Curtain Call

The pandemic’s surreal drama brought lockdowns, a silent stage, heartbreak, and a fading spotlight of hope. But now, the Key City Theatre’s show goes on.

Dire.

Galen Olstead can remember the feeling that hung above the seats, stage, and staff of the Key City Theatre mid Covid, as he and his people strained to keep their beloved building and business alive during the agony of the worldwide pandemic.

“We encountered all sorts of frustration and heartache,” says Olstead. “We’d have a touring artist coming in for one night, and then we’d have to cancel the show at the last minute. And sadly, we had to do that more than once.”

Olstead says the cancellation of the Fonda-Parton-Tomlin classic ‘9 to 5’ was the unkindest cut of all.

“So much work went into creating the show, just to have it slam to a halt. We felt like we had actually built some positive forward momentum, and we could see the light at the end of the tunnel. There was a real community connection with the production.”

“Everybody was so eager to get back to some sort of normalcy, and be human beings in public again, and enjoy the arts.”

If anyone could be Captain Ahab to the Key City Theatre’s Pequod, Cranbrook could ask for no better managing director to steer the ship through the storm than Galen Olstead.

Despite his relative youth, Olstead’s CV is uber-respectable and downright startling. Before taking his current job in 2014, Olstead spent the previous eight years as Operations Manager of the vaunted Kay Meek Theatre in West Vancouver, as well as held a two-year stint as Front of House Manager at the Royal Albert Hall in London (yes, that Royal Albert Hall), so if he could handle shows for Rod Stewart, Sting, Elton John, and Eric Clapton (he saw Cream’s 2005 Farewell Concert from twenty feet away), then he can handle the Barra MacNeils with aplomb.

Brenda Burley is Key City’s Manager of Events and Development. Cheery, motivated and imaginative she kept a calm determination to see the venue through the global strife.

“It was really busy, but not in a performing arts sense,” says Burley. “It was our recent ‘Raise the Curtain’ event when it truly felt like our first step into a true post-pandemic Key City Theatre. Everything started to feel hesitantly normal again. That was the first positive moment when we saw the community re-entering the Key City Theatre environment in happy numbers. You could feel the excitement and the relief, the warmth and joy, from everybody attending — not just theatre staff.”

First unveiled in 1993 as an autonomous adjunct wing of Mount Baker Senior Secondary School, the Key City Theatre shines as one of the finest performing-arts facilities in Southeastern British Columbia and is the vanguard venue for the entire East Kootenay region, boasting a 602-seat amphitheatre area overlooking a sizeable stage which has hosted international-caliber live music, theatre, dance, spoken word, lectures, town hall meetings, art gallery showings, and almost any conceivable event under the sun and moon, all for the enthusiastic joy of the good people of the Kootenays. And the theatre’s upcoming 2023 events calendar is as chock full of nuts as ever: the Winter Ale Concert Series, stand-up comedians, secondary school band recitals, a Pink Floyd tribute, a Tina Turner tribute, an ABBA tribute — and new events are being added on an almost daily basis. The theatre is thriving and pulsing, as it should be. But recently it was far from thriving, like nearly everything else.

“As we’re re-emerging,” says Olstead, “we’ve given a lot of thought into what’s changed and how audiences — and communities in general — have altered after the pandemic experience. People learned new habits during lockdown. If they stopped doing something for a long period of time, now they’re sitting in front of their screens at home and intaking entertainment in non-public, non-social ways as their go-to. Or they’re just doing other things than attending public events.”

Olstead says there is some lingering hesitancy about being back in crowds. The theatre, he says, “is in a process of retraining a certain portion of our established audience — and the general Kootenay public — to come back and enjoy live performance as a fundamental part of the human experience.”

Olstead adds that it wasn’t until recently that the theatre found its true stride once more. “A long string of bigger-name artists came through almost simultaneously,” he says. “We had more shows in the Fall of ‘22 than in any pre-pandemic fall season. The challenge there, like everywhere else, was finding staff to handle the events, but where do you find staff?”

“Everybody’s scrambling, whatever the vocation or profession, but now all of a sudden, we have this big string of shows we have to deliver. We did make improvements to the Key City Theatre experience though; we finally managed to allow alcohol into the auditorium area itself, which suddenly doubled the amount of concessions work — but dramatically boosted our cash intake, as well as overall audience morale!”

Despite the oftentimes hulking administrative burdens, Olstead has seen audience attendance gradually rising. “Big events did very well in the fall. Even now they’re doing great. Certain nights that have an easier audience appeal, like the Colin James Blues Trio live in concert, are selling as well as they did pre-pandemic, if not better than ever.”

The upcoming KCT events calendar is as busy as it was pre-pandemic. “We have fewer big-ticket shows,” says Olstead, “but wait for a week or two and that’ll probably change! We’re hosting more community-focused projects, like Faces of Pride — events created around, and for, the Cranbrook community as a whole.”

The importance of the Key City Theatre as a living community hub is a passionate point for Burley.

“The Key City Theatre isn’t just a place where the audience passively watches what’s presented on stage, but actually participates in what’s going on. It opens people’s definitions of the space. We’re seeing more of that happening, and that’s what keeping us busy. I’m looking forward to Faces of Pride. We recently did the photo shoot for it with Joel Robison. I had this really amazing couple of days where I got to speak with 42 different people about their experience in our community as people who are LGBTQ+ and what compels them to be part of this project, to reach out and educate and bring visibility. It’s things like that which I enjoy here at the theatre. Recently we hosted the First Nations/Métis/Inuit Exhibit and invited local artists who self-identify as Métis or First Nations or Ktunaxa to come display their artwork and be part of this reception. It’s all so very cool. It’s cool to meet all the various people in our community, and it’s amazing for all the people in our community to gather here at the Key City Theatre.”

Olstead reveals new goals on KCT’s 2023 horizon. “We’re revisiting the Children’s Festival again and working how to make that event sustainable.” For almost all of these projects, the stuff we’re doing at community level — we have to gather the sponsors and pull the pieces together to make it work. With the Children’s Festival, we can’t charge admission. If we get sponsors, the sponsors can’t advertise, which disincentivizes a marketing approach for a business to be part of the event. Right now, we don’t get any government grants for the festival, so we’re researching that. Every year we’re figuring out the funding. We have wonderful community sponsors who’ve partnered with us for years, like the Rotarians, or the local Tim Hortons’ outlets, or the Jensen Foundation, who’ve all been amazing. We’re getting really good support, but we never take it for granted.”

Burley, one of the most motivated live-theatre directors Cranbrook has ever seen, takes much personal pride in the annual large-scale productions she brings to life on the Key City Stage, which are enthusiastically embraced by the local public. “Hosting our production of Cabaret was a wonderful experience,” Burley says. “It was like any other production in any other year past; we sold out the New Year’s Eve opening night, and then word of mouth started selling out the run, so we saw strong ticket sales. It wasn’t the same numbers we had for Chicago, since that was pre-pandemic, so we’re rebuilding our in-house production drives as well as the overall functions of the theatre itself. But we had such amazing feedback for Cabaret, and many people went to see it more than once.”

Brenda Burley sums up her Key City Theatre Experience of recent years smartly: “It reminded me of (Emily St. John Mandel’s award-winning post-apocalyptic novel) Station Eleven, where even after the collapse of technology and industrial civilization, it’s a wandering troupe of minstrels and actors who perform improvised theatrical productions for the new hamlets and villages — because the arts will survive, no matter what happens.

The recurring catchphrase in that story? ‘Survival itself is insufficient.’” ph: P6R GOLF

Please keep abreast of all Key City Theatre events at www.keycitytheatre.com.