Coping with the coronavirus shutdown, Hawaii theaters revise season schedules and plan new attendance procedures

When the curtain goes back up for the ­Hawaii theater community, putting on a show is going to be a different experience than before the coronavirus crisis began. Theater leaders, along with season ticket holders, are already thinking about how that scene might play out.

Matthew Pennaz, a Diamond Head Theatre season subscriber, says he and his wife, health care professional Kirsten Pennaz, may initially wear masks when theaters start to open up.

“There’s an expectation that we’d like to see other patrons do that as well,” he said. “It’s going to be almost like a courtesy — hopefully it’s just for a short period of time.”

Since mid-March, Oahu’s theaters have been as dark as their counterparts on Broadway: Kailua Onstage Arts closed its spring production of “Gruesome Playground Injuries” March 13 after its first weekend. Manoa Valley Theatre was planning to open “Desperate Measures” on March 19, and Diamond Head Theatre’s production of “The Bodyguard: The Musical” was set to open one day later. Both groups made the difficult decision not to open.

DHT initially planned to move opening night to May 15, but when the lockdown was extended until May 31 the production was shelved entirely. DHT aims to present a yet-to-be determined nonmusical production in October and then officially open its 2020-2021 season with “Elf, the Musical” for the Christmas season.

“That is the plan right now, but it could change,” DHT Executive Director Deena Dray said recently. “We need to be nimble and able to pivot quickly to

accommodate any fluctuations.”

“All options are on the table, but we really need to take the time here to assess all options and will be doing that carefully and thoughtfully,” she continued. “Tons of ideas are being broached all across the theater community. No one has settled on any, as right now everyone’s priority is to remain solvent. As October is five months away, DHT has some time to research and then implement best practices. The patrons, actors and volunteers feeling comfortable will be our top priority.”

MVT Executive Artistic Director Kip Wilborn is also looking long term with cautious optimism.

“We have to go forward on the belief that we’ll be back to normal at some point. There’s no other way to do it,” Wilborn said regarding MVT’s plans for the 2020-2021 season. “We’re having to do some rearranging, but we just have to plan with the belief that we’re all going to be back at some point. It just doesn’t happen quickly.”

Overcoming challenges

Eric Nemoto, president of The Actors’ Group (TAG), describes COVID-19 as the latest challenge TAG has faced in its 27-year history.

“TAG has faced innumerable challenges throughout our evolution from a mere idea, to a novel theater curiosity, to the new kid on the block within the Hawaii performing arts community, to a consistent producer of quality plays, and then to eventual stability and success,” he said in an email.

“We’ve always been ‘the little theater that could,’ always finding a way to survive and eventually thrive, and we’ve succeeded because we’ve met every challenge with a proactive attitude. We are doing no less with this,” he said. “We are already anticipating that the new normal will mean community theaters will have to adapt to continuing COVID-19 restrictions, so we are thinking up alternative forms of reaching our audience. We feel we must. Basically, we will find a way to move forward, but do so safely.”

TAG plans to open its 2020-2021 season with Florian Zeller’s contemporary drama “The Father” on Aug. 14.

Over at Kumu Kahua Theatre, Managing Director Donna Blanchard still hopes to present “The Conversion of Ka‘ahumanu,” which had been scheduled to open March 19, before the 2019-2020 theater season officially ends in July.

“Depending on what Gov. Ige decides over the next few weeks, it may be possible for us to move the show into that pocket park next to the theater and make this ‘lawn chair theater,’ ” she said. “What we don’t have currently is lighting and microphones, so we’re working on figuring out that piece of it. We want to make sure that you can see everything as well as you can see inside.”

Blanchard envisions limited ticket sales to allow for social distancing, and will ask ticket buyers to bring their own lawn chairs. The cast has been rehearsing each week via Zoom and will be ready when the logistics are worked out.

Blanchard got the proverbial “two thumbs up” from Kumu Kahua season subscribers Bill Budenholzer and Elizabeth Wichmann-Walczak.

“I think the lawn is an excellent idea,” Wichmann-Walczak said. “I don’t think you can have theater on a screen. If you don’t have people together it isn’t theater, so you need to somehow bring performers and audience together in a way in which they all feel safe enough to do it.”

Budenholzer applauded Blanchard’s commitment to “thinking outside the box. Doing something outside where there’s space, where there’s open air, things like that would be very welcome.”

Budenholzer misses theater — he is also a season subscriber at DHT — and is ready to go back as soon as theaters are allowed to open and he feels it’s safe.

“It’s a far more greater risk for (the actors) than for me to go one time, so I’m figuring (the theater groups) will take that into consideration,” he said.

Budenholzer suggested Andrews Amphitheatre, the open-air facility at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, as a great place to do theater.

“Now’s the time to put that into use. It would be a great opportunity,” he said. “Everybody can sit far apart. I would be open to lots of things like that (and) I’m guessing masks are here to stay for a while.”

Kailua Onstage Arts founder Kevin Keaveney said that when theaters are allowed to reopen he’ll continue the measures he had in place for the three performances of “Gruesome Playground Injuries” in March.

“Seating spaced apart, hand sanitizer stations, staff to open and close doors to reduce audience contact with surfaces. I don’t think we’ve got the type of budget to allow for complimentary masks, but I have a feeling everyone will be wearing their own by then,” Keaveney said. “We are going to have to strike a balance between caution and intrusiveness.”

‘A different world’

Pennaz, a Hawaii stage veteran, said, “I think everybody is expecting this to return to normal like other pandemics in the past, and I’m not afraid to slowly wade back into it,” he said. “By the fall maybe things will have changed.”

Speaking as an actor — Pennaz met his wife, Kirsten, in 2003 when they were cast in a show together — he said that although performers have to work without masks and gloves, and without maintaining social distancing, they are “already really aware of germs and bugs and potentially getting sick.”

“A show can be totally devastated if a bug goes around, and there’s typically no back-up performers, so there already is an awareness. I think they’ll continue to take really good precautions.”

Pennaz’s longtime friend and and fellow actor Howard Bishop, a season subscriber for MVT and DHT, is more cautious. Bishop was a cast member of “The Bodyguard” and says the final nights of rehearsal were nerve-wracking.

“Being in my 60s, there’s a whole different look at what’s going on with COVID-19,” Bishop explained. “I was going to rehearsal every night with 30 or 40 people all the way through the middle of March and I was really nervous. We were doing the full handshakes, and I had to hug the leading lady — and she came from New York. Every night when I came home, my wife made me take my clothes off in the garage and sanitize the car and myself before I came in the house. I sat there for 14 days after that final rehearsal crossing my fingers hoping that I hadn’t contracted it. We’ve been following all the protocols ever since.”

Looking past the shutdown, Wichmann-Walczak said, “It’s going to be a different world, at least until there’s a vaccine that works,” but repeated that “if you don’t have people together it isn’t theater.”

Keaveney wholeheartedly agrees.

“To me the real value of theater is that it is an experience shared in a communal space. As an audience and as performers we are affected by not only the performance we view and the voices we hear, but by the shared breath and exchange of electrons between us.”