Your Chattanooga Theatre Centre may be quiet at the moment, but we’re anything but inactive as we endeavor to move ahead with a good deal of caution and a fair amount of savvy and vision.
We’re focused on balancing the safety and wishes of our patrons with the safety and wishes of our volunteers, and we’re focused on balancing the security of the live theatre experience with the expectation of quality theatre that the community has come to expect of us.
We’ve made the tough decision to pick up our 2020-2021 season in its entirety, which was due to open in September with "The Sound Of Music", and move it a year down the road to 2021-2022. There’s a delicate balance to creating a season, and we didn’t want to cherry pick shows and upset that balance by pulling out shows to consider for the coming months.
Plus, the season was selected before the crisis hit, and the majority of the shows could not be staged with the necessary safety precautions we need for our actors on stage. We have to consider the safety not just of our audiences, but of our volunteers on stage and behind the scenes. So that’s a sacrifice we had to make.
We had two productions (Agatha Christie’s "The Hollow" and Neil Simon’s "Barefoot In The Park") ready to open in March when the pandemic hit, but both of those had to be put on hold indefinitely. As the crisis evolved, it became clear that we couldn’t stage them in the current climate. Our audiences want to see them, but even streaming options are out of the question right now because we have to consider the safety of our volunteer actors who can’t physically distance themselves on stage. It is our hope to revive both shows in 2021.
Instead, we’re looking at opportunities in the fall and winter to produce non-musical plays (singing in musicals increases the likelihood of exposure) with small casts that can be pulled off with physical distancing for the safety of our actors, without compromising the artistic integrity of the shows.
We are confident we can exceed recommended standards for the safety of our audiences. We can reduce capacity to 33 percent and seat patrons more than six feet apart. We can redirect foot traffic to avoid crowding, conduct temperature checks, institute no-contact ticketing, require masks, sanitize before and after performances, etc. We already have touchless faucets and an HVAC rehab scheduled. We’ll enact those protocols when the time is right, when it’s safe and ethical for us to open our doors again.
We also have a unique opportunity with the beautiful riverfront lawn on our property, and we’re exploring options for presenting community arts performances in that space.
Thanks to you, we will weather this storm. Thanks to those of you who’ve donated the value of your unused tickets to the theatre. Thanks to those of you who’ve entrusted us with their children at Summer Academy. Thanks to those of you who’ve engaged with us on social media and kept us connected. Thanks to those of you who’ve responded with generosity to our donation appeals. Thanks to those of you who participated in our patron and volunteer surveys and helped inform our decisions for moving forward. Many, many thanks for hanging in there with us.
We look forward to seeing you once again!