When COVID-19 shut down Hawaii last spring Oahu’s vibrant theater community went dark almost overnight. As the weeks became months with no end to the lockdown in sight, local theater groups found alternative ways of keeping theater alive and maintaining a connection to their audience.
Some went online, while others went outdoors.
The Hawaii Shakespeare Festival presented its three 2020 shows in a Zoom format. By the time the third show opened in August, festival co-founder Tony Pisculli and his tech crew had honed their Zoom production skills, supporting actors’ performances with visual effects and animation. Hawaii Pacific University presented the drama “A Shot Rang Out” starring Twan Matthews in November as a live onstage streamed performance for two camera operators in a closed theater. It was like the days of live television in the early 1950s.
Diamond Head Theatre presented live entertainment last summer using an outside balcony overlooking the theater parking lot as the stage for a Sunset Serenade Drive-In Concert series of musical performances, as audiences watched from their cars and listened on their car radios. Kailua Onstage Arts offered a similar outdoor experience. Founder Kevin Keaveney partnered with the Assaggio Restaurant in Kailua to present shows in the restaurant’s covered open-air parking lot.
>> RELATED: Hawaii’s classical music groups tune up for upcoming shows
Oahu has been in Tier 3 of the city’s four-tier economic recovery plan since Feb. 25. As COVID-19 case numbers fluctuate, it’s unclear whether Oahu will move forward to Tier 4, which eases restrictions, or possibly move back toward the more-restrictive Tier 2.
The city classifies theaters as indoor commercial attractions. “Occupancy must be limited to no more than the number that allows each attendee to maintain six (6) feet of physical distance from other attendees at all times,” according to the city’s requirements.
Keeping flexible
Although Diamond Head Theatre’s parking lot concerts were a hit with theater fans, DHT Artistic Director John Rampage and Executive Director Deena Dray took their time restarting live theater inside the building. A Christmas season show was unobtrusively choreographed so that cast members were masked unless they were speaking and those who were speaking were more than 6 feet apart. DHT’s recent production of “Love Letters” had a cast of two seated more than 6 feet apart.
Last month DHT presented its first musical since 2019. “Shout! The Mod Musical” had a cast of five supported by a five-person stage crew.
“Higher tiers give us more flexibility,” Rampage explained. “It’s not just people onstage, it’s the people you need backstage. For the non-musicals we were doing, we only had one crew person back there and no dressers. With ‘Shout!’ we had five people onstage and five people backstage — which makes a huge, huge difference as far as what you’re able to do.’”
As with DHT’s previous COVID-era in-theater productions, social distancing protocols were in full effect with temperature checks prior to entry and socially distanced seating. Masks were required wearing throughout the performance, audience departure row-by-row as directed, and there were no post-show meet-and-greets outside the theater.
Manoa Valley Theatre observed the same precautions last month with its production of “Popcorn Falls” — a contemporary dramatic comedy in which a two-man cast play more than 20 characters.
“It’s coming down to how ‘groups of’ are defined,” MVT Executive Director Kip Wilborn said recently of the challenges theaters face in complying with frequently changing health regulations. “Is a ‘group’ of, say, 10 people, 10 people who live together or 10 people who are related, or 10 people who happened to come to the theater together? You don’t want to get caught on the wrong end of that and risk peoples’ safety. Tier 4 would just increase the size of the groups but you have (only) so much real estate, that’s all you can use and you (still) have to distance people.”
Wilborn says MVT will keep things small for a while longer. MVT’s next show, “Tiny Beautiful Things,” which opens May 6, has a cast of five. After that comes “Daddy Long Legs” with a cast of two.
This summer MVT will use Kaimuki High School’s much larger theater for its production of “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.”
“We’re anticipating being back to normal by fall as far as seating goes,” Wilborn said with cautious optimism. “Many theater fans can’t wait to go back to experiencing theater — musicals or straight plays — in person. Others aren’t ready to congregate. Some have found they enjoy the convenience of watching a show on their phone or on their desktop computer or on the screen of their smart TV, so we’re planning to keep the digital side of it going if the owners continue to issue streaming licenses.”
A different art form
Kumu Kahua Managing Director Donna Blanchard considered moving her group’s planned staging of “The Conversion of Ka‘ahumanu” to the park adjacent to the Kumu Kahua Theatre on Merchant Street.
The logistics proved complicated, so Blanchard decided to do Kumu Kahua’s entire 50th anniversary season online.
“It’s a very different art form and I know there are people who just can’t embrace it, and it’s a weak substitute for a lot of people. I do hear that,” Blanchard said recently. “I also hear from people (watching) on Molokai and even on the North Shore of Oahu, as well as Chicago and even from someone in the Democratic Republic of Congo.”
“Since the pandemic began we’ve had more than 15,000 people see the works that we’re doing. It would take us years to make that happen if we were only in person doing things our old way.”
The Actors’ Group (TAG) also reached a larger audience online using Zoom and livestream technologies, integrating them into its shows in different ways. Its first show had all the actors using Zoom from separate locations. The next livestream show had a single actor onstage at the Brad Powell Theatre interacting with two unseen actors who voiced their characters from different locations in the theater.
In “Covid Release,” however, Zoom is a part of the story itself. The drama follows a Zoom meeting between a psychologist and five convicts living in a halfway house due to an increase of COVID-19 cases at the prison. The recorded play is free to watch. Go to vimeo.com/506606837 and use the password TAG 2021COVID; contains profanity, mature themes and descriptions of violence.)
“I’m hoping by August that we’ll be able to have everybody (back) in the theater,” TAG Artistic Director Brad Powell said recently. “A lot of our audience has already gotten their shots and they can’t wait to get back in the theater.”
In the meantime TAG will be streaming two one-act plays, David Ives’ “Sure Thing” and “Boise, Idaho” by Sean Michael Welch, with live performances May 20-23, and May 27-30, followed by “I and You,” Lauren Gunderson’s two-person tale of quirky teens, in July.
Future outlook
Looking long-term, Blanchard, Rampage and Dray are also cautiously optimistic.
“We’re working on a slate for our 51st season that will be shows that would work digitally or in person,” Blanchard said. “We want to make sure that we have that flexibility, but I really think that we’re going to start getting in-person again during this upcoming season and potentially take advantage of that yard outside the theater as we planned before.”
Rampage describes DHT’s schedule as subject to change.
“We started ‘planning ahead’ a long time ago and then we scrapped those plans and went to another set of plans and then we scrapped those and went to another set,” he explained. “When we put this season together we had no idea there was even going to be a vaccine becoming available anytime soon and so we chose some productions that we knew would pretty much fit even under Tier 1 or 2, so next up is a one-woman show called “The Lady With All The Answers.” (The play opens April 23.)
“We have another show in the wings, but we’re not going to announce it until we’re sure,” Dray added. “We’re going to do another what we call ‘pop-up’ show in September and then (officially) open the next season with subscriptions in December.”
