Items

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  2021-10-09

  The Challenges of Performing Arts During the Pandemic

  This is a short audio file that talks about what challenges I faced during the pandemic, including a performing arts that was shut down the day before opening night and then a successful fundraiser that raised $25,000.
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  2020-03-13

  The Fight for a Show

  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.
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  2020-03-18

  The Show that Almost Was

  After Susanville's Best of Broadway show was cancelled just a day before its opening night, Susanville's local online news editor Jeremy Couso reached out to the Best of Board members to see if he could publish an article about our show, the show that never happened. He and his wife attends the performance for a media night and he happened to have a video of the show. For a small production, the youtube video of the performance has had just under 900 views as of October 9th, 2021. I directed Wizard of Oz with a dear friend of mine, in a one year shot to direct. Watching the video of the show that didn't happen is honestly very sad and hard to do. We become family with the cast and to not reach the finale is painful. But the show must go on, and in 2022, Best of Broadway will take the stage again.
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  2020-03-17

  Performance Cancelled a Day Before Opening Night

  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.