday at the age of 64. A rep for Willner confirmed the producer’s death to Rolling Stone. While a cause of death has yet to be announced, a source close to Willner tells Rolling Stone he was suffering from symptoms consistent with the coronavirus.

Using her personal connections might have just cost her future ones.

Sip to support your neighborhood gathering place! Despite all restaurants and bars following the COVID-19 mandated shut-down, licensed spots of lubrication may now offer cocktails to-go with the State Liquor Authority’s blessing.

Crazy times cry out for good music — the kind that sends your spirits soaring, even as it helps keep you grounded. That often means classic rock for some, but for me, it’s classical music, period. I grew up with a musician who, when she wasn’t leading her Brooklyn elementary school’s Glee Club, could usually be found at our piano. I’d fall asleep to Bach fugues and Beethoven sonatas, seeing pictures in my head and making up lyrics for the glorious sounds coming from our living room.

Gov Ball has been called off.

The 2020 Tony Awards, originally scheduled to air Sunday, June 7 on CBS, will be postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic, a spokeswoman announced Wednesday.

Jackson Browne was suspicious that something was not right when he started feeling ill in recent weeks. “As soon as I had a small cough and a temperature, I tested [for COVID-19],” he says. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee tells Rolling Stone that he has tested positive for the coronavirus and is currently recuperating at his Los Angeles home. “My symptoms are really pretty mild, so I don’t require any kind of medication and certainly not hospitalization or anything like that,” he adds.

Do you wake up each day and weigh the pros and cons of showering, as though you’re Hamlet pondering “to be or not to be?” Then, like me, you are surely having trouble acclimating to our new homebody reality amid the coronavirus pandemic lockdown.

The Metropolitan Opera laid off many of its employees, including its musicians and chorus in the wake of the coronavirus shutdown.

Mayor Bill de Blasio has ordered New York City’s movie theaters to indefinitely shutter due to the coronavirus pandemic — but that didn’t stop one Park Slope cinema from sending an ongoing message to its patrons.

The coronavirus has spread to as many as 135 countries, with more than 135,400 confirmed cases and over 5,000 deaths as of Friday afternoon.

Telecharge, the service that bills itself as the official ticketing site for Broadway and Off-Broadway, will automatically refund Broadway tickets purchased for performances between today and April 12. The tickets will be refunded back to purchasers’ credit cards.

Like many artists, Grammy-winning Beninese singer Angélique Kidjo — whom Time magazine once called “Africa’s premier diva” — has felt the staggering effect of the coronavirus crisis, which forced the cancellation of her Daughter of Independence concert at Carnegie Hall on Saturday.

More like Harry Potter and the Goblet of Liar.

The nation’s coronavirus scare has not as yet impacted Broadway production schedules, with all shows currently playing as planned in theaters scrubbed and disinfected with extra vigor and stocked with additional sanitizer dispensers.

Goodbye, South by Southwest.