Dallas Summer Musicals announced its “new” season Friday, and in many ways, it’s a testament to the ongoing menace of COVID-19, which continues to wield a devastating hammer on the hopes and expectations of performing arts organizations.
The company had hoped to import the Tony Award-winning Hadestown to Dallas in May, but the revised season reveals that those hopes are gone. Hadestown is now booked for the 2021-2022 season but not until January of next year.
The season announced Friday won’t bring a performance to the Music Hall until August, when DSM plans to use Wicked — a favorite in Fair Park and around the world — as the launchpad for its revised lineup.
Another crowd-pleaser, Jersey Boys, will follow in October, with the return of the box office giant Hamilton closing out 2021 from Nov. 16 through Dec. 5.
As it did when Hamilton first landed at the Music Hall in 2019, DSM is using the show as a lure, offering first dibs to season-ticket holders, allowing them to “secure their subscription seats for Hamilton” and to purchase additional tickets for the Pulitzer Prize-winning show.
All of this, of course, is contingent on the rollout of the coronavirus vaccine and how successful it is in allowing Americans to return to some semblance of normal life. Two shows canceled by the coronavirus — the musical Tootsie and the stage play To Kill a Mockingbird — have disappeared altogether from DSM’s current plans.
DSM executives hope that Hadestown can indeed open in 2022 — at the Winspear Opera House — followed by Rent (booked for Feb. 18-20, 2022) and in March of 2022, the return of Come from Away, which finished three performances at the Music Hall at Fair Park in March 2020 before the coronavirus brought life to a standstill.
The Music Hall at Fair Park has been dark since then, and as the new schedule reveals, its shutdown will have lasted well over a year before Wicked attempts to make its scheduled debut in August. Even if all goes as planned, the hiatus will have lasted more than 16 months.
Kenneth T. Novice, the president of Dallas Summer Musicals, said Friday that the effects of the coronavirus have been devastating and, in the sweep of their magnitude, historic.
“It has been significant, unfortunately,” Novice said. “‘But we’ve tried to make the best of it. What we’ve really focused on is to try to stay engaged with our subscribers, with our donors, with our board. It’s important for us to let them know that we’re not going away.”
On a hopeful note, Novice said that, for shows postponed, “no one really asked for their money back. They said, ‘You hold on to it, and when the show comes, we’ll be there.’ That’s the good news. I think we’re holding on to our audience.
“The challenge is, when you don’t have any revenue, you still have some expenses. Just like everybody in town, we’ve had to reduce expenses dramatically, to keep the organization strong and prepared to go back into business when it happens.”
Novice said Friday that from March 2020 through the current month, “We are down $1.9 million” in operating revenue. He has laid off eight employees and furloughed four others, with eight receiving partial furloughs. His remaining staff of 15 employees have, he said, had their salaries reduced by up to 25%.
Some help came through the federal Paycheck Protection Program, which allocated $700,000 to DSM.
“What that allowed us to do was to keep many of our show-related staff on payroll for a period of time,” Novice said. “However, that didn’t last through this entire period. It was still heartbreaking. We are looking forward to opening so we can bring our folks back and put people back to work.”
Novice is hoping for more money soon through the second federal stimulus package signed into law on Dec. 27. He said the arts component of the package promises to compensate companies such as his for as much as 45% in lost revenue.
In Texas, museums, movie theaters, stadiums, restaurants and other businesses have reopened at partial capacity. Most at the moment are able to allow up to 50% of full capacity. But, Novice said, that won’t work for Dallas Summer Musicals. Its business model requires full capacity, or the company can’t meet expenses, much less turn a profit.
“It’s not economically feasible for the producers or anybody,” Novice said.
In addition to that, Novice admits that the revised 2021-2022 season leans heavily on musicals that promise box-office gold, in the hope of luring as many fans to the Music Hall as possible.
“Mainly, it was our desire to bring back as many of the shows that people didn’t get to see,” he said. “For me, that was priority one. Audiences were super excited about them.”
They include the return of Come from Away in March 2022, followed by Jesus Christ Superstar in April 2022; Mean Girls from May 3-15 of 2022; the daring new Broadway revival of Oklahoma! from May 31-June 12 of 2022 at the Winspear; and Disney’s Frozen as the season finale, running from July 20 to Aug. 7 of 2022.
“All these things were on our calendar, so it was really important to me to get them back. We have been talking about Hamilton coming in in its new time slot for quite some time. I guess you could say it’s a happy accident that we’ve got Hamilton, Wicked, [Disney’s] Frozen — some very big blockbuster titles — all in the same season.
“The primary driver was that we deliver to our audience what we said we would.”
Hamilton carries, of course, its own special lure.
Novice said the impact of Hamilton was enormous on Dallas Summer Musicals, albeit in the halcyon year of 2019. DSM had about 22,000 subscribers before the show, he said, but Hamilton elevated the figure to 36,000. “Not all of them stayed, of course, but Hamilton introduced a new audience to The Music Hall at Fair Park and to musical theater itself. If that happens again, that would be a huge win for us.”
Such expectations are dependent, of course, on most Americans getting the coronavirus vaccine as soon as they can.
“To me,” Novice said, “the vaccine is absolutely vital. We need to be able to play to 100% capacity. Even with the vaccine, we will probably still have masks at the theater. We will have lots of hand sanitizer. We’re going to have social distancing as people come into the building. We’re going to make it as safe as we possibly can, even though, yes, people will be sitting side by side.”
Details
For more information, patrons can visit DallasSummerMusicals.org or call 1-866-276-4884, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Tuesdays through Fridays.
