Summer venues face 2nd challenging year
Three Middlesex stages brace for more uncertainty
While the reopening plans for many Connecticut venues focus on the fall, three Connecticut theaters that rely on the summer season to survive are facing daunting challenges that range from a major reduction in the number of tickets they can sell to the prospect of a second consecutive season of no shows at all.
Directors of three historic Middlesex County venues — The Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center, affectionately known as The Kate, in Old Saybrook; the Ivoryton Playhouse, a charming small theater in Essex; and the historic Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, traditionally one of the biggest summer tourist destinations in Connecticut — gathered with officials Wednesday to celebrate the passage of the American Rescue Act and its $16 billion Shuttered Venue Operators Grants program for performing arts venues impacted by the pandemic.
But recovery will be slow, with fewer performances staged for smaller audiences, and some venues still unable to open at all. The federal funds won’t be enough to replace the revenue generated by a regular season — an economic driver for small towns that begins with paychecks and ticket sales, and flows to nearby restaurants, shops and pubs.
East Haddam First Selectman Rob Smith called the Opera House “the iconic center of East Haddam” and The Kate and Ivoryton Playhouse also “iconic and part of the fabric of every town” in the area.
Congressman Joe Courtney said that as the
pandemic wore on, state leaders had seen that “some sectors were able to adjust and work remotely, while others, like shuttered venues, took it on the chin the hardest.”
These three theaters are in a different situation than large venues like The Bushnell, New Haven’s Shubert and the Waterbury Palace, which serve big cities and their suburbs. The Goodspeed, Ivoryton Playhouse and The Kate are day-trip destinations in small towns.
All three operate in buildings built over a century ago, in a pre-television (and long pre-internet) age when most towns had their own performance spaces (or in the case of Ivoryton, a recreation hall for factory workers). They’ve been able to adapt and survive as summer theaters or concert halls.
The Kate
Brett Elliott, The Kate’s executive director, discussed the trauma of the past year but said his venue (the former Old Saybrook Town Hall, restored to the building’s original purpose as a theater in 2005) was “focused on the future.” The Kate opened for concerts in March and plans to hold shows on a weekly or biweekly basis until it can start programming normally again. It’s a blow for a venue that did 285 events a year pre-COVID-19.
He’s had to restart his programming with regional acts, including more tribute bands than The Kate might ordinarily have, since most national acts have not yet begun touring, in part due to differing COVID-19 regulations for venues in other states. Even local fare is difficult to book, Elliott says, since groups such as Vista
Life Innovations (a school for learning disabilities in Westbrook) and the Connecticut Gay Men’s Chorus, which regularly perform at The Kate, haven’t been able to rehearse, let alone stage shows. Elliott says he has “some 300 event slots being moved around right now.”
Ivoryton Playhouse
Ivoryton Playhouse has problems with regulations, too, but they involve the Actors Equity union rather than state guidelines. Executive Director Jacqui Hubbard says she has a full summer season already cast and ready to go, using actors with whom the theater is familiar from past productions and doing smaller cast shows in general. The theater is equipped to operate year-round, but its reputation
is as a summer theater.
Hubbard says the state deemed her reopening plans “perfect.” But Equity said no.
“My staff has all had COVID compliance officer training. The staff has all been vaxxed, and by next month we’ll all have been double vaxxed. We had six plays lined up, with all the actors and directors.” At issue, however, is the theater’s HVAC system; it’s been upgraded, but Equity has different conditions for HVAC than the state. Ivoryton will likely get to reopen, but not in June as originally hoped. Meanwhile, she’s holding off announcing the season altogether until it’s certain.
Still, Hubbard’s “feeling more hopeful this week,” after months of Equity negotiations. “At first,” she says, the Equity guidelines were “all cookie cutters,” applying equally to the playhouse and much larger or much different venues. “Now they’re more able to work directly with the venues.”
Goodspeed
It’s the Goodspeed that has been most affected in terms of reopening. Musicals at the Opera House are on a Broadway scale, often with casts of two dozen or so, plus a pit orchestra, with limited backstage space. The theater can’t reopen until it can operate at virtually full capacity both onstage and in the audience. With its dedication to full-scale musicals, the Goodspeed can’t downsize its shows the way Ivoryton or The Kate can.
When COVID-19 shuttered theaters in March of last year, the Goodspeed had already built the sets and was well along in rehearsals for the first show of its 2020 season, the Rodgers & Hammerstein classic “South Pacific.” It’s a grand show even by Goodspeed standards, and Goodspeed has decided that it will be the show the theater reopens with. The hope was that would be this summer, as part of a truncated two-show season. But those hopes were dashed last month.
Now “South Pacific” is scheduled for the fall, and the Goodspeed is arranging a series of outdoor concerts on its spacious lawn alongside the Connecticut River. The series will expand on a couple of multiperformance concert shows the theater did last summer. This year, audiences can be larger. There’ll be a tent rather than “weather permitting,” and a larger slate of shows can be planned.
“The Goodspeed will return,” Goodspeed Musicals artistic director Donna Lynn Hilton said Wednesday. But while the lawn may be lively, the doors are still closed.