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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the cast party during COVID
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My name is Kevin McCollum. I am a very humbled and grateful producer along with David Furnish
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and many of my collaborators in the room, the producers in the room. I want to thank you first
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of all for coming. The audience that showed up as well as our creative team, our vendors during
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supply chain issues. We made a show tonight. We had an opening against all odds and we're so grateful
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Thank you to you first, to Broadway and Chicago for in this very difficult time, having five glorious weeks, we still have two left
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to create a show and have a world premiere. And I would like to now introduce you to someone
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who you might have recognized but not in person, Lauren Weisberger, the creator of the book. Lauren, where are you
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Thank you. She encouraged us to make an Andy for today and a show about today and so we did. Thank you
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Lauren, for letting us. And now, ladies and gentlemen, the leader of our creative team, Anna Shapiro
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Oh my god, I'm so glad that I can't see anyone
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I'm not used to this but I'll tell you what I am used to
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I'm used to opening new work in this incredible city that shows up for its artists like you all
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It's so special to be here. It's so special to be able to share this with you and I'm just going
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to be super selfish and say that it is incredibly special to me to have my kids with me for the
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first opening they've ever been to. I'm so proud to share this with you
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And I just also want to say on behalf of the company, you got to carry a lot of water and you
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got to be super brave to be a producer on Broadway right now and I just want to thank Kevin McCollum
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and his whole team for carrying this on. I love you guys. Thank you so much
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So why we did this tonight is unfortunately we're not going to be able to have a cast party
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because we have to protect the company for two more weeks and I will also want to let all of you
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know since June 27th of today we've had 23 cases of COVID. We've had people out of the show for 11
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days and then coming back in today we had Christian Thompson as Christian Thompson come in after being
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on for 11 days. And I know a lot has been written about this but we live to breathe the power of
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swings and understudies. And they're special but you know but you know because
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Sawyer is so special they decided to break their arm as well
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So all of you please in this very very conflicted and challenging time shows like these tell our
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stories about you know finding your voice showing up for each other so take that with you be kind
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to each other have your own private celebrations tonight go to the theater it takes all of us
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and thank you all and we will see you in theaters around the world. Thank you creative team. Thank you
