Many postponed shows back on schedule
Promoters busy getting entertainment slots filled
The third time might be the charm for the Airborne Toxic Event.
The band is scheduled to play at the Newport Music Hall on Oct. 17.
It was also scheduled to play on May 2 of this year.
And on Oct. 25, 2020.
Both Promowest Productions, which operates Express Live, the Newport Music Hall, The Basement and the A&R Music Hall; and the Columbus Association for the Performing Arts, which operates the Ohio Theatre, the Palace Theatre, the Southern Theatre, the Lincoln Theatre, the Riffe Theatre Complex and the Mccoy Center, have been busy scheduling and rescheduling shows, some of which have been booked several times over the past 18 months.
“We have had multiple shows that have rescheduled multiple times,” said Marissa Mcclellan, marketing director for Promowest Productions.
Among those shows are COIN – originally scheduled for March, 2020, moved to May 2020 and now scheduled for Oct. 10 of this year – and Fozzy, originally scheduled for July of last year, and then October of last year, and then May of this year, and now for Sept. 2. CAPA has faced the same challenges. “We had a couple shows scheduled the weekend COVID really hit last March, and we took those shows and moved them into the fall. And then we said, OK, this is still going to be around in the fall, so we're going to bump them into the spring, because we'll all be fine by spring. And then it got to be spring, and we bumped them into the fall of 2021. It's been interesting,” said Rich Corsi, CAPA'S vice president of programming.
Included in the many shows CAPA has rescheduled are Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, a talk by astrophysicist Neil degrasse Tyson, comedian Leanne Morgan and Broadway in Columbus shows such as “Cats.”
“You don't just pick a show up and
move it down the road. You’ve got to massage the reschedules into the schedules,” Corsi said. All of the shows are on the upcoming schedule: Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes (Oct. 3, Southern Theatre), Neil degrasse Tyson (Sept. 21, Palace Theatre), Leanne Morgan (Sept. 16, Palace Theatre), and “Cats” (Jan. 11-16, Ohio Theatre).
There are no rescheduled shows at Nationwide Arena this fall and winter, only new concerts. At Value City Arena, Lil Baby was originally slated for April 5, 2020, and is now scheduled for Oct. 28. Lauren Daigle, scheduled for April 23, 2021, is now booked for for Nov. 11.
After having been closed to performances since March 2020, the venues are just beginning to host concerts, with Eric Church at Nationwide Arena on Sept. 18, and Guns N’ Roses slated for Sept. 23 at Value City Arena.
Gary O’brien, director of communications for Nationwide and Value City arenas, said moving the events didn’t create any challenges. “There were no problems. It’s what we do. They were rescheduled to a date when full capacity concerts were allowed to resume.”
As Promowest has been rescheduling, it’s been moving artists from venue to venue.
“Sometimes when a show can play the Newport Music Hall, and we think we can sell enough tickets to make it worthwhile, we switch it to Express Live, where the show can be outside. We’re still trying to push things from indoor to outdoor as much as possible,” Mcclellan said.
“Most of the shows we have now through mid-october are outdoors.
We’ve gone to the end of October outdoors some years, but the weather can be very unpredictable. We’ll do it if we have to, but we try not to go past the mid-october point,” she said.
As for any rescheduling beyond that, Mcclellan said: “I wish I had an answer for you, but I honestly don’t know. I’m hoping the number is very small.”
The past 18 months have been unlike anything Corsi of CAPA has experienced.
“I’ve been at CAPA over 30 years now, and naturally, I see new stuff happening every day, but this is one that totally came out of left field,” Corsi said. “We had no idea how consumers would handle it, how artists would handle it, how
agencies would handle it, how our company would handle it. But it’s been phenomenal. A few folks who can’t make dates are getting refunds, but most people are holding onto their tickets. For the most part, people are just thrilled that we’re trying to figure out how to do this safely and get these artists to come in so that people can come out and enjoy live entertainment again.”
As for the possibility of shows being rescheduled in the future, it’s difficult to say. Rolanda Copley, Publicist for CAPA, said: “There’s no way of predicting the future, but we are moving ahead with the full intention of safely presenting the shows as currently scheduled.”
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