‘You Gotta Get a Gimmick’: Theatre’s Newest Stage During a Global Pandemic
By: Mckenzi Thi Murphy
Tags: Covid 19, Broadway, Theater, Digital Theatre, Theatre

Listen along as you read

The show must always go on. The mantra of theatre calls for the opening of the metaphorical red velvet curtain, no matter the problem. But the grim real-life drama of a global pandemic forced theatres across the U.S. to remain dark — except for a single ever-burning bulb known as a ghost light. It’s for safety, and an unspoken promise that one day, it’ll be show time.

Until that day comes, non-profit companies, artists, and even commercial theatres have turned to any means necessary to remain relevant and recoup even a fraction of their losses brought on by the pandemic and keep their ghost light burning even as their physical stages remain dark. And so began the popularity of digitized performance.

But in those first months, no official guidebook existed on how to produce a digitized theatrical performance. Some aired archival footage on YouTube, others produced readings of new and previously established shows on Zoom.

A sample of “Row,” Williamstown Theatre Festival’s final Audible release, starring Grace McLean.

Breaking from the mold with their unique “gimmick,” the Massachusetts-based Williamstown Theatre Festival, in partnership with Audible, set out to produce fully-fleshed out audio plays, complete with immersive sound design, but lacking any visual component. These audio plays, distinct from audiobooks in that they feature full casts with dialogue rather than singular narration, were an effort to create a product that would stand even beyond a pandemic.

”Our goal was to give audiences something polished,” Aileen Lambert, Williamstown’s literary manager, said. “Something edited, something that was complete. A complete package.”

When it became clear that shutdown orders would not be lifted anytime soon, Williamstown announced its partnership with Audible Theater in April 2020. The audio format, Lambert said, benefited the telling of certain theatrical stories, but more importantly increased accessibility to the shows, as the physical location of the theatre is in a remote location not near any public transportation

“Audible has actually been digitizing theatre since before the pandemic,” said Michelle Farabaugh, associate vice president of Boneau/Bryan-Brown, which worked closely with WTFestival. “In the spirit of increased access and democratizing a space and entertainment form that can sometimes be elitist.”

Using recording kits provided by Audible, actors in six of the seven productions recorded their parts right from the comforts of their homes. Cloistered away in closets, under bunk beds, or hunkered down in a fort made of blankets and couch cushions to ensure the best possible audio quality, the casts connected to each other via video calls. Among them were Tamika Lawrence (Beautiful: The Carole King Musical), Ariel Shafir (Skeptic Tank), and six-time Tony winner Audra McDonald.

The cast of “A Street Car Named Desire” for Williamstown Theatre Festival’s Audible Season. Courtesy of Audible.

Row, the WTF Season on Audible’s only musical and final recorded product, was recorded in a studio owing to the limitations and difficulties of recording songs remotely. Just three members of the cast could be in the recording studio at a time in addition to the director and sound engineer, while safety precautions remained in place. Recording wrapped up production in February.

The lead actress in Row, Grace McLean (Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, In the Green), recorded her parts in less than a week. She said she was relieved for having had the opportunity for an in-person exchange.

“As soon as they were in the room,” McLean said, “even if we couldn’t see each other, the timing was just immediately there. There was immediately an organic exchange that is impossible over Zoom.”

Over the past year, McLean has streamed a handful of concerts from her home as well as an onsite concert streamed to an absent audience at Rockwood Music Hall. Though she remains largely dissatisfied with the digital substitute, she said she did enjoy the learning experience and only appreciated in-person interaction more.

“I’m learning something about this sort of quiet and softness that can be achieved,” she said. “It’s been an interesting flavor to explore…but to have an opportunity to just have a little bit of a flavor of those old things that had become routine in the ‘before times,’ to get a sense of them again, there’s a real appreciation that I am grateful to have.”

In the early days of quarantine, McLean and her husband bought a car and traveled across the country, staying far from other people.

“And we just, like, slept under the stars and went on hikes. And that was really nourishing,” McLean said. “What an incredibly privileged thing for us to be able to do. I don’t know that I feel great about that, but I also wouldn’t have felt great sitting in my house stewing.”

Eventually, the need to continue generating income to pay the bills made such a thing unsustainable, she said.

‘City on Fire’: Possible Salvation After Economic Devastation

Lincoln Center has been closed since March 2020, though they began pop-up outdoor performances this April. Photo by McKenzi Thi Murphy

In New York City — the country’s theatrical hub — the arts, entertainment, and recreation sector saw a drastic 66% drop in employment in December 2020 compared to the year prior, according to data from the state Department of Labor. This devastating drop, larger than any other economic sector in the city, is also the largest in at least 30 years. Not even the economic recession of 2008 had such a dramatic impact.

The largest subsector of this sector, performing arts and spectator sports, accounts for half the sector’s overall jobs, and experienced the largest drop in employment year-over-year. 2020’s annual average of those who remained employed was just 29,000, compared to the previous year’s 47,500 — nearly a 40% drop.

Those working non-management jobs, such as custodial staff, actors, artists, and building staff, could not do these jobs remotely as they had done before.

State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli found that, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, employment, number of establishments, and total wages in this sector grew faster than any other city sector.

Broadway’s 2018–2019 season, the last to be unaffected by the pandemic, grossed $1.83 billion, and saw an attendance of 14.77 million, both the highest to date, according to data from The Broadway League.

All told, the economic impact of theatre to the New York City economy is vital, DiNapoli said.

“In order for our city to recover — economically and psychologically — we must help our arts community recover,” said Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY12). “I think our society at large would be a much darker, less stimulating place were the arts community to be diminished.”

However, the revenue from streamed productions and performances is not enough alone to keep theatres from darkening permanently. “Arts and recreation face an uphill climb to recover from the damage wrought,” DiNapoli said. This sector is the only major employment sector in New York City that remains below half of its pre-pandemic employment levels.

In April 2020, the National Independent Venue Association formed to fight for “venue survival amid mandated, extended shutdowns,” according to their first statement. The association, consisting of over 3,000 member groups, urged the federal government to provide large-scale financial aid for struggling independent venues. By the summer, Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) and Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) introduced the bipartisan Save Our Stages Act to Congress.

“This bill developed a lot of momentum really quickly, and that was largely due to the rapid mobilization and advocacy of the theatre community,” Maloney, a co-signer of the SOS Act, said.

“The relief packages that Congress has passed so far have largely overlooked aid for the arts and humanities. Yet the arts are vital to our city — New York City wouldn’t be New York City without its incredibly vibrant arts scene.”

In total, the SOS Act, now formally called the “Shuttered Venue Operators” Grant Program, garnered co-sponsorship by 230 members of Congress, and was signed into law on Dec. 27, 2020, as part of the second coronavirus relief package. An estimated $15 billion in relief will be distributed to independent music venues, theatres, and like cultural institutions, though the rollout is expected to take months.

The association has since assembled the Implementation Task Force to ensure relief is granted as equitably and efficiently as possible with the hardest hit businesses receiving aid first. However, applying for aid is a lengthy and complicated process, and not all theatres who need funding are eligible.

‘I’m Still Here’: Entering A Digital Era

On March 10, two days before the Great White Way of Broadway shut down, the Staller Center for the Arts in Stony Brook, New York, canceled that month’s events, becoming the second arts center on the East Coast to close. Shortly thereafter, Director Alan Inkles announced an indefinite closure that has remained in place, at least regarding in-person events, since.

A timeline of relevant events.

To remain on theatregoers’ radars, Staller partnered with IndieFlix to bring their annual Spring Film Festival into a digital streaming medium. They sold over 1,000 passes and individual tickets to households across the country, and gave out an additional 400 free passes to students at Stony Brook University. This partnership continued into 2021.

From March to late December, Inkles estimates a loss in revenue of about $1.2 million. Or, almost half of the $2.5 million necessary to run the Staller theatres annually. About two-thirds of this needed budget comes from ticket sales and fundraising, both of which have predictably decreased over the past year.

“The problem is the charging,” Inkles said about digital ticket prices. “That still has not gotten easier. For so many months, the world gave this away for free.”

When theatres expected to be back within weeks, but certainly not months, The Met Opera offered free streams of professional previously recorded full productions — as did the National Theatre and many other smaller venues. Inkles is concerned audience members grew too used to this free business model, and are now less willing to pay alongside their existing multiple streaming memberships.

”Now that everyone’s starting to charge — because people have to pay their bills and actors need to get paid and dancers need to get paid,” he said. “Some people love and support the arts and will always pay but the average person who’s been paying their monthly fee for Netflix, and Disney+, and Amazon Prime and Hulu said I’m paying enough money, I can see so much stuff for free. Why should I pay to listen to Renee Fleming? Why should I pay to see Dance Theatre of Harlem when I can go on and watch them for free?…And really, we cannot succumb to the easiness of digital, or theatres aren’t going to be around.”

And even with digital streaming ticket sales, Staller generates only a fraction of the required funds it needs annually to continue running. They are ineligible for the federal grant, Inkles said because they are officially part of the state university, and should theoretically be able to receive other federal grants through Stony Brook University. Ultimately, because the university also encompasses the Stony Brook Hospital, the arts are not at the top of the priority list, he said.

Likewise, Ridgefield Playhouse in Connecticut, a non-profit performing arts center, has had to move over 300 shows, and has lost $3.5 million in revenue since the pandemic began. They, unlike Staller in New York, are located in a state that has allowed various forms of limited in-person performance since June.

Merely days after their final regular show on March 13, they transitioned over to virtual events, then offered for free. Ridgefield Playhouse continued to stream live shows throughout the pandemic, amidst limited in-person events, and even in hybrid format.

For Ridgefield Playhouse, an employee must be monitoring the stream backstage, and another person has to shoot it from next to the soundboard. Coupled with the cost of streaming software, equipment, and licensing, the cost of running streamed shows may not justify the return rate as theatres fully reopen in the distant future. And Allison Stockel, Ridgefield’s executive director, predicts artists may not be as willing to perform for a hybrid show without the necessity a pandemic provides.

Furthermore, given the varying levels of technical competency theatre companies may have, streaming shows even within the pandemic has been an untold hassle.

Using her knowledge of Open Broadcaster Software®, New Jersey actor and choreographer Jessa Blackthorn developed her own methods of technical direction for Ames Performing Arts’s full-scale Zoom production of The Laramie Project.

Actors from across the country joined the cast, including Blackthorn herself as an unexpected replacement for a leading role. The standard Zoom format places participants in grid-like boxes, which is not conducive to a live stage play adaptation, she said. Each scene required individual setup and real-time cues, and Zoom limitations constantly required workarounds.

“Four hours before the show, everyone had their Zoom log in so I could set 51 scenes worth of cues,” Blackthorn said. As a leading character herself, Blackthorn had to personally signal over 200 cues using hotkeys, while simultaneously acting.

A template for a scene in “The Laramie Project,” created by Jessa Blackthorn. Actors’ Zoom screens are inserted into the placeholder black boxes during the performance.

Ultimately, Blackthorn and the rest of the cast were able to push back the production, and restream, this time using pre-taped scenes Blackthorn could cue using a much more simplified format. Here, the show could go on.

“[Digital performance] has a lot of technical flaws,” she said. “There’s a lot that would need to be created, a lot of new things that would need to be worked out. New technologies would have to be designed with theatre in mind.”

Blackthorn said she believes the longer the pandemic continues, the more likely it is people will find sustainability in this developing medium. And theatre, at heart, is one of the most resilient and adaptable forms of art, she said.

Earlier this year, Patrick Dooley, the founder and director of Shotgun Players in California, announced the advent of a Bridge Series — four productions designed to transition the theatre from “streaming only” to “streaming with small audiences” and eventually make way for their in-person mainstage season in the distant, safe, future, culminating with the West Coast premiere of Dave Malloy’s Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, a 12-time Tony nominated production.

And unlike Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts, which aims to move beyond the pandemic and create an immersive experience hidden away from the limitations of remote performance, Shotgun Players keeps the theories of Bertolt Brecht in mind. That is, keep the mechanics of the production visible, and the address the audience directly.

“It’s really a hybrid,” Dooley said. “Where we’re not going to be trying to hide at all that we’re in COVID times. It’d be part of the aesthetic of the piece. I don’t want to lose the immersive quality. That’s key to the show. That’s key to the ethos and the spirit of this.”

The Bridge Series’ first show, Every Time I feel the Spirit, is a commission on Zoom that invites audiences to actively participate by turning their cameras on if they so choose and joining in by singing and even praying at appropriate times.

Shotgun Players and Dooley, out of all the theatre companies interviewed, remain the only ones to express excitement at continuing digital performances beyond COVID-19.

“We’re never gonna go back,” Dooley said. “Even when we can go back, virtual performance is going to be part of our repertoire going forward.”

However, the vast majority of artists, companies, and indeed viewers, including Dooley, ultimately agree there can be no substitute for live, in-person theatre.

“It’s awful,” Grace McLean (the Great Comet of 1812, In the Green) said about performing only through digital means for over a year.

“It’s not good. No one likes it. I mean, there is no substitute for a live audience. There’s just not. And a computer screen is, even having the people in real time is a very, very poor substitute. I have to say quite honestly.”

‘What Will Tomorrow Bring?’: The Next Step For Theatre

Lincoln Center “Restart Stages” rendering by Ceylan A. Sahin Eker, courtesy of Lincoln Center.

Since vaccinations began last December, the U.S. has administered approximately 2.57 million doses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — less than 20% of the American population. The projected trend indicates full vaccination may not happen until early 2022, according to the CDC. Questions of what the future of American theatre will look like continue to remain just that.

“I’m not planning on anything until 2022,” Donna Walker-Kuhne, America’s leading expert on audience development, said.

On March 25, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the city’s plans to set up a COVID-19 vaccination site on Broadway for theatre industry workers, as well as mobile vaccination units for workers beyond Broadway in the hopes of a fall reopening.

Earlier in March, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced venues would reopen on April 2, at one-third capacity. Such a limit is not, according to Broadway producers, economically feasible as the situation changes daily. Much remains unanswered about any future reopening plans for the performing arts.

The expensive nature of running a theater, producing a commercial show, or even streaming means too many institutions could be at risk of going dark for good as they continue to hemorrhage funds.

“If we can get through this semester, and we can get through this summer and get close to a fall that looks sort of what normal might be…then we have a chance,” Staller’s Alan Inkles said. “If we’re stuck another semester like before, like now, it’ll be very hard to recover.”

Yet, Walker-Kuhne said: “The issue is not not enough money. The issue is equity. How’s it being distributed? That one percent hold 95% of the country’s wealth. So this is what we have to change. And this is from birth of America. This country was founded on that kind of capitalistic principle. But now it’s time to change.”

It is unlikely, Walker-Kuhne suggests, that producers and companies will be able to return to the old “greedy” business models of expensive ticket pricing. Gone, at least temporarily, will be the days of asking for $250 a ticket. And lower prices may be the incentive people need to return.

“It won’t be income producing,” Walker Kuhne said, regarding the first six months after theatres return to in-person performances. “It’s kind of like an entrée back into theatre to see how people even feel coming into the field. But just physically going into the theater, what is that like? And what is the comfort level?”

Even as vaccinations increase and cases lessen, however, those in theatre administration worry state mandates on when they can safely reopen won’t allow for necessary preparation time.

On May 5, Gov. Cuomo announced Broadway theatres would be allowed to open on Tuesday, Sept. 14 at full capacity, though shows will likely opt to open that Friday instead. Specific productions will have the ability to roll out openings based on their individual needs, such as rehearsals, recasting and new hiring.

Just because the theatres can open does not guarantee the audiences will come, said Inkles.

“There’s no crystal ball on this one,” he said “If there is, it’s broken.”

Several commercial theatres in New York City have begun a soft-rollout of popup events to gauge interest. Lincoln Center’s Restart Stage initiative consists of 10 outdoor performance and rehearsal spaces, and is part of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation-Lincoln Center Agora Initiative. Free and low-cost events include cabaret concerts, dance, and even community service events such as blood and food drives.

No clear picture of the theatre’s full reopening exists, but several sources have expressed hope that certain aspects, digital streaming, accessibility, lower pricing, will remain indefinitely. And not only due to the global health crisis.

“We had three pandemics,” Walker-Kuhne said. “COVID was one, the murder of George Floyd was two, political disunity was three. In America, we have quite a year. And I think the result of all of those should be that we looked at our humanity, and that we use this opportunity to really refresh. How are we being respectful? How are we building equity on every aspect of our lives? That’s what I’m hoping will be the result.”