We Shut Down Our Theatre for 25 Days — and Why I’m Okay With That, Part 4

Following our decision to close the theatre, our team swung into action. We had a second staff meeting and made the decision to not only close for the weekend, but take it all the way through the Young Acting Company’s run of Cinderella: 25 days total. In our minds, there was no reason to cancel shows only to continue to rehearse with and teach over a hundred students each week.

And so we issued our statement. We sent our press releases. We contacted our patrons, students, parents, volunteers, actors and production teams. And I slept like a baby that night.

Was I worried about the students getting sick? A little, but I was much more worried about spreading COVID-19. If you follow what’s happening with this virus, you know that children and young people fight it off fairly well. But children pass diseases around like crazy, and what if one of them carries it home to an aging grandparent that can’t fight the disease? What if I carry it home? My father is 91 and healthy, but he is NINETY-ONE and lives in the same house as me. My husband is 55 with a compromised immune system and one kidney. These risks are very real to me, no matter how much it costs. And it does cost.

In one fell swoop, our decision cost Gamut over $10,000 in advance ticket revenue and a potential $20,000 in total ticket sales. I am in the process of evaluating how much all of this is going to cost us in real dollars and cents. You would think as the administrator that oversees the budget that I would be a complete mess right now, but I am not. I am calm, upbeat, and strangely at peace with myself.

As I write this, there are 47 presumptive positive cases in PA [At the time of publication, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Pennsylvania was more than 8,400]. That happened in one week. I am so thankful for the readiness and decisive actions of the PA Department of Health and the Wolf Administration for giving us clear guidelines. It was exactly what Clark and I needed to have confidence in making the hard decisions that we did on March 12. Now, we are working our way through rescheduling what we can and making adjustments to the remainder of the season schedule. As the financial markets take a plunge, and our own revenue comes up short, it is clear that there are difficult times ahead. But on this day, at this moment, I know that we made the right decision.

This is a strange time for live entertainment. We are normally the place that everyone turns to during a crisis to find comfort and community. How odd to be thrust into the spotlight as a potential enabler/inducer of the crisis at hand. I urge everyone to please refrain from being overly judgmental on how organizations handle their response to this pandemic, whatever your view.

Whether you think this is being blown out of proportion or the prequel to Logan’s Run, just realize that we are in uncharted waters, and we are all just trying to steer our ships the best way we know how.

A four-part profile of the challenges posed to arts organizations by COVID-19

Part 4 of 4
By Melissa Nicholson, Executive Director, Gamut Theatre, Harrisburg, PA

Photo of Little Theatre of Mechanicsburg. Photo credit: Marc Faubel: ERFotos 2020

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