Dallas-Fort Worth theater companies are busy making plans for fall and beyond despite not knowing when they’ll really be able to get back on stage in front of a live audience. For artists whose work relies on intimate contact with one another and with viewers occupying the same physical space, the rising spread of COVID-19 in North Texas has created an uncertain future.
When will it be safe to return to live performance? Answering that question is like trying to hit a series of moving targets. Season announcements and revisions to previously released 2020-21 schedules keep getting delayed because of shifting circumstances around the pandemic.
Productions slated for this spring and summer have been wiped out, with dozens canceled or postponed. Even though the governor has given permission for theaters to mount shows with audiences at 50% capacity, most local industry leaders interviewed say that’s still not practical.
Some companies are writing off 2020 altogether, at least for the types of shows they’re accustomed to producing, and are hoping to open up again early next year. Others are holding on to the chance, however remote, that they can return to their stages this fall.
So far, layoffs and salary reductions have been minimal, thanks in part to federal coronavirus loans and the fact that most of these groups have small staffs, allowing them to be nimble. That’s likely to change when new fiscal years begin later this summer and companies are forced to make budget cuts. Hundreds of freelance artists and technicians are already out of work.
The long-term consequences include the distinct possibility that the robust North Texas performing arts scene will shrink.
“Those of us in theater and the other performing arts are at the most extreme end of uncertainty, not the place I like to be,” says Kevin Moriarty, artistic director of the Dallas Theater Center, the area’s oldest and most prominent troupe, which expects to reduce its annual budget from about $10 million to $7 million when its new fiscal year begins Sept. 1.
“Whenever we talk about our plans, which we have to make, we know the chance that they get put into action is very small… . No health official in the country would say it’s safe for people to be acting or singing in public right now. Our company’s livelihood is in great jeopardy.”
David Lozano, executive artistic director of Cara MÍa Theatre, blames a mixture of inaction and politics by public officials for the crisis.
“What’s continually shaking things up, creating obstacles, is there’s not true mitigation of the disease in Dallas,” he says. “The governor has permitted, through stages of reopening, for us to become accustomed to a rampant pandemic. The lack of policies have left theater companies and arts organizations in a position where they can’t properly open.”
A resident company at the Latino Cultural Center, Cara Mía is exploring alternatives to a traditional season, including site-specific outdoor performances and theater in other venues. Lozano says he will use a National Endowment for the Arts grant to film bilingual productions and classes that will tour to schools and community centers.
It’s a time for self-examination, says Kitchen Dog Theater co-artistic director Tina Parker, who doesn’t expect her company to perform for live audiences during the rest of 2020, when it was to begin its 30th season. The troupe is currently completing its canceled New Works Festival of readings via Zoom.
“It’s a brand-new frontier, and it changes every day. Are we important enough to stay around? Maybe it’s over. You have to have a pretty good ‘come to Jesus’ talk with yourself. But theater is not going to die. People need that interaction.”
Numbers, union requirements don’t add up
Parker and other theater leaders say that even if it were possible to create socially distanced scenarios inside their venues — an iffy proposition at best — it wouldn’t generate enough revenue for them to survive in the long run.
And while the focus has been on audience safety, what happens onstage and behind the scenes is just as critical. Actors, directors, designers and technical crews often work in cramped quarters in small black-box theaters, making social distancing all but impossible.
Actors’ Equity Association has yet to approve proposals for its members to star in live productions anywhere in the country, a major obstacle for the approximate dozen and a half companies in Dallas-Fort Worth that employ union performers. That position has shuttered Broadway and shut down national tours scheduled to stop here.
The union has hired a former head of the Occupational Health and Safety Administration to guide their decision-making, insisting the pandemic must be under control or effective testing, contact tracing and isolation regimens in place before their members can return to work. With COVID-19 cases on the rise and the United States not set up for comprehensive tracking or mitigation of the disease, the goal appears unreachable.
“They’re acting like we’re a bunch of irresponsible nincompoops. The bar is impossible to meet,” says Dana Schultes, a 20-year member of Actors’ Equity and executive producer of Stage West Theatre in Fort Worth. She’s frustrated by what she considers the union’s hard stance at a time when other businesses are reopening.
“I don’t want people to get sick, but this is a political nightmare. Equity has to trust local theaters. Few companies have the financial ability to wait for the pandemic to be over. Some theaters won’t make it. I’m freaking out as we watch revenue go out the door with nothing coming in. The whole thing is maddening.”
Like many companies, Stage West has already paid for the licensing rights to plays scheduled for its 2020-21 season, several of which will be difficult to produce amid COVID-19 because of cast sizes and the close contact required between actors. Schultes is now hoping to open the season in September at a city park with Into the Breeches, one of the four plays that had to be canceled or postponed after the lockdown began in mid-March.
The backstage comedy couldn’t be more appropriate for the moment. Set in 1942, it tells the story of a group of women who decide to produce an all-female version of Shakespeare’s Henry V. With the men off to war, the women are trying to prevent cancellation of the season.
Detailed plans might not be good enough
Moriarty is trying a similar approach at Dallas Theater Center, which was supposed to open its fall season with The Sound of Music. That plan has been scratched because of the dangers of a large, singing cast in the intimate confines of the 500-seat Kalita Humphreys Theater.
Instead he’s hoping, against all odds, to stage a radically altered version of A Christmas Carol starting in November at the Wyly Theatre in the downtown Arts District. Neither building is open to employees yet.
His 50-page proposal to Actors’ Equity will include a reconfiguration of the space that would reduce seating from 600 to 350. “We will be submitting diagrams of every entrance and exit and our plans for temperature-taking and testing.”
For the rest of the season, Moriarty envisions nine company members performing a series of shows in repertory, including a scaled-back Hello, Dolly in the round, the already scheduled four-character Tiny Beautiful Things and a new Jonathan Norton play written specifically for the times.
But, he concedes, “I don’t believe this will ever happen... . We’re trying to solve a lot of different problems at once.”
Pressing on with fall shows
Likewise, Theatre Three is hoping that it can open its 59th season in October with The Rocky Horror Picture Show after having scrapped planned spring 2020 productions of The Elephant Man and The Immigrant amid the pandemic. The latter was filmed for online consumption only.
Artistic director Jeffrey Schmidt says he’s trying to design a safe way to do Rocky Horror for a reduced in-person audience, perhaps 50% of his Quadrangle theater’s 242-seat capacity.
Meanwhile, Second Thought Theatre, whose season runs on a calendar year, is still planning to close with Samuel Beckett’s Endgame starting in September at Bryant Hall, next to the Kalita.
Incoming artistic director Carson McCain thinks she may have an advantage because the play’s dark themes would only benefit from characters wearing masks and gloves. Two of the four spend the entire time in trash cans.
“Endgame can be staged fully socially distanced and with PPE,” says McCain, who’s already in discussions with Actors’ Equity about how to pull off a safe production, including reducing seating by about two-thirds, to 30 or 35.
Second Thought already had to cancel A Streetcar Named Desire and the world premiere of local playwright Janielle Kastner’s Sweetpea. McCain doesn’t want that to happen to Endgame. “It’s truly a brave new world, but I hold out hope that we can be back in a room together. It’s a sacred space.”
Like other companies facing uncertainty, Second Thought is considering a 2021 season of one- and two-person plays or commissions of new works designed for Zoom or film. Drew Wall, director of operations, has designed one-way entrances and exits at Bryant Hall and upstairs dressing rooms that would keep actors and audience members apart.
Waiting for the pandemic to wane, McCain says, “I want to pull the trigger as late as possible.”
Alternative programming
Based next door at the Kalita Humphreys, Uptown Players is also looking at alternatives, like scheduling outdoor productions at other venues or one- or two-man shows, possibly to be filmed on the Kalita stage for streaming only.
Uptown almost certainly will have to postpone or cancel already contracted productions for 2020-21, say co-producers Jeff Rane and Craig Lynch.
Rane hopes to open the season in August or September with a one-man show that would be filmed on the Kalita stage and made available to online audiences. Like Second Thought and other Equity houses, Uptown would need permission from the union.
“We’re on Plan W,” Lynch says. “Every week, it’s something different. We’re actively trying to figure out what’s most safe. We want to get it right the first time.”
Theatre Three, also an Equity house, would need permission from the union to stage Rocky Horror with union actors. For its filmed version of The Immigrant, available to stream through Sunday, Schmidt was forced to recast with non-union performers and to wing a socially distanced production.
It included Zoom rehearsals and the use of a green screen onto which scenic backdrops could be inserted. Each cast member performed alone, though the other actors and crew were in the room at a distance.
“We had to turn the theater into a soundstage,” Schmidt says. “Everyone is scrambling to find new solutions. But the art will happen regardless. We’re in pretty good spirits. Finally, we have something to do. There’s no time or energy to fortune-tell.”
Schmidt believes streaming programming will now become a permanent fixture, even after business gets back to whatever passes for normal.
WaterTower Theatre in Addison is also planning to film a non-union production of the one-person show I Am My Own Wife for broadcast starting in July.
Outdoor shows, new venues
Other companies are pursuing alternative venues or other ways to produce content.
This weekend, Dallas’ Prism Movement Theater opened local playwright Zoe Kerr’s Everything Will Be Fine in the parking lot of the Latino Cultural Center. The actors wear masks and the audience watches from their cars and listens to the score on their radios.
Soul Rep Theatre still plans to open its 25th anniversary season with Do No Harm, a play by managing director Anyika McMillan-Herod based on the true story of three slave women who were experimented on by the father of gynecology.
But rather than use the tight confines of its performance space at the South Dallas Cultural Center, Soul Rep would move the show to the historical cabin at Dallas Heritage Village, probably as a filmed event with one live performance, McMillan-Herod says.
“We are embracing these times and feel even more purpose to continue to grow, thrive and provide a consistent platform and voice for the black experience,” McMillan-Herod says. “Innovation is key. But we are resilient. We’re not going anywhere.”
Deep Ellum’s Undermain Theatre will make streaming shows the center of its fall season while pushing back live productions until 2021, says producing artistic director Bruce DuBose. Some shows may be abandoned in favor of productions with smaller casts and no intermission.
Actors’ Equity is allowing companies to stream from their archives, which Undermain plans to take advantage of in the fall with past productions of We Are Proud to Present a Presentation... and The Testament of Mary.
To prepare for a more cautious future, DuBose is adding UV sterilization lights to Undermain’s HVAC system and installing virus-resistant copper coverings on surfaces. He’s considering Plexiglas space dividers and a temporary reduction in the number of seats sold for each show to 25, about a quarter of capacity.
“I’m willing to wait and innovate with streaming,” DuBose says.
Brave souls who don’t want to wait for conditions to improve can see a live, in-person production right now. With the cast already rehearsed, Fort Worth’s non-Equity Jubilee Theatre decided to go ahead with its gospel musical How I Got Over, delayed from March.
At a performance last weekend, an audience of 19 wore masks, and a couple of Plexiglas dividers were set up between the audience and the actors singing their hearts out in the small black-box theater.
Jubilee is allowing up to about 70 patrons at each show, with every other seat blocked off. Temperatures were being taken at the door and staff directed the movement of attendees to keep them socially distanced from one another.
Managing director Christie M. Howard says the cast of nine, unmasked onstage, has been isolating themselves, including wearing masks backstage, and the theater is monitoring their health. “Our show was ready. Our stage was built. It made sense to get up and running.”
