photo courtesy dreamstime
The pandemic has been unkind to the arts in general, and particularly to live performing arts. Whether staged theatrical works or dances or concerts, productions have always relied on people gathering in one place to share the experience of sights, sounds, and movement. They also share the air, which covid-19 has rendered potentially harmful.
Presenting organizations reeled from the shutdown, and needed to figure out — quickly — how to navigate a newly contactless world.
Michael Detroit
In March, there was a general sense that quarantining would be tough, but would be over soon. Michael Detroit, the executive producer at Playhouse on the Square, like the rest of us, hoped for the best but knew his organization needed a plan. “What does it look like if we have to stay closed through April?” He chuckles ruefully remembering “the good old days.”
Playhouse leadership were simultaneously making plans in case a quarantine lasted through June, or July, or August, and on. Which shows and educational programs and fundraisers could they keep on the docket until they absolutely had to cancel? They looked at the covid-19 case numbers in Shelby County as well as within a two-and-a-half-hour driving radius.
“We hope that if numbers get better we’ll have two shows opening the day after Thanksgiving to run through the weekend before Christmas, But I’m not confident.” — Michael Detroit
“The irony was we actually had our reopening plans approved by the Shelby County Health Department. County health officer Dr. Bruce Randolph made a site visit and answered all our questions,” Detroit says. Playhouse had all the safety precautions in place with socially distanced seating, precautions backstage, lobby distancing, acrylic partitions, touchless hand-sanitizing stations. “We hoped to reopen in August with A Little Shop of Horrors.”
Yet even with the okay to reopen, it wasn’t feeling right, Detroit says. So the decision was made to cancel everything through late November.
“We hope that if numbers get better we’ll have two shows opening the day after Thanksgiving to run through the weekend before Christmas,” he says. “But I’m not confident. If we cancel everything through December that’s 14 shows and five programs, and we end up canceling a second major fundraiser.”
Canceling almost an entire season plus key fundraisers is, unsurprisingly, brutal to the budget. “We will have a large deficit for the 2020-2021 season,” Detroit says. “There’s just no getting around it. We’ve put together two operating budgets, one that takes us through December 31st. And then a worst-case scenario budget if we have to cancel shows, education programs and fundraisers through July 2021. We’ve been pretty fiscally responsible over the years and we have a mandate that we’re not releasing any employees. It’s going to be a financial hardship but we have cash reserves that will take us through at least the beginning of December.
“But it’s really going to hinge on unearned help from outside sources,” he continues. “For 50 years we’ve always had more earned income — ticket sales, class tuitions, and rentals — than we had unearned.” But the pandemic made that all go away, so Playhouse needs the help from foundations and corporations. Yet those sources, too, are dealing with a battered economy, and accordingly tightening the purse strings.
Ekundayo Bandale
The situation at Playhouse is shared within other organizations. At Hattiloo Theatre, founder and executive director Ekundayo Bandele says, “We are being overly conservative and we may not have any in-person programming before the second quarter next year.” If the crisis eases before that, however, there are projects the theater can produce quickly.
As he puts it, “We’re staying artistically vigilant, organizationally conservative, and using this moment to make certain that we come out of this stronger and more self-reliant than we did when it started.”
Peter Abell, president and CEO of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, says the organization kicked off its renewal campaign in February. “But we soon realized we wouldn’t be able to do that for both artistic safety and financial reasons. It’s not just one or the other.”
The goal, Abell says, is to stay healthy and stay together. “Everything we do has to be not only for the health of the orchestra, but also for the patrons and staff. It’s actually always been an issue for an orchestra because of playing in, for example, pits for operas and ballets. You’re in a very confined space often during flu season. So we have protocols anyway, like lots of hand sanitizer. But this is a new level.”
Ned Canty
Opera Memphis, always ready to experiment, adapted early to the pandemic. Seeing what was coming, it never did announce a season, knowing it would have to be canceled. But it has continued to produce content. Its “Sing2Me” program features a singer and accompanist traveling in a van with a trailer to various neighborhoods to perform, following social-distancing protocols. General director Ned Canty says that’s been successful just through word of mouth.
He says that his organization is getting up to speed with streaming technology and is looking ahead to programming, among other things, a short opera by Jerre Dye. “The goal is to really focus on the things that we will want to continue doing, even when theaters open up again,” Canty says.
Theatre Memphis managed to have great luck in timing. It shut down in late December after its annual production of A Christmas Carol to do a major overhaul of the theater. Since then, work crews have been adding to the building, reconfiguring existing elements, and upgrading everything from seating to ventilation. So when the coronavirus hit, there was no immediate need to shift gears.
It had hoped by now to have its 2020-2021 season under way, but as with everyone else’s seasons, that has been pushed back. Executive producer Debbie Litch is hoping that A Christmas Carol can be presented in December, “virtual or otherwise because we’re not going to ruin our 43-year streak,” she declares. But the first priority is the safety of audiences, cast, and crew. The hope is that regular stage productions can resume next spring in the redone facility, coinciding with the theater’s 100th anniversary.
Elizabeth Perkins
Providing another perspective is Elizabeth Perkins, program director of the Ostrander Awards that were scheduled to be awarded August 30th. The annual event, sponsored by Memphis magazine and ArtsMemphis, judges all the shows in professional, community, and collegiate categories. But it was an abbreviated event this year since only about half the shows were produced before the pandemic hit. “We feel the worst for these college kids,” Perkins says, “because they have a much longer rehearsal period and they were ready to go and then just got cut out.”
The awards ceremony has in recent years been held at the Orpheum and is the one night of the year when the entire theater community can gather, since no shows are scheduled. But instead of getting all dressed up and hanging out with each other at a big party, Memphis’ theater people got together online.
Perkins says that there could be residual effects of theaters going dark for so long. “When they open, will the same number of people be ready to go back?” she asks. “To completely over-generalize, your typical theater patron, the person who buys the subscriptions, is in that age range where they may not want to come back out. The younger theatergoers are single-ticket buyers and last-minute deciders, and that’s hard to keep a business going on. The organizations are going to need support for a while.”
And, Perkins notes, it’s likely to be a blow to encouraging youth in theater. “Looking longer-term, a lot of Memphis theater talent is groomed in high school, grow up in the high school, and they start their theater careers there. It’s where I fell in love with theater. If they’re not going back to campus, where are those kids going to learn to fall in love with theater and want to grow up and do it?”
Things are fluid and people pivot,” Detroit says. Those catchwords of the day describe how organizations must adapt. And the situation now has allowed many of the organizations to learn and refine skills as well as catch up in areas they might have put off.
image courtesy dreamstime
At Hattiloo, Bandele says the break in performances has allowed for practical as well as creative improvement. “We never in 15 years were able to take a pause to catalog our programs and catalog our actual materials, such as costumes, props, wood, and tools,” he says.
That effort has resulted in efficiencies in inventory. But Bandele is especially gratified that he can devote more time to his original passion, playwriting. Before the crisis, it wasn’t practical for him to squeeze in some writing, then switch to some administrating, and take care of some fundraising during the day, and then come in and direct a play in the evening. His current project is a play about Memphis’ Confederate statues coming down, for which he received a MAP Fund grant.
Another unexpected benefit of this down time is “the tightening of our relationships with other theaters across the country,” Bandele says. Publishers are not allowing plays to be streamed, so he’s been developing collaborations with other theaters to share resources, host panel discussions, and organize training. And, very importantly, to use these partnerships to apply for grants.
At Playhouse, Detroit ticks off some of the changes brought about by the theater going dark.
“We’ve transitioned a lot of our programming to digital platforms and I have to say, I’m really proud of our staff for putting in the extra effort,” he says. “We were able to get a grant from the Jeniam Foundation through ArtsMemphis to purchase additional streaming equipment. Our folks had a basic working knowledge of this technology but nobody ever produced television before. They’ve really stepped up. Our digital footprint is huge right now in terms of the educational programming that’s there.”
Playhouse’s summer conservatory was canceled, which wiped out a good bit of income. And while the digital replacement is awesome, Detroit says, the income is negligible. But the knowledge and use of the technology will continue to be important when the crisis passes. In short order, the marketing team put plenty of digital content on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.
“Our goal is to come out of this stronger than we were. Financially there are realities we have to deal with, but as far as the way we plan and the way we think through things, we really want to come out of this strong.” — Peter Abell
At MSO, the forced silencing of the orchestra has brought about some opportunities. In a recent Zoom meeting of musicians and staff, several ideas came forth, many as a result of the musicians’ contacts with other players around the globe. “These allow us to see what’s possible and what can be done safely,” Abell says.
And like other organizations, the pause in activity has given MSO some time to reflect on what’s been working well and what hasn’t. “Our goal is to come out of this stronger than we were,” Abell says. “Financially there are realities we have to deal with, but as far as the way we plan and the way we think through things, we really want to come out of this strong.”
Toward that end, one of the great resources of the MSO is its extensive library of music scores. “We haven’t inventoried that in a long time,” Abell says. “And we’re working on our inclusion and equity priorities. So we’re keeping track, for example, of what works we have by women so we can have a more equitable representation of what we own.”
Canty at Opera Memphis has been on halftime furlough and he’s using that to contemplate experimental ways to blend opera and digital. One thought — maybe call it a grand concept — that he’s been pondering is creating an entertainment universe — think Harry Potter, or the Marvel cinematic universe — with video-game influences. “We’re taking The Magic Flute, the characters, themes and archetypes,” he says, with its many epic mythological aspects. “It would have elements of an alternative reality game with some operatic element.”
Mozart and Marvel are not the only influences. One of Canty’s favorite video games, he says, “is Red Dead Redemption 2, one of the best-written video games I’ve ever played. Any performing arts group could learn from a game like that and what makes it so compelling.”
Steven McMahon
Ballet, of course, is an art form that often requires people to touch each other. At Ballet Memphis, artistic director Steven McMahon has been wrestling with the limitations wrought by the pandemic and what to do when the original season has been obliterated. The answer, as with other organizations, is going digital, which at least allows more flexibility in time than the rigid schedule of a regular season.
He’d like to see programming that runs throughout the season, with an emphasis on the dancers themselves. “Dancers would be given the opportunity to share things about themselves, about what they believe in, about how they see the world and their place in it and how that connects to their art form,” McMahon says. It would serve as an anchor for creating new content, whether new pieces or interviews or in-depth profiles.
“Whenever something feels like a problem or like a constraint of some kind,” he says, “we just try to figure out how we can walk with that creatively.”
So many members of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra are involved in education, whether as part of the MSO or as professors and teachers. The crisis means getting creative and reaching students via technology. The orchestra already has its “Tunes and Tales” program, storybook concerts done in collaboration with Shelby County Schools.
“I think more than anything, everybody in the arts community is just showing a lot of innovation, a lot of grit and grind. And if people respect that, I mean, it’s Memphis.” — Ned Canty
“We know the public school system will be teaching virtually in the fall,” Abell says. (Shelby County Schools has announced the fall semester will begin virtually for all students, only transitioning back to in-person instruction when the local covid-19 situation improves.) “That means we know they won’t be walking into music class in person. So what can the Memphis Symphony do to help parents and school administrators and faculty and music teachers have more fun with trying to teach virtually?” The MSO is working on meaningful ways to help when youngsters are at home practicing. “Let’s build the kind of infrastructure to be able to do this online, so when we do go back to in-person, it will be that much better.”
The Ballet Memphis school has closed its in-person sessions, but has managed to successfully turn to online teaching, McMahon says, although it’s hardly ideal. “Dance is tactile and best taught in person,” he says, “but the teachers, students, and parents have embraced the shifts.” Meanwhile, some of the Pilates classes are available in limited-sized classes and also online. “Who’d have thought that is a way people were interested in working out? But it’s been successful,” he says.
Canty at Opera Memphis sums up what he’s been feeling about the response to the impact of the pandemic.
“I think more than anything, everybody in the arts community is just showing a lot of innovation, a lot of grit and grind,” he says. “And if people respect that, I mean, it’s Memphis. People respect the fact that we’re not just going down easy, we’re fighting all the way. And I think that, more than anything, is the defining characteristic of a Memphis arts organization.”
