Collected Item: “Performance Cancelled a Day Before Opening Night”
Give your story a title.
Performance Cancelled a Day Before Opening Night
What sort of object is this: text story, photograph, video, audio interview, screenshot, drawing, meme, etc.?
Online Newspaper Article, Text Story
Tell us a story; share your experience. Describe what the object or story you've uploaded says about the pandemic, and/or why what you've submitted is important to you.
I am the board president for a local theater company, in a small town in Northeast California. For over 20 years, the production Susanville's Best of Broadway has produced a yearly concert series that features snippets from several different Broadway shows. Our production is 100% volunteer and is run by a production manager and a production team. Our cast runs over 100 people every year and includes community members of all ages. Our 2020 production was an epic year for us, as we had spent a lot f money on props, backdrops, and costumes. Several of the shows included Hamilton, Waitress, and my personal favorite Wizard of Oz (to name a few). Our production team started in April of 2019 to plan and the cast started to rehearse in January 2020. The cast would show up to rehearsals 6 days a week for 10 weeks. Two days after the pandemic was announced nationally, was supposed to be Susanville's Best of Broadway Opening Night. We schedule a total of 7 shows over two weekend. The day before opening night, our local public health team reached out to me. In a stressful meeting with the public health team and the Broadway board of directors, it was determined that we had to cancel our show. We attempted to do whatever we could to modify and change things, including social distancing, but pubic health was worried that if someone got sick from our show, we would end up with some sort of lawsuit we couldn't handle. They did, however, allow for us to present to anyone who had been at rehearsal, which included some family members and we called it a rehearsal. It was a sad night. Performing to an empty hall was sad. The cast cleaned up their belongings with hope that we would reopen in a couple of weeks. Not only were we unable to open the show, but we were unable to perform a concern series in 2021. Thankfully, plans are underway to have a performance in 2022.
Use one-word hashtags (separated by commas) to describe your story. For example: Where did it originate? How does this object make you feel? How does this object relate to the pandemic?
#performingarts, #cancelledevents, #pandemic #covid19 #susanville #bestofbroadway #quiettheater #financialloss
Enter a URL associated with this object, if relevant.
https://www.lassennews.com/best-of-broadway-postpones-2020-concert-series/
Who originally created this object? (If you created this object, such as photo, then put "self" here.)
Makenzie Davis, News Editor for Lassen County Times
Give this story a date.
2020-03-17