Re)Filling Those Seats

from The Commonwealth February/March 2022

by The Commonwealth Club of California

Maryles Casto

theatre in the age of COVID. From the December 1, 2021, Arts Member-Led Forum program “(Re)Filling Those Seats: California Theatre Challenges.” SEAN SAN JOSE, Artistic Director, Magic Theatre JOHANNA PFAELZER, Artistic Director, Berkeley Repertory Theater KHALIA DAVIS, Artistic Director, Bay Area Children’s Theatre TIM BOND, Artistic Director, Theatreworks BRAD ERICKSON, Executive Director, Theatre Bay Area—Moderator

BRAD ERICKSON: I went to your websites to figure out when you [took on your currrent positions], it’s all been something of a blur. And Johanna, I think you were the first; [you] came on in the fall of 2019, and we had no idea that any of this was going to be in front of us. Talk about what that was like, up into your first full season at Berkeley Rep, only to have the brakes hit a little bit into the season. JOHANNA PFAELZER: Yeah, I started at Berkeley Rep in September 2019. I had what in retrospect seems like an incredibly blissful five, five-and-a-half months with all of the challenges attendant in taking over an organization. My predecessor, Tony Taccone, had led Berkeley Rep as artistic director for 22 years and as the associate artistic director for eight years before that.

So I thought the challenges ahead of me were simply coming into a new company, learning what it wanted and needed of me, what my agenda was going to be for it. All of those things that at the time seemed plenty challenging. Only to find that within a few months—because when I think back, it was really in February that we all started to get a sense of this impending potential threat. So

California Theatre Challenges Post-Pandemic

we started having conversations about health protocols and hand-washing. We weren’t even in the land of things like masking yet. And I’d never heard of Zoom.

By the middle of March we, like everybody, had fully shut down. That was the context of my first year on the job.

So I’ve now been in a leadership position at Berkeley Rep for three times as long in COVID times as I have in normal times. I’m incredibly relieved and proud to say that we started live performances in our actual theater a few weeks ago.

This has totally felt like we’re all really in this together as a community. It feels like for me to go through the experimentation of opening up our doors and figuring out what those protocols are and how our audiences are responding, the beautiful part of this time is that I feel like we’ve all been in conversation in a way that I think is really, really unprecedented. So as thrilled as the four of us [panelists are] to see each other today, it’s in part because over the last 20 months we have been in conversation together—first precipitated, I think, by total crisis and then by the opportunity of what it was as a community to think how we were all going to walk through this together.

And I say that in relationship both to the COVID pandemic, but also to this real call for change in terms of anti-racism and in rethinking what our relationships were to social justice. And it’s meant that there have been incredibly rich and rigorous conversations that have happened among arts leaders. So I have colleagues now in these three people with whom I get to spend time today, but also across the Bay Area in ways that I never had anticipated. ERICKSON: Tim, you came in late in March 2020, right? So you were on your way. Obviously, you were ready to take those reins. Was there a show up and running when you came on, and did you have to close it down? Or was it already? Where where were you in that timeline? TIM BOND: I started officially full time in March, but it was going to be remote from the beginning anyway, because I was still finishing my time in Seattle. And then COVID reared its head and I decided to just move here in April, because all my other shows—I had four other shows going on

(RE)FILLING THOSE SEATS

California Theatre Challenges Post-Pandemic

throughout the nation, the Guthrie, the Kennedy Center, all these places—and they all, of course, within a couple of weeks shut down. So I just decided, Well, I’m just going to move now and get there.

Theatreworks at that time [was running] a production called They Promised Her The Moon, which was a world premiere. It opened and closed—opened on a Saturday and closed on Wednesday the next week. So then Robert Kelley, [who founded Theatreworks 50 years ago], was still officially in charge through the rest of that season. They made the decision to stream that show. They were able to capture it archivally and then run that video, so our subscribers and audience members who had bought tickets were able to see it.

That sort of started the whole pandemic. Then Kelley and I worked together to figure out all of the different virtual productions we’ve done since then, which was 28 through last year. A number of them are readings, and some of them were films that we made. Others were shorts. We’ve learned a lot [laughter]. ERICKSON: How did your audiences respond to to that? Were they engaging? And I’ve heard you’re also getting audiences all over the country, because you don’t have to necessarily be in Palo Alto or Mountain View to see it. BOND: That’s true. Our initial audience was very happy to have this stream of that show. And then as we started to do other productions, there were good feelings. But as time has gone on, I think people are having fatigue of looking at this, in terms of our traditional theater-going audience. But we have found other audience members throughout different states, actually internationally, who have tuned in and seen it, but not in numbers that are significant enough to make it fill the gap and in us feeling we’re having truly the reach that we want to have. But it has been heartening to know we’ve had people from the Philippines and from Germany and from wherever tuning in to see our productions.

And when we did Pride and Prejudice, which ironically had just been filmed by the playwright Paul Gordon and [the] composer for that piece, which we did in December of 2019—they had done a major five-camera shoot of it, national theater-level video of it, which we can’t afford. That went out and was seen by like hundreds of thousands of people and is now able to be gotten on Amazon Prime. So that’s an unusual and really incredibly far-reaching project; to be able to replicate that again and again for us, going into our current season, is beyond our

“OUR INITIAL AUDIENCE WAS VERY HAPPY TO HAVE THIS STREAM OF THAT SHOW. BUT AS TIME HAS GONE ON, I THINK PEOPLE ARE HAVING FATIGUE, IN TERMS OF OUR TRADITIONAL THEATER-GOING AUDIENCE.”

—TIM BOND

means right now.

But we are streaming. We have streamed our first show. We opened our first production in October, Lizard Boy. We had quite a few viewings of that, and that was very good. But again, not enough to make up our total audience size. We’re getting ready to have our first preview tonight of It’s a Wonderful Life, which we will also be streaming in about two weeks and we’re hoping we get good viewage for that. ERICKSON: Khalia and Sean, you came on to your jobs during the shutdown. To come on, take the reins—what was that like? KHALIA DAVIS: My trajectory into the position that I now hold as artistic director at Bay Area Children’s Theater is a little special, because right before Nina Meehan, the CEO and founder of the company, offered me this position, she actually came to me back in the start of May with a book called A Kid’s Book about Racism, by Jelani Memory, and was so excited about this.

She said, “I feel like this book needs to be adapted. You need to be the one to adapt it, and I want you to direct it. And I don’t want any of the producing entities in our industry to bother you,” which is very rare.

So I was already so excited about the fact that even after I knew they had shut their doors, they were still thinking of innovative ways to create theatrical programing for young audiences, that also—Johanna started to talk a little bit about this—bring to light the need for more specific, intentional social justice and anti-racism media and programing, especially for our young people. So I was already very excited about that type of work that they wanted to do and that they wanted to bring me into it. So I put a lot of my heart and soul into making it happen.

We put that show up real quick. I called it a kid’s play about racism, and we were one of the first to utilize the now very famous method of taking theatrical storytelling and putting it into a film medium. We also were one of the first two young audience programs that Broadway on Demand featured. And Tralen [Doler], who worked for Broadway on Demand, actually was so excited about the numbers that we received.

Tim was speaking to streaming; we actually streamed very well, [enough] that we were extended, and then that produced that new wave of young audience programing that they now have an educational programing. They actually have sections on Broadway on Demand for that reason.

So we’re really happy to see that even though this shutdown caused a lot of pain and harm and hurt, it also opened up further opportunities for expansion in the ways in which young audiences are able to receive the type of work that we were producing ahead of time. And also think about how are they consuming this now. We are also an organization that really likes to test our boundaries and take risks. And so when I jumped in, they were already talking about an at-home theater experience called Play On, and Play On is our at-home theater kit. It’s a screen-free audio musical adventure that comes in the mail. In the box that you receive, you have different items that can help in the storytelling experience. They’re items that just enhance the experience for a kid. It’s

not necessarily needed, but it’s fun and kids love to have things in their hands and then they’re listening to the adventure. And the kids are a part of the adventure.

And that is actually the genesis and the catalyst to what we’re excited about launching into in the New Year, which is having more official, interactive and immersive experiences for young people live, because we recognized how fun it was to have them be at the center of our work through the Play On series. ERICKSON: That’s really interesting. I think that’s part of the conversation, too— the way that having to do things differently and having to do this video and film and whatnot and just reach audiences in different ways, how will that linger on?

And maybe Johanna and Tim, you’re saying that you’re ready to kind of just get the audiences back in and go on with live show on stage. But we have learned these other ways in the streaming that’s happening to continue to reach audiences.

It’s interesting to see the kind of the ongoing learning and changes that will happen because of the pandemic and the ways that we were forced to do things differently. PFAELZER: Yeah, actually, I don’t think I’m saying that we’re 100 percent reverting just to in-person programing. I think the commitment we made early on in this was that everything was going to be an experiment. Everything was going to be things we were trying for the first time. The reason to invest in those experiments was so that at the end of this, whenever the end may be, we would come out of it with new skills, with some new practices, with some different modes and means of engaging with audiences, whether they are our subscription audience or, as Tim and Khalia said, we have had this incredible opportunity to be essentially in conversation with people who are in Paris and in London and in Montana, and some of the people who had relationships to Berkeley Rep pre-pandemic or maybe even decades before, and this was a chance for them to reconnect to an organization that had been really meaningful to them, as well as new people who were responding, perhaps to a particular piece of programing.

So forgive me—I’m now going to speak for all of us, interrupt me when I’m wrong, friends—but I think all of us are figuring out how we’re going to take the things that we’ve learned, positive and negative, and use them as we move forward. I don’t think anybody is like, “Oh, business as usual. We’re going back to the before” in any form. ERICKSON: Yeah. Sean, I’m going to jump over to you, because you’ve taken the lead at this legendary Bay Area theater company and you are making some changes there on the cusp of reopening. Talk to us a little bit about about that and your vision and some of the changes already underway. SEAN SAN JOSÉ: Yeah. Thanks, Brad, and thank you for gathering us together. Thank you, [Club program organizer] Anne [Smith] for doing this. I miss the [Club] gavel, is the only things [laughter].

I’m excited to hear what you all are talking about. I come from a group that’s been here in San Francisco that has kind of specialized in just reaching community. So a very particular focus always has been the luxury of what we get to do and the passion of what we get to do. And now having this new opportunity, as you say, Brad, as a bigger platform at Magic Theater.

It’s been helpful for me in a weird way to come into it where our land beneath us is unsettled, because I’m hoping that we can use this time to to reshape the landscape. I mean, we [are] long overdue for it, class wise, race wise, culture wise, language wise, phenotype-wise. What ever wise there is, and especially in the Bay Area, where our cities are getting swooped asunder by these unknown mega-corporations, and every block you go down gets changed before you. So how do we hold on to what we have, which is power of community, power of storytelling, power of seeding conversations that if it doesn’t make political change at least it plants dialog for for civic thought.

I say all that sort of highfalutin’ stuff to say that coming into this, it’s been helpful to be able to wipe away and go, What do we want to focus in on and how do we want to approach it? Because my whole approach to even having the honor of being at a theater like this, but also accepting something to work in a white organization, a white institution when I’m interested in rightfully centering people of color throughout everything—it helps to have a wider open focus, if that makes sense, so that it doesn’t feel like a total dismantling.

And as we know, race stuff, class stuff—it’s all fear-based. So as soon as you start to make one move forward, everyone’s like, Why do you want to break that? And I don’t want to break anything. I want to redefine things so they have resonance for more people. So in that way, I think coming into a new position and saying, “Hey, we want to do a whole bunch of new things here” has been been exciting.

That sounds weird to say “exciting” in

“ALL OF US ARE FIGURING OUT HOW WE’RE GOING TO TAKE THE THINGS THAT WE’VE LEARNED, POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE, AND USE THEM AS WE MOVE FORWARD. I DON’T THINK ANYBODY IS LIKE, ‘BUSINESS AS USUAL.’”

a time that has been full of madness. And you know, as [Pfaelzer] alluded to, too, I think the biggest mistake for any of us moving forward is not even the form that we’re going to use, but for us not to look at the near-racial reckoning as it is some grave informer of where we go with the work that we do would be just the biggest continuation, perpetuation of the madness that we’ve been living through.

So if we don’t take that and go, What are we going to do with it and how do we implement it into the daily activity of our community? Because that’s what we’re doing. We commune. So for us to sort of use that as an old newspaper would be the biggest error we can make.

But what we can do is to look at it and look around and start to build some new things together. You know, it’s hard to say new things, though, with people, and it’s hard to say race things, because it’s always received as sort of a divisive thing. It’s not that at all. It’s looking at the reality of it and saying, Well, now we recognize these things, why don’t we build on it? Why don’t we expand on it? We’ll only grow from it. All of us that came into the theater performance-making practice learned from all our predecessors and all our ancestors, all of our mentors and teachers, and we expanded on that. We didn’t replicate that. That doesn’t do anything. For the . . . live performance, it’s about today. This whole time has been like this extended pressure cooker of a great informing period.

And it’s so weird to think that we’re at the end of 2021 when we kept thinking like, Man, if we make it to 2020, we gonna be cool. And then all of a sudden I just looked up, I was like, “What? We’re about to end 2021 and we’re still in this madness.”

Though I say all that stuff and talk extralonger than anybody else, I do feel so hopeful moving forward with it, because I think we’re an empathetic industry, we’re about community, we’re about gathering. And I think we can learn a lot and grow a lot from it. ERICKSON: Some of what you’re just saying now, Sean, is making me think about how are people actually responding to being back in the theater, to seeing what you’ve got on stage? What’s it been like? How are they responding? DAVIS: I’m going to jump in, because I would love to share, as the person in charge of an organization that provided in-person programing and what that experience was like. But then I also got to go and witness Wintertime at Berkeley Rep, which is playing right now. It’actually was my very first live show, since I had moved from New York City. I’d been living in New York City for the last three and a half years. So Six, the Broadway musical, was my last show I saw before the pandemic—I saw it in previews.

Bay Area Children’s Theater this past summer—because we like to do things a little kooky and crazy—we did Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, by Mo Willems and Deborah Wicks La Puma. It’s a musical and we actually did it on a bus. And we did it outside. And so Sean probably saw us, because we were in Fort Mason for a lot of that time. We also were able to utilize Cal Shakes, who were very generous, and then we were on a cute little farm in San Ramon. But the whole thing was that we were outside, and families were able to experience the joy of theater again in a safe environment. It was just really heartwarming to see how easy it was for them to fall back into what it meant to share that experience as a family together and the fact that even though our actors were masked as well—we had puppets, it was a record, the whole show was prerecorded, so there’s a lot of big gestures, but they themselves were not actually physically talking to the kids—there still was this sense of magic and wonder and joy that I saw in all the faces. It was very sweet.

On the flip side, being able to be in space with other people and get to share the experience of just seeing live performance— Berkeley Rep is so smart in bringing a show to us during a time period that is Wintertime, and also, though, a show that was very bizarre. We needed just a little bit of whimsy, a little bit of zany and also just something very solid to hold onto story-wise. But it was just very fun. If you haven’t seen Wintertime, I’m going to plug it. It’s a wild ride. [Laughter.] Stay to the end.

It was a really beautiful experience for me as an audience member. That felt good to be like, Oh yeah, this is what it’s like to share this time with other people who are complete strangers. But now we have something in common that we got to experience together. It was really nice. PFAELZER: Have you all met Khalia, my new PR person? [Laughter.]