Frederick’s theaters aren’t over it

the show.’ But now we’re like, ‘OK, well, I guess your understudy’s going to go on that night.”

He said the company and audiences have even learned to be forgiving of understudies who have major conflicts with performances when they are needed, citing a recent incident when both a principal actor and the designated understudy had to miss a performance of the MET’s original production “South & Saints.”

“We had one of our stage managers go onstage on book, and the audience was so appreciative of that after the pandemic, of having to reschedule so many times because of canceled performances,” he said. “They were all in for it. She’s not even really a performer, but she was having fun with them, and she is like a rock star in our eyes.”

Familiar Faces Disappearing From The Stage

While audiences are seeing new faces onstage, thanks to new understudy policies, many of the usual faces have disappeared in the wake of the pandemic, some never to return.

Kimberly Price, the director and owner of the Mid Maryland Performing Arts Center, a pre-professional dance school that has annual performances at the Weinberg Center, said most of her students who were in their early teen years during the core pandemic time have sharply reduced their commitment to dance. Some have dropped out altogether.

“Prior to the pandemic, there was a very focused energy from students, particularly from teenage students. They were very dedicated, very committed to working and dancing a lot,” she said. “Then the craziness happened, and what I have noticed since we’ve come back from it is now my older kids are often doing many other things. They want to dance, but they don’t want to commit to it as their main activity.”

She said the time away from regular dance practice during the pandemic led many students to question their priorities.

“Their choices were taken away from them when they were locked down, and now they’re not locked down anymore and they want to be footloose and fancy free to make many choices,” she said. “I think it’s because they were locked down and they resent that.”

She feels the pandemic caused an age role-reversal among her students, leading the teens to be less committed and younger students to a new sense of dedication. Practically speaking, the shift means her staff needs to re-focus the bulk of their attention on their younger students.

“I opened my studio 34 years ago, and I feel like I did 34 years ago. It’s almost like I’ve got this brand-new baby and now I’m going to have to rebuild my dancers,” she said. “I’m going to have to put energy into my younger dancers to build them to pre-professional level.”

Price has been hearing similar stories from other dance companies in the region — that there will forever be a generational gap among the dancers who are currently high school aged.

Andrew Baughman is the producing artistic director of Landless Theatre Co., a professional company that moved to Frederick from Washington, D.C., shortly before the pandemic started. One major lasting effect of the pandemic he has noticed is an age gap in performing arts participation.

“There was a generation of students that, when they all went to online school and they weren’t able to rehearse in person and train … we did lose a lot of kids that way,” he said.

Earlier this year, his company partnered with 24/7 Dance Studio for a production of “Footloose.” Normally these types of partnerships yield several teenage intern performers taking on big roles, but this year was different.

“I expected to have much more student interns in that 13 to 18 age range. We had some on the younger side, but we had maybe one or two 16- or 17-year-olds,” he said. “We wound up having to hire in really young-looking 20-year-olds for some of the lead parts. We wanted to give those opportunities to students.”

But like Price, he also sees strong numbers of a younger generation entering the performing arts.

Loss Of Volunteer Crews And Support Staff

Christine Mosere, artistic director of Endangered Species (Theatre) Project in Frederick, relies on a mixture of paid and volunteer staff. Like Frederick’s community theaters, she reported, “Volunteers are harder to get.” She is finding ways to cope with the loss of people to help run ticket booths and usher audiences to their seats, but says it’s one of many contributing factors to her inability to schedule a season in advance.

She believes many former volunteers have lingering concerns about contracting COVID-19.

“There’re still less people who want to volunteer to come inside a theater space and sit with 30 people,” she said.

Her company’s recent opening weekend of “Twelfth Night” was canceled in part because an actor had an allergic reaction to a COVID treatment.

Steve Cairns, who recently took over the role of artistic director at Other Voices Theatre from Thornton’s long tenure there, believes many former community theater volunteer staff are still concerned about COVID because they mostly fall into an older demographic.

That is true for Fredericktowne Players, as well, Ward said, a company that often partnered with Frederick Community College to find volunteers. He thinks even though COVID is less of a concern, “Now some people just have illness awareness.”

Shifts Of Audiences

That heightened awareness of illness is the likely reason for shifts in audience demographics, many theater companies said, but other factors were cited as well.

Janes says the MET’s post-pandemic audience has shifted both in age and in absolute numbers. He said their more traditional productions, such as “A Christmas Carol” and “Christmas at Pemberley,” have been well attended since the pandemic, but their newer and edgier productions have lost about 10% to 15% of their audience compared to prepandemic numbers. He is not yet sure if that segment of the audience is coming back.

“Certainly, the return has been slow. Before the pandemic, people were like, ‘Oh, I’m willing to see this even though I don’t know anything about it,’” he speculated. “But now, I think in the consumer’s mind, maybe there’s the idea of ‘Do I have to go see this, or do I not have to go see this?’ The idea of staying home and watching Netflix is probably a little more appealing to someone who is wavering right now.”

College students have also been slow to return to the theater, despite FCC and Hood College students receiving free tickets to performances. As a theater instructor at FCC, Janes used to strongly encourage his students to attend certain MET shows, but during the pandemic, the college administration prevented that practice, due to differences in masking policies. FCC did not require students to wear masks in class, but the MET requires masks at performances, and professors were prevented from sending students anywhere that required masks.

Now that those differences are no longer in play, college student attendance is still not back to what it was pre-pandemic, but it’s heading in that direction. He also said their season subscription numbers are nearly back to what they were pre-pandemic.

Cairns said shows at Other Voices

(See PANDEMIC 27)