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Collected Item: “The Fight for a Show”

Give your story a title.

The Fight for a Show

What sort of object is this: text story, photograph, video, audio interview, screenshot, drawing, meme, etc.?

screenshot

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.

When the global pandemic hit, we were just a day away from putting on a theater production that we had worked on for a year and over 10 weeks of rehearsal. As a board, we thought of every possible way to keep a show, so that it wasn't shut down. I went and measured the venue, the local Veterans Hall to see how many seats we could have in the hall, if they were six-feet apart. We looked at requiring mask or limiting to just family. We met with local public health officials with different options on how to keep our show. But, the final decision was that it was in our best interest to cancel the show. The concern was that with family coming in from other areas, that Best of Broadway could be responsible for bringing Covid-19 to Susanville, and we were not willing to take that risk. When we cancelled, we figured we just needed to reschedule the show a couple of weeks. That, in and of itself was challenging. But the idea of a possible lawsuit or worse causing harm to others was a real possibility. As the Board President, I had to announce via Facebook and Instagram that the show was cancelled. It was terrible. A very sad day for our Broadway family. This post was from one of the husbands of our performers. His words of encouragement was reassuring. Most people responded in a sympathetic and understanding way.

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?

#covid19, #pandemic, #performingarts, #bestofbroadway #cancellation

Who originally created this object? (If you created this object, such as photo, then put "self" here.)

Matthew Vorlicky

Give this story a date.

2020-03-13
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