Re: Happy New Year!
Not bad, ttytt. When the pandemic first hit we had to cancel a musical that was a week or two from going on stage. That was hard. Then we spent a year dark. We had board meetings via Zoom.
But, we tried a couple of creative things to stay in touch with the community. 2020 we came up with the idea to put on some reader's theater events using old radio show scripts. No royalties. Very low cost. We built the stage in our parking lot. We got an okay from the county board of health. And we offered this for free. Several weekends. Each weekend a different set of shows. Bring your own chairs. A summer event.
Summer of 2021 we expanded the idea by opening things up to any kind of royalty free works our pool of directors wanted to explore. And we were able to move things inside. This was pre-Delta.
Now, for our 2021-2022 season we've been able to put up two regular season shows with a third just beginning production. The second show got hit with the Omicron wave, and they had a rocky time of things rehearsing around the quarantine periods of some of their cast, but they put the show up, and it's relatively well attended.
Audiences are not what they were pre-pandemic. We're extremely happy if we get a half house of roughly 100 people. Understandable. And, we've made a significant change in going from assigned seating to festival seating. So, if a patron isn't comfortable sitting next to another patron - who will not, for example, wear their mask properly - then they can now move.