THE “MAGIC” OF THEATER

Jeff Herbst, Artistic Director

At Northern Sky, in a normal year, under normal circumstances, almost all of the details of our summer and fall performance season are settled at least a year before we open. By then, we have already vetted whatever premiere we might be staging through readings and workshops, and secured the actors and musicians attached to that project. A costumer has researched and sketched, a prop designer has started scouring bargain stores, and a scenic designer has drafted ground plans in readying the world of the play to come to life on the stage. Our admin team has discussed marketing, playbill, sponsors, and box office concerns and put action plans in place to make sure we have as many ways as possible to secure an audience and generate excitement. We then focus our attention on securing all the personnel needed to carry out the incredible amount of work it takes to do repertory theater, outdoors, six nights a week for eight performances. And do the same thing in another venue at the same time! We need a bevy of interns and technicians and the requisite housing to bring them in from out of town for the duration of our usual 15-week summer season and extended 9-week fall season. We need to line up hundreds of volunteers and a house staff to facilitate patron needs and comfort. Northern Sky might seem like a “small” theater company that magically makes things happen in the middle of the woods and now in the Gould Theater. Poof! A new show! But, as I just described, the machinery behind the curtain has been cranking away and the Wizard is really a steadfast crew of professionals who put in the hours and apply their expertise to conjure up delights well in advance of the moment anyone walks down the paths to the amphitheater or Gould.

That’s a normal year, which, as we all know, was not 2020 and is not 2021. As COVID continued to loom from March of last year through to this new year, we knew that our upcoming season would be a difficult one to conjure up. How could we possibly plan for anything, really, given that the park, under the auspices of the state-run DNR, was at a 50-person limit for any group gatherings? How could we possibly plan for professional theater when the actors’ union, Equity, was protecting their members’ safety by enforcing volumes of mitigation requirements before issuing any contracts? And even if the DNR upped the attendance allowance to 50% capacity, how could we plan a season that would make any financial sense at all with such reduced numbers?

We scratched our heads and then, once again, started writing a new playbook linked, as needed, to a gazillion spreadsheets that included various options for getting live performances up and running. Budget sheets, personnel scenarios, start and end dates—anything we thought we needed to think about and even some stuff we were pretty sure we didn’t. For instance, we put together a 40-page document detailing our plan for COVID mitigation in order to satisfy the union and reassure the park that we would proceed safely. Well, all of those factors were fast becoming outdated as science played catch up and then surged ahead once the vaccination roll-out started to happen. Soon, we were being offered the option of operating as a “fully vaccinated” company, which meant we’d have our staff, visiting artists and volunteers all agree to be fully vaccinated two weeks before our first official rehearsal date. And then, after numerous email exchanges and drafted mitigation plans, the DNR relaxed the gathering maximum and is allowing for 25% capacity with the possibility of revisiting that cap based on how things develop. Luckily, we had put together our Plan A with the hope that both of these developments would eventually happen. We kept proceeding “as if” they would and kept at all of the detail work that would make Plan A possible.

Even so, Plan A, by dint of circumstances, couldn’t be a plan that would overcommit us up front, especially financially. And also, because COVID was still a factor, we had to plan for an ultra-safe season, especially before we knew anything about the efficacy of the vaccines. We couldn’t be sure that our dressing rooms would be a viable space for gathering, or if costuming would be problematic. We had no way of anticipating what our housing needs would be unless we planned something that minimized that need, no matter what developments took place. We had no way of guaranteeing employment, so we reached out to our artists to find out about availability and interest in returning if we got the go ahead. It was definitely an exercise in precariousness. Still is, really.

But, we had enough to go on that we knew we had a real shot at having some kind of season, which led us to deciding what that season might look like given all the constraints. And, instead of seeing the limitations as an impediment, we decided to embrace them. Why not have a slate of shows that really emphasized our roots of singing songs and storytelling, like our predecessor troupe, the Heritage Ensemble? Why not employ our vast experience at creating new material that we knew our audience would find engaging because it’s a Northern Sky original? In other words, why not create exactly what we needed? Amazingly, coming out of a year of having no live performances, we will have two world premieres and a preview production on our stages this season. We will also revisit the very first book musical written by Fred Alley for our 1991 season, and we will bring back one of our hit fall shows for a run in the Gould. Plus, we will also launch the season with a premiere musical performed virtually to kick off Raise the Curtain on May 30th in anticipation of our first performance in the park on June 14th. And we’ll bring that show from the virtual world to the magical world of theater and present it live in the Gould, too. Poof! Out of nothing—something. Like a rabbit from a hat, right?

See you under the stars—at long last—once again.

– Jeff Herbst