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cancelled event
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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. -
2020-05-25
Friday the 13th
On Friday the 13th of March 2020, Garden Grove High School's Orchestra program was set for their 2nd festival of the season. We were supposed to leave school at 1:30pm and bus all the way to Beckman High School in Irvine, California, 30 minutes away. But of course, Friday the 13th was a bad omen, and it was no exception this time. The festival was cancelled the morning of, at 8am. Once we were told so, anyone in our classroom would tell you that a gust of sadness engulfed the room. We had worked endlessly since August for our short performance but it was all gone to waste. 8 hours later, at 4pm while I was at Track practice, everyone got the news that school would be cancelled for a month. By then, our concert season would only be halfway through so we were hopeful. Unfortunately, school had been cancelled until the end of the school year and our performing arts program will, no doubt, be suffering in the aftermath of this pandemic. Friday the 13th really is a bad sign. -
2020-03-18
Virtual Chorus Rehearsals
This is a text letter from a chorus instructor explaining the protocol for his choir on navigating Covid-19 as a team.